CBR18 Book 47: "Book Club Boyfriend" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR18 Bingo: Craft (this book dwells a lot on writing as a craft - both novels and screenplays)

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book is on sale now.

Blair Kellermoon (former rom-com star, now powerful producer) has adapted several novels as movies and TV series and runs a book club, and the books she picks usually get huge sales boosts and are again likely to be optioned for adaptation. Suffice it to say, most authors are thrilled when being asked to be part of her book club.

Jack Branksome is not one of those authors. When receiving the offer from her via Zoom, he rather coldly rejects her, and while this was a private meeting, it is widely reported in the press. After Jack also says something that could be seen as rather unflattering about Blair in a magazine interview, he texts her to apologise, and this becomes the start of their friendship.

Blair is recently divorced, and both her children are away at college. She is finding the empty-nest situation more difficult than she was expecting, and it's clear to the reader that she has several mental health issues that need to be dealt with that she's clearly not ready to acknowledge within herself. Jack's debut novel was a huge success, but he's now struggling with writing anything for the second. He's already had to ask for an extension on his deadline once. Blair invites Jack to come stay in her pool house, anIntd the friendship they began via phone develops further.

Both Blair and Jack are very observant people who are very good about pushing away anything to do with themselves. Jack's father is also an acclaimed novelist, and his elitist views on literature and culture, which have clearly affected Jack, combined with the pressure of trying to write something as well received as his debut book, make it very hard for Jack to get out of his own head and get something new written. 

Blair has been trying to adapt a YA novel, but the lack of a good script means it's hard to find funding for the movie, and because she's heard too often from men in her life that she's a great actress, but not a writer, she scoffs at Jack's suggestions that she write the script herself. 

Jack can see that Blair is struggling with depression, anxiety and OCD. Blair can see that Jack has massive daddy issues. Neither of them is looking for romance, and they keep denying that their deepening friendship has any romantic undertones, yet they also become extremely adept at anticipating each other's needs. This book is extremely slow-burn, and a lot of the story concerns itself more with how Jack and Blair can become better at taking care of themselves than how they can build a lasting relationship.

If I had to list some tropes for this book, it would probably be antagonists to best friends to lovers, and also grumpy meets sunshine. Jack was an aloof and grumpy supporting character in Holiday's previous romance, Into the Woods. I remember wondering if Holiday was setting up Jack as a future hero when reading that one. Blair is clearly inspired by Reese Witherspoon, both looks- and career-wise. She's blond, beautiful and bubbly. She used to be a beloved rom-com actress who has reinvented herself as a Hollywood producer and champion of books and reading. 

This book turned out to be rather different from what I was expecting, and the romantic payoff comes rather late in the story, but it's such a well-written and enjoyable book that it didn't bother me. I am really glad I got an ARC of this one, and look forward to Holiday's next contemporary (I find I like her contemporaries more than her historicals, in general). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 32: "Manic Pixie Dream Earl" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 320 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 15 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

Thanks to Jenny Holiday, Netgalley and Tantor Audio for this ARC. My opinion is my own.

Edward "Effie" Astley, Viscount Featherfinch, is a poet and a terrible disappointment to his father. Thankfully, he's about to set off on the annual "Earl's trip" with his two best friends, who support him come what may. So they don't ask any questions when Effie asks them to help him store a broken printing press, nor why he's so preoccupied with letters from a Miss Evans. Effie doesn't really want to confess to having become infatuated with a non-aristocratic lady, who coincidentally thinks he's a woman too, called Euphemia. 

Miss Julianna Evans loves the magazine she publishes, but hates that her odious brother insists on weekly editorial meetings and keeps questioning every decision she makes, constantly cutting her budget. Normally, she's far too busy to ever consider taking a brief holiday, but when there is a delay at her printers, and the alternative is waiting impatiently at her sister's house, generally just being in the way, she impulsively decides that she's going to spend some of her hard-earned savings to go to Brighton to meet her best friend Euphemia, who she knows will be staying there with her friends. 

