Messing with Mac is the final installment in the South Village Singles mini-series. I did not read the previous books, Tangling with Ty and Roughing It With Ryan, but I will be seeking them out because the heroines seem like interesting people. Too bad I can’t say the same for the couple featured in Messing with Mac.

Taylor Wellington and her two best friends vowed to remain single. Both of her friends are now blissfully in love and have begun teasing her about finding a man of her own. But Taylor believes love is something she can live without – it’s not worth the pain of the kind of deep, soul-crushing love she once knew. She’s able to keep busy renovating the huge Victorian estate she inherited from her grandfather in a bustling part of California.

Thomas “Mac” MacKenzie is the hunky contractor working on Taylor’s property and the two are at odds from day one. Taylor hopes for one last day of solitude before work begins, but Mac shows up to get an early start and ruins her plans. She thinks he’s impossibly annoying. He insists on calling her Princess and thinks she’s a pampered little rich girl (even it if fits, calling a client Princess was way out of line for a professional contractor. ­ I’d have fired his butt, no matter how gorgeous). But the scorching attraction is unavoidable when they’re forced into constant contact – Taylor continues to live in the building during the renovation.

Both characters have baggage and spend the book doing all they can to avoid falling in love. Taylor was raised in luxury by an ambitious, unaffectionate woman whose career always came first. Despite her unloving upbringing, she managed to fall deeply in love as a young woman, but her heart was left irreparably shattered. She’s allowed herself a few flings with beta men she can walk all over and leave before she grows attached. Because of her past, Taylor’s fear of opening up to Mac read realistically to me. Mac, though, is the kind of hero most of us have read about way too many times. Screwed over by the evil, money grubbing, aborting (I kid you not), pride-stealing, ex-wife from hell, he thinks all women are greedy – despite the fact that his parents have a loving, stable relationship. Mac is certain that Taylor is nothing more than a socialite used to the finer things in life and he vows to keep his distance. This is the conflict and also the majority of the plot, and it just wasn’t strong enough to pull this book out of “C” territory for me.

Now onto my reason for the “C-.” Taylor is dirt broke. With no income, she’s selling off her antiques to fund the renovation. Her grandfather supported her for nearly 27 (!) years, even funding her “fancy education,” but when he died he left her his crumbling and all of his money to her penny pinching mother, who refuses to share the wealth. Taylor is desperate to make the estate profitable and has grand ideas of renting out the apartments and one of the storefronts located on the lower level. She also plans to open an antique store with the other storefront. So, what’s a girl with no moola to do in the meantime? Consider getting some sort of temporary job with that fancy education, maybe? Not Taylor. She whines about her lack of funds and the fact that she must sell off bits of her precious antique collection, but she does little to improve her situation and continues to bid on antiques she can no longer afford. Her friends commiserate with her because she works so hard poring over the renovation drawings and fondling her antiques and, later, Mac. Sorry, this was not sympathy-inducing – it’s not like Taylor was an integral part of the renovation, hanging drywall or even painting walls here, folks. Get a job, lady, and then I might sympathize.

There are also issues here, both parental and sibling, which are never given any sort of closure probably due to the short length of the book. Mac goes out of his way to avoid his well-to-do parents and make his own way and Taylor has some major mother issues that are brought up and then dropped. At one point in the story Taylor is visited by her slutty little sister, who drops by, spills Taylor’s deep secret to Mac, then disappears, never to be seen again. Taylor treats this sister as a nuisance, instead of a young lady in need of some love and guidance, and she doesn’t give her a second thought. This made Taylor appear very self-centered.

Despite all of the niggling problems, there’s nothing horribly wrong with this book, but there’s nothing that sparkles, either. And therein lies the problem. It’s a book that is moderately enjoyable, moderately irritating, and too easily forgotten. If you’ve read the previous books, you’ll probably want to seek this one out to close up the trilogy, but if you haven’t, I have to recommend picking up something else.