The Valencia Expat Club by June Patrick

THE VALENCIA EXPAT CLUB by June Patrick has an especially appealing, colorful cover, reflecting Patrick’s author bio which says that she “writes witty, escapist stories set in swoony, faraway places.” And her descriptions of places, food and culture around Valencia, Spain were plentiful and interesting, the best part of this novel overall. The main characters are Dahlia (trying to reset her life after a divorce) and Liam (proprietor of the Expat Club) who experience a fairly typical enemies to lovers romance. The story, though, required a bit of effort to stay engaged due to the number of similes that the author employed. In fact, the word “like” appears 705 (!) times, or more than twice per page. At first, this adds color and imagery (e.g., “The taxi wound through Valencia's streets like a thread stitching together patches of a centuries-old quilt” or “the Mediterranean appeared ahead like a gift, spreading out to the horizon in shades of blue that would make Pantone jealous”), but with so many comparisons, it quickly gets annoying and then requires effort to ignore. Even Patrick seems to appreciate her overreliance on this technique, writing at one point: “…his voice all rich and velvety, like expensive chocolate or aged whiskey or some other metaphor that would make my former English professors cry.”