Brighton isn't a big enough place for Effie and Julianna to avoid each other for very long (nor would this be a particularly effective romance novel if they did). Considering Effie has been lying about his identity to Julianna for the past five years, she gets over the deceit remarkably quickly. Effie's two best buds also take it in their stride that their slightly unorthodox bestie is in love with a magazine publisher who is quite a few years his elder.

The publisher claims that this book is Ted Lasso meets Bridgerton meets The Hangover. I have complained in the past that absolutely everything set in the Regency era is now marketed towards "fans of Bridgerton", and I can only surmise that the Ted Lasso comparison is made because this book features non-toxic male friendships and guys who support each other in wholesome ways, while The Hangover is thrown in there because it's the most famous dudes on a road trip story out there, even now, sixteen years later. I despair at these sales pitches. 

There is a lot to like here. Effie is bisexual and has no problem admitting this to his friends, although his friends seem to have suspected him to be gay and/or asexual before he reveals his feelings for Julianna. There's the aforementioned non-toxic male friendships. We have an age gap, where the heroine is about a decade older than the hero (Effie is in his late twenties, Julianna is in her late thirties). Most of the book takes place in Brighton rather than London, and the more unusual location made for a nice change. 

Harry Frost does a good job with the narration of the book, but I find that about a month after finishing the story, I don't remember too much of the overall plot. While I've liked several of Jenny Holiday's contemporary romances, I'm not sure I liked her rather unusual take on the historical genre. Nevertheless, I already own Earl's Trip, the first book in the series, so I'll probably get round to reading it at some point. I also hope she gets round to writing about Effie's friend Olive in some future instalment, she was the most interesting supporting character here. 

Judging a book by its cover: This cover is rather busy, and features a number of people in various situations, not all of which take place in the actual story, unless my memory entirely fails me. I think there are too many things going on here. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 1: "Into the Woods" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 368 pages

Audio book length: 10 hrs 45 mins

Rating: 4 stars

This was an ARC I won from the author in a Facebook contest (!) I know, right? My opinions are my own.

Gretchen Miller is a self-proclaimed badass, and she's not lying. After growing up with financial instability, food insecurities and a lot of general uncertainness due to her father's unpredictability, she became determined never to have to depend on anyone ever again and started earning and saving her own money as a teenager, squirrelling it away for a future project. That project became a dance studio for kids, known as "Miss Miller's from Minnetonka". Recently, about to turn 40, she's decided to "expand her empire", and is in the process of buying a second building, intending to expand to yoga and pilates classes. She has also decided that she is DONE with men, after years of disappointing deadbeat boyfriends and terrible Tinder dates. 

Gretchen doesn't really have time to take a whole month off from expanding her business, but to help out a friend of a friend, she agrees to mentor kids at a summer camp in the woods. Being away from civilisation and with limited cell service will hopefully help with her "man cleanse" and further her ambitions of "becoming a crone". 

Tennyson "Teddy" Knight agreed to take a job at the same summer camp without even realising it was going to involve teenagers (he didn't read the fine print). He just needed to get away after the dramatic breakup of his band, where he became tabloid fodder after trashing a hotel room. Teddy's not really an outdoorsy person, doesn't know anything about how to relate to teenagers and is generally a grumpy misanthrope. However, time away from tabloid attention and the opportunity to work on a revenge album sounds good to him.

To begin with, Gretchen pegs Teddy as an entitled asshole because he mistook her for an overenthusiastic fan when they first met and did not behave graciously, while Teddy finds Gretchen annoying and far too perky. Her worldview seems to be the exact opposite of his. With cabins right next to each other in the woods, and a lot of time on their hands, they develop a tentative friendship as the days go by, and discover that they have a lot more in common than they would have imagined at first. Taking on board the idea of temporary camp friendships, they seem able to be open to one another about a lot of stuff they've never really told anyone else about. 

All the talking furthers the mutual attraction between them, and after about twelve hours lost in the woods together, Gretchen decides to ask Teddy to be her "last hurrah", one last fling before she embraces her crone status and gives up men and dating forever. Since they agree that it's purely physical and has a set end date when Gretchen leaves the camp, neither of them has hangups about a lot of the stuff that's complicated dating for them in the past. Of course, when it's time for Gretchen to actually leave and return to her real life, it turns out that neither of them are happy with the never seeing each other again plan.

Gretchen Miller was introduced in Jenny Holiday's previous romance, Canadian Boyfriend, where she was the boss and best friend of protagonist Rory (who is now heavily pregnant, yet still a very supportive best friend). I liked Gretchen as a supporting character and even more as a protagonist in her own right. She really is a badass, and a very accomplished woman, who unfortunately has gotten so used to taking care of herself and her very structured plans for her life that she's unable to see that she may need others to take care of her occasionally as well, and that being flexible and allowing the possibility of change might be just as healthy, if not more, than having your future plans set in stone. 

Teddy begins the book as quite a mess, both professionally and as a person. Having been the bassist and co-writer in a major touring rock band since his late teens, he's not really sure who he is as a person now that his band has broken up, and he's on the outs with his former best friend. He has a ton of unresolved issues because of an even more unstable and shittier childhood than Gretchen, and he starts out being angry, resentful and behaving less than great with the people around him. A month in the woods at camp turns out to be great for him, and working with teenagers and other artists makes him have some personal epiphanies and forces him to reevaluate a lot of things. His plans for a revenge album fall by the wayside pretty quickly and for the first few weeks, he seems unable to write or compose anything at all. Confronting a lot of unresolved feelings about his past also allows him to grow closer to his sister, who clearly has a lot of emotional baggage of her own because of their mother's neglect.

I listened to this in audio, and like Canadian Boyfriend, this is a duet narration, where each performer reads the dialogue and action of their character across all chapters and sections, as well as those of characters of the same gender. The narrators, Teddy Hamilton and Kit Swann did an excellent job. I really hope more romance audio books use this style of narration, it makes the story so much more immersive and I felt I got closer to each of the characters this way. 

Into the Woods was a great start to my reading year. Winning it in a Facebook giveaway was a wonderful holiday surprise (especially since I had been rejected for the ARC through NetGalley the week before). It will be released on Tuesday the 7th of January and is well worth your time. 

Judging a book by its cover: Leni Kaufman has yet again made a lovely and very cosy cover for this romance, although if I were to nitpick (and I will), there are no tents involved in this summer camp experience. Everyone lives in cabins. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 11: "Canadian Boyfriend" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 384 pages

Audio book length: 10 hrs 52 mins

Rating: 4 stars

This was an audio ARC from Netgalley. My opinions are my own.

CBR16 Sweet Books: Exciting (I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and was VERY excited to get an ARC shortly before the release date. 

Nowhere Bingo: A book with multiple POVs

When Aurora "Rory" Evans was a lonely teenager, she ran into a handsome Canadian hockey player while she was selling coffee at the Mall of America. She took his name and pretended to have an actual Canadian boyfriend, making her loneliness and ostracism seem more bearable, because even if she had been invited to things, she wouldn't have been able to come, since she was probably visiting her boyfriend, in Canada. And obviously, he couldn't come to school dances or her ballet recitals, living in Canada and all. To keep up the ruse, she also wrote her fictional boyfriend long letters, basically making them a sort of journal for some difficult years in her life.

Now an adult, having given up on ballet as it was making her sick, Aurora works as a dance teacher in a small town. She still struggles with her years of disordered eating, and occasionally gets panic attacks, but she's doing a lot better and enjoys teaching children the joys of dance. To her great surprise, the tragically widowed Mike Martin, whose daughter comes back to dance classes after some time away (what with the grief and the dead mum and soforth), is none other than the handsome young man she took as inspiration for her fake boyfriend. To her credit, it takes her a while to confirm to herself that the Mike she met as a teenager and this Mike are the same person, but even when she does, she doesn't tell him the truth about her teenage coping mechanism. 

Mike loved his wife and is still dealing with a lot of emotions after her sudden death in a car accident. Olivia, Rory's dance student, is his step-daughter and while he's the only father she's ever known, he's had to fight his parents-in-law for custody, which hasn't exactly made the grieving process easier. It's clear that Olivia adores her father, but she's also a tween who lost her mother and is prone to tantrums and sudden outbursts. Dance classes with "Miss Rory" are one of her favourite things. Mike likes that Aurora doesn't fawn over him (unlike many of the dance mums) and he sees the easy rapport she has with Olivia, and when he discovers that Aurora is working multiple jobs to make ends meet, offers to hire her to be Olivia's sort-of nanny while he's off resuming his hockey career. 

So the romance here takes a while to develop. Aurora is keeping the secret that she basically used Mike as a template for a fantasy boyfriend for a long time as a teenager, a truth that becomes more difficult to tell the longer she knows him and the closer they become. Mike is also Aurora's employer (she refuses to take a paycheck, but lives in his basement, has access to a car whenever she needs it, and gets health insurance) for a lot of the book, which certainly complicates the situation between them somewhat. Mike also feels like he can't date again until his daughter is older, possibly even until after she's old enough to move out. He doesn't feel like he can introduce a new woman into her life, in case they break up and she would have to deal with losing another person. When they do finally decide to become more than friends, they do address the employer/employee complication, so it's very much not a case of anyone being exploited or taken advantage of. 

There's so much to like in this book. The close friendship between Aurora and her best friend (who owns the dance studio where she works). Mike has been in therapy since his wife died, and once Aurora gets health insurance, she can also afford to see a therapist. She has a long list of reasons as to why she needs to, beginning with the relationship with her very controlling mother, who still makes her feel guilty for giving up a career as a dancer, because of all the time and money her mother put into "supporting" her daughter. There's the disordered eating, which still creates problems for her occasionally, although I liked how she tried to get more comfortable with allowing herself sugary things and her anxiety. And after a while, it's actually her complicated feelings about her relationship with Mike. 

By the way, notice how I keep calling the male protagonist simply Mike in my review? My major complaint about this book, the main reason I cannot give it five stars, even though I really enjoyed it and it did so many things well, is that consistently, throughout the entire book, up to and including the epilogue, Aurora calls Mike by his full name. He is Mike Martin EVERY single time she refers to him. I get it when they are still just acquaintances, and he's the father of one of the girls she teaches. But once she moves into his house to take care of his daughter? Once they actually start engaging in spicy recreational activities? Why? Who does that? 

I do not call or think of my husband as Mark Patterson, he's just Mark. Possible exception if I have to fill out official paperwork or something, then I guess I'd use his full name. Why, Aurora? What is your deal? What is up with that? This strange quirk started bothering me about halfway through the book when I really started noticing it, and by the end of the book, I was annoyed enough that it made me want to scream. So no five stars for you, book. 

It's been a while since I listened to an audio book with two narrators, but to me, this had an unusual audio format. I'm used to romance novels that have alternating POVs between the protagonists, and if the audiobook has two different narrators, they read the entire chapter from "their" character's POV. That is not the case here. Emily Ellet narrates the chapters where Aurora is the POV character and Joshua Jackson narrates Mike's. In all the chapters, Ellet does all the female voices and Jackson does all the male voices. So it becomes a sort of hybrid between a standard audio book and an audio drama. I really liked it. I've now come across another romance audio that did the same thing. If this is a new trend in dual-POV books in audio, whether romance or not, I'm a big fan. It makes the whole thing a lot more entertaining. 

Both narrators for this are really good and make the story more engaging. Normally, I only listen to audiobooks when I'm going to and from work, or am out doing errands, or if I'm doing chores. Now, I kept finding excuses to listen more. I know there was a lot of excitement on social media because THE  Joshua Jackson (of Dawson's Creek and Fringe fame) was doing the male part. Is this actually his first time doing audiobooks? If so, he did a good job. I enjoyed the audiobook enough that I used one of my precious Audible credits on it once I finished listening. So even if this was an ARC originally, Ms. Holiday got another sale.

Niggles about Aurora's weird name quirk aside, this was really good and I liked how Mike's character actually got the space and time to work through his many issues because of his wife's death. Neither Aurora nor Mike are magically healed by the love of another, and keep going to therapy because even once they work through the final act complications, both of them need mental health support. In so many books, one or both of the main characters should have intense and comprehensive therapy to deal with their MANY issues - that is not the case here.

I think the next book in the series is about Gretchen, Aurora's best friend. I can't wait. Hopefully, she'll not refer to her romantic partner with first and surname constantly. 

Judging a book by its cover: By now, I can pretty much recognise a Leni Kaufmann-illustrated cover at a glance. I always love her covers, and this one is particularly cute. Not entirely sure why the guy (clearly Mike) looks like the twin of Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation, but the pink and the mint-green and Aurora's lovely ballet slippers - the playful way she sits and glances over at Mike. It works for me on every level. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR15 Book 23: "Three Little Words" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 369 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

CBR15 Bingo: Bodies Bodies (self-esteem issues, eating disorder)

15-word review: International supermodel Gia has an eating disorder, but eats when restaurant owner Bennet feeds her. 

Longer review: Gia Gallo is used to travelling in her job as a globe-trotting fashion model. Recently, she struggles with the fact that she doesn't fit into the teeny tiny sizes of the clothes she's supposed to model, and she's not really sure if she's not outgrown the whole industry, both in body size and motivation-wise. Having never been in anything outside of the fashion world, however, she doesn't really feel like she would be qualified for anything else if she were to retire. The pressures of her job are causing her to have massively disordered eating. Deep down she knows it's a problem, but she doesn't really want to own up to it, and she's certainly not ready for anyone else to find out, especially not her best friends.

One of those best friends, Wendy, is getting married in Florida in six days. Gia has Wendy's late mother's wedding dress and needs to get to Florida in time to have the dress altered before the ceremony. Unfortunately, she's stuck in New York in a snowstorm, and no matter how much she threatens or pleads with airline staff, is she getting out of there by air. It just so happens that the best man for the wedding, restaurant owner and chef Bennett Buchanan is also stuck in the city, with the wedding rings, and he gets the last rental car but offers to let her come along for the road trip if she dials down her fashion diva behaviour. 

Because the weather is decidedly not on their side, Bennett and Gia decide to drive all the way to Florida. They fight their obvious attraction for one another, because Gia is only interested in a short-term fling, while Bennett only doesn't do casual hook-ups. Their differing outlook on relationships doesn't keep them from jumping one another for too long, though. As their road trip progresses and they get to know each other better, it also becomes very obvious to Bennet that Gia has an eating disorder, but she never seems to refuse food as long as he's the one cooking it for her. He tries to encourage her to open up to her friends about her troubles, while she helps him get more comfortable with his past and his relationship with his family. 

This is the third and final of the Bridesmaids Behaving Badly series, and by the end of it, all three friends introduced over the course of the series end up married. I enjoy Holiday's books, although none of them have impressed me enough to rate five stars yet. She's not on the 'buy at full price', and certainly not on the extremely rare 'buy in pre-order as soon as it becomes available' list, but I will keep picking up her book on sale.

Judging a book by its cover: This cover is perfectly fine, but since Gia has her hair dyed for the majority of the book, I really think the cover model's hair should have reflected that. I'm sure it's possible to do that sort of thing in editing after the photo is taken, so the model wouldn't even have had to dye her hair for real. 

CBR15 Book 22: "It Takes Two" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

15-word review: Bridesmaid Wendy keeps hooking up with former crush Noah, who’s the brother of the bride.

Wendy's best friend Jane (from One and Only) is getting married, and she's delighted to be asked to be the maid of honour. Unfortunately, the best man is the bride's older brother, Noah, who Wendy nursed a crush on for pretty much her entire adolescence until he broke her heart by standing her up at the prom. She has spent most of her adult life going on strategic trips to avoid spending time with Jane when she knew Noah was around, but now she's going to have to spend quite a lot of time in his company and it has her on edge. Determined to not show him how much he still affects her, Wendy challenges him to a "friendly" competition, about making the most memorable bachelor or bachelorette party. 

Since Wendy spent almost all of her time at their house growing up, Noah is very comfortable in her presence. His sister's friend is all grown up now, however, and initially, he feels almost guilty at how much she's now affecting him. She also seems to go out of her way to either avoid him entirely or snarkily disagree with him. As they are both trained lawyers, they can certainly both dish it out verbally, but the closer his sister's wedding they get, the more he seems to forget that Wendy was his sister's childhood companion because he can't stop thinking about how much he wants to kiss her. 

The major obstacles in the path of Wendy and Noah's HEA are Wendy's reluctance to ever let herself be vulnerable around him again and both of them having to get over their past relationship, where Wendy spent so much time with Jane that Noah came to see them both as little sisters. While Wendy nursed her crush for years, Noah was so busy working part-time jobs to help support his family after his father's untimely death and to cover for his grieving mother's depression that he didn't really have time to think about romance. A few years older than Wendy and Jane, as an older teen that age difference was great enough that he never really considered Wendy as a potential love interest. Now that they're both adults, however, the age difference is negligible, and really spending time with her makes him see her in an entirely new (and much more desirable) light.

I liked this one better than Jane's book, where I felt that the ending got a bit silly and the obstacles put in the way of the couple's HEA were a bit forced. Jane and Cameron make for fun supporting characters in this one, though, and it was nice to see them in a different light than in their own book. 

Judging a book by its cover: While the current trend of cartoony romance covers can be exasperating and make the books seem overly cutesy, I'm not sure I miss having photos of actual people on the covers either, as they so rarely match the images I have in my head. Neither of these cover models look anything like I pictured Wendy and Noah. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 37: "Duke, Actually" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Holiday (a Christmas romance written by an author called Holiday - boom!)

Maximillian "Max" von Hansburg, popularly known in the tabloids worldwide as "the Depraved Duke", is in fact, merely a baron. He is the eldest son and heir to the Duke of Aquilla, however, and he doesn't really mind his playboy reputation very much. While in New York to fulfill family obligations and meet a prospective bride that his parents might approve of, he decides to have some fun instead and contacts Dani Martinez. Dani's best friend Leo now lives in Eldovia (the fictional European country that Max hails from) and is due to marry its crown princess Marie. Before meeting Leo, Marie was going to marry Max and they had a whole plan for a marriage of convenience. So it's not like Max is pining for his lost love. While he knows Dani finds him a bit insufferable, Max really enjoyed spending time with her before (in a past story that I assume all happened in A Princess for Christmas, Holiday's previous romance involving the fictional Eldovia) and would like to see her again. 

Dani, a New York English professor, is in the middle of going through a thorny divorce (her fellow English lecturer spouse ran off to Spain with one of his students) and isn't exactly looking forward to the faculty Christmas party where her cheating spouse and his potential childbride are also going to be. However, Dani needs to impress the heads of faculty if she ever wants to get tenure, so she has to appear. When Max texts her out of the blue, she initially tells him to sod off, but when he offers to accompany her to her dreaded faculty do, the thought of showing up to the Christmas party with one of the most famously handsome men on the planet (Dani likens him to the handsome Swedish vampire on True Blood, and Alexander Skarsgård is certainly a snack) makes her change her mind, despite being firmly post-men, post-romance now.

Dani finds herself having a surprising amount of fun with Max, who is self-deprecating, charming, and very attentive to her and when Max leaves to go back to Eldovia, the two keep texting and exchanging messages, building a real friendship. Max is supportive of her when she decides to try her hand at dating again, giving her advice and funny anecdotes about his own love life. Dani is supportive of Max's challenges with his family and finding a meaningful pastime besides being an international playboy and minor European aristocrat. As the royal wedding gets closer, Max invites Dani to come for an extended stay on his family estate, so she can find peace and quiet to work. By this point, Dani's been on a bunch of failed dates with over a dozen men, while Max has found himself strangely celibate for a very long time. Could it be that neither is really interested in anyone but the other? 

So, while this romance novel both starts and ends at Christmas, it's not really a holiday romance, as such. Nevertheless, Christmas, with its many different traditions in many cultures, not to mention the existence of Love, Actually (a movie Max has never seen until Dani introduces him to it) plays an important part in the story. It was really refreshing to have a book where the couple doesn't fall into insta-love or insta-lust even (although there is a clear acknowledgment of the other's attractiveness from the start), and instead, they grow a solid and mutual friendship before they ever get to the kissing and smexy times. 

I'm always fascinated with the fictional European countries that North American authors tend to invent for their romances. I guess it works better than having fictionalised versions of actual European countries, especially if you can't seem to do your research well enough (A Duke by Default, I'm totally talking about you). Based on the descriptions given in the book, Eldovia must be in the southern parts of Europe, it's described as having a lot of mountains (so probably near the Alps) and its main exports appear to be luxury watches and some minerals only found in the country's many mines. Max's family is very involved in the mining industry, and after rebuilding his relationship with his younger brother, Max also begins to take a more active part in the family business. 

While a lot of the book is focused on Max and Dani, there are also some nice supporting characters, and an adorable dog, amusingly also named Max. While I loved the slow burn and developing friendship before having the protagonist start bonking, the ending seemed rather rushed, and I'm not super enthused about the rather melodramatic way that Max is prevented from going to New York to pursue Dani. I'm pretty sure that that whole plot strand could have been resolved in a slightly different way, especially since Max's brother might find himself rather emotionally scarred and swamped with guilt in the aftermath. 

Nevertheless, this was a very cozy book and I'm glad I chose it for my Holiday bingo square. So far, I've very much enjoyed Ms. Holiday's romances, although I find myself more intrigued by the sequel to this rather than the earlier story where Leo and Marie meet and become a couple. The various clever references to books and films throughout (there's a whole extended subplot with Max and Dani trying to do the lift from Dirty Dancing, as well as the Love, Actually call-backs) were also fun. 

Judging a book by its cover: See, this is a cartoony cover where I don't think either of the protagonists is given enough justice. Neither Max nor Dani look as attractive as described. I do like the inclusion of dog Max, however, and the big sign with the title is a nice nod to the movie from which the book cheekily takes its name. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 81: "One and Only" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:

With her bridezilla friend on a DIY project rampage, bridesmaid Jane Denning will do anything to escape - even if it means babysitting the groom's troublemaker brother before the wedding. It should be a piece of cake, except the "cake" is a sarcastic former soldier who is 100% wicked hotness and absolutely off-limits.

Cameron MacKinnon is ready to let loose after returning from his deployment. But first he'll have to sweet talk the ultra-responsible Jane into taking a walk on the wild side. Turns out, riling her up is the best time he's had in years. But what happens when the fun and games start to turn into something real?

For way too much of this year, it feels like I've been playing catch-up, reviewing books I read three, two, or one month ago. I don't think I can remember reviewing a book right after I finished it. It's certainly made the work more challenging, and sadly, I suspect it makes my reviews a lot less informative and useful. So I'd like to hereby apologise to the writers whose books are possibly not being picked up because I'm not adequately conveying how good they are, and to my readers for harping on about the same complaints in too many of my reviews this year. I'd promise to do better in 2021, but large backlogs just seem to be how I roll these days. Sigh.

At least it's only been two months (pretty much to the day), that I finished this one. I read it as part of one of my many reading challenges, and it was a nice palate cleanser from some of the more heavy books that seemed to take me ages to get through. It only took me a little over a day to read the whole thing, and while this is my first Jenny Holiday contemporary romance, I can absolutely see why I've seen her name on a lot of recommendations lists in the last few years. 

The pairing in this romance is one we've seen many times before, in both contemporaries and historicals. The trustworthy, bookish, and sensible heroine whom everyone sees as possibly a bit boring, with the rakish, irresponsible bad boy hero. Jane is a successful YA author who works from home, so when one of her demanding best friends is getting married and asks her for a huge favour, she agrees just to get out of a million other crazy bridesmaid's duties. While Jane in actuality has a fairly tight schedule working on her newest book and getting her costume ready for an upcoming con, she also can't say no to her friend Elise, and she also can't stand the thought of spending all of her free time doing DIY wedding favours.

Cameron is the brother (possibly half-brother, I forget) of the groom, with a terrible reputation. They say he knocked up his high school girlfriend and abandoned her, that he set fire to his family's barn and that he's been dishonourably discharged from the army. The bride is terrified that he'll end up in some kind of trouble, and pretty much asks Jane to babysit him and keep him on the straight and narrow. As Jane gets to know Cameron in the time before the wedding, he discovers that there are some truths to the rumours, but that Cameron's entire family have no idea who he really is and should probably give him much more of a chance.

Cameron did get dishonourably discharged from the army because he punched a superior officer who tried to sexually assault one of the female soldiers in Cameron's unit (and Cameron's friend). In defending his friend, he ended up fired from one of the only things he'd found meaningful. He got back to the US to discover that his girlfriend (who he'd been hoping to make a future with) had been cheating on him. So now Cameron is single, fully aware of how much of a disappointment he appears to his family and just wanting to have some fun. He's hiding his PTSD and refusing to actually confide his real situation to anyone in his family. He has plans to get drunk and laid a lot, but Jane is there at every turn, making sure he can't hook up with anyone. He discovers that he enjoys teasing her, and they end up making a bet. He won't go carousing and hooking up with random women before the wedding if she comes with him on a series of unusual adventures. They bungee-jump from the highest point in Toronto, take a road trip to Niagara Falls, go to an amusement park and a bunch of other stuff, and get closer with each "date". 

There's a lot to like in this romance. While Cameron can seem like a bit of a selfish jerk at the beginning, the reader quickly comes to see why he has the attitude that he does and that he's been a victim of his own bad reputation and low self-worth for a very long time. While I'm not into making costumes and going to Comic Cons, I think I identified a lot with Jane, the responsible and loyal friend who's willing to drop everything to help out high maintenance friends just to keep the peace. Both she and Cameron clearly need people who see who they actually are, and take time to challenge their established ideas of themselves.

I suspect the author has done some research into how discharged soldiers deal with PTSD because that aspect of the book felt very real and very well done. It's an issue plaguing far too many ex-soldiers and there is no quick and easy fix, certainly not something that will be instantly fixed by "the love of a good woman". 

This book is the first in a trilogy (I think there may also be a bonus novella or two) and I will absolutely be reading more of them. I love discovering new voices in romance, and Jenny Holiday deserves the praise she's been given. 

Judging a book by its cover: I always like romance covers where the cover models look at each other as if they actually felt affection towards one another. The posing of these two people is very well done, their smiles feel genuine and I like how they're gazing deeply into one another's eyes. I also like the female model's dress, I can only see it from the side, but it looks cute.

Crossposted by Cannonball Read.