CBR15 Book 18: "Georgie, All Along" by Kate Clayborn

Page count: 366 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

15-word review: Trying to get some direction in her life, Georgie turns to a new-found teenage journal

Georgie is feeling adrift. She's worked as a personal assistant for a number of industry people in L.A, and was really good at it. Now, however, her former boss decided to retire to the countryside and doesn't need a P.A. anymore. Georgie is free to go home to her family to realise her own dreams, the only problem is, she has no idea what those are. She had hoped to help her best friend Bel get settled before having a baby, but discovers that with the exception of one room, her friend has a picture-perfect home and doesn't need much of anything from Georgie except her company.

As Georgie's parents are going travelling, she can stay in her childhood home and take care of their plants. Unexpectedly, her parents had also made an arrangement with Levi Fanning, former wild child, and current grouchy recluse, to let him stay at their place while his house is having the floors redone. Georgie, used to her parents being scatter-brained, takes the surprise house mate (and his dog) in her stride and they agree to share the space. 

While sorting through her Bel's one messy room, Georgie rediscovers an old journal, where she and Bel used to write stories about their dreams and goals in high school. Looking through it, she realises that she hasn't always been without plans or purpose and she becomes determined to complete a number of the goals in the book. Once Levi finds out about her quest (after rescuing her from a near-drowning attempt) he offers to help her achieve her goals. 

Kate Clayborn writes romances about complicated, messy people who feel entirely real and she makes you feel privileged that you get to spend time with them throughout their story. Georgie has had a loving and supportive upbringing, while Levi was literally cast out by his family and has worked very hard to overcome his teenage rebel reputation in his hometown. There is definitely some tension developed in the friendship/tentative romance between him and Georgie once he discovers that she's friends with his younger brother and sister, neither of whom he's seen for years. Things are further complicated when the truth comes out about Georgie's teenage crush on his brother, who is now the successful manager of the family hotel.

Georgie could have been an annoying character, but I feel like a lot of people today can identify with her seeming aimlessness. Society seems to expect that everyone has their lives planned out and clear goals for their future by the time people graduate high school, and that's obviously not the case for everyone. While she doesn't have a college education or a standard career path, Georgie is clearly a creative person who adapts quickly to new challenges and has been a very successful personal assistant to several demanding clients because she's really good at anticipating people's needs and shows a willingness to problem solve. Seeing the successes of Bel (beautiful new home, career, successful husband, baby on the way) makes it even more difficult for her to see that her life choices haven't necessarily been as poor as she seems to think they are.

Levi made some poor choices during his teenage years mainly in direct response to his overbearing father's unreasonable demands of him. His experimentation with drugs and alcohol led to a very unfortunate episode when his younger siblings were endangered, and since then, Levi hasn't had any contact with them, because his father sent him away. He assumes that his siblings resent him for what happened way back when, and has made no attempt to reconnect with them, even after moving back and taking over his mentor's construction business. Without any help from his family, he's had to remake his life on his own and find his own support network. It's clear that he doesn't always realise that he's done a remarkable job, because he works with manual labour rather than has a business degree, and his only family is his neurotic pitbull and the people who work for him. He's definitely thrown for a loop when he discovers that Georgie has been working part-time at his family's hotel, and that she may be more interested in his brother than him. 

As well as the romance between two vulnerable people, this book also focuses on the complicated friendship between Bel and Georgie. Having been each other's best friends growing up, it's clear that the women are now at different points in their life. Georgie seems to think that Bel has everything anyone could ever want, and how is there even space for Georgie in this life now? While she may not realise it, the reader can see that Bel's insistence on joining Georgie on a lot of her journal quests suggests that she may not be as content in her life as Georgie believes, it's clear that Bel is chafing a bit at her situation. It's another very relatable situation, friendships change as people themselves grow and change - but the obvious love between the two women is still very much present, and while they haven't been able to see each other as much during the past few years, Georgie is wrong to think that Bel has "moved on" without her.

This is probably my favourite of Clayborn's romances so far. She's only getting better with each new book. I look forward to seeing what we get next. 

Judging a book by its cover: I think this cover is lovely, and in a fairly different style from most cartoony covers on romances. The colour combination, the messy hairdo, and the woman's face hidden behind the book, it all works for me.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 32: "Love Lettering" by Kate Clayborn

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR14 Bingo: Fonts (Meg's whole livelihood involves lettering, fonts, and calligraphy. Also, this was the first book on my TBR I could think of when I saw the bingo prompt.)

Meg Mackworth is known as "the Planner of Park Slope" and uses her hand lettering skills and creativity to design custom journals and planners for the rich and influential in New York City. Lately, she's really feeling the pressure of all the work and suffering from a creative block - not exactly a good thing when she's trying to complete the pitch of a lifetime. She's not sure why she keeps growing more and more estranged from her best friend and roommate. So when a former client shows up at the shop where she works and confronts her about the wedding program she designed for him and his fiancée, a beautifully decorated piece where she hid the word "mistake" from everyone, or so she believed. Reid Sutherland is a financial analyst who's excellent at spotting patterns, and he wants to know how Meg could be so sure that his relationship was doomed even before the wedding took place.

Meg obviously feels bad for Reid and admits that her action was rather unprofessional. She apologises and reckons that she's unlikely to ever see the handsome man again. She's surprised to hear that not only is he not married, but he's also shortly going to be leaving New York, claiming he never really liked it there. As Meg adores New York, she decides to apologise to Reid by trying to make him see the magic of the city, which she figures might help her find new inspiration for her work, as well. She plans a number of walking tours and invites Reid along. He not only agrees to come with her, but he also challenges her to little games and friendly competitions while they wander. The more time they spend with each other, the more their attraction grows. But is there any future for the two of them if Reid is going to be leaving the city soon? 

This is one of those romances that pretty much got rave reviews all over the place when it came out, and I didn't have the opportunity to read it back then but snapped it up in a sale, whereupon I of course promptly forgot about it, until the Bingo challenge came along and made me examine my digital library when planning my reading list. Having now finished it at last, I think it may be my favourite of Clayborn's books so far. 

I wouldn't describe the romance as angsty as such, but both Meg and Reid have some baggage to work through, and it turns out that the very private Reid has also been keeping some secrets from Meg that are revealed in the final act and complicate their relationship quite a bit. I'm not sure I was entirely happy with that whole plot strand, I thought it made things a bit too melodramatic. Apart from that, I liked the slow burn of Meg and Reid getting to know one another on their walks all over New York, and the little games they made up with letters and signs to pass the time. I also liked Meg's growing friendship with her movie star client (who I will insist in my head is Anne Hathaway, and you can't tell me any different) and the other found family friendships she had to support her. The most angsty aspect of this book was probably Meg's sort of relationship breakdown with her roommate, but I thought that was solved really well at the end of the book as well.

I'm glad I finally got round to reading this one. Clayborn is a good writer, and while she might not blow my socks off, I had a good time reading the book, and can recommend it for anyone wanting a cozy read. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is cute, but I think that a book that is so focused on writing and fonts could have a more exciting cover, featuring more interesting graphics. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 7: "Love at First" by Kate Clayborn

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer! I got this book as an ARC from NetGalley. That has in no way influenced my review.

Sixteen years ago, Will Stirling first cast eyes on Nora Clarke and was instantly smitten. He was standing under a shaded tree, listening with a sinking heart to his mother pleading with the uncle he hadn't even realised existed, while she was up high on a balcony, throwing little tomatoes at thieving squirrels. 

Cut to the present day, when Will is an overworked doctor and has inherited his uncle's apartment. With the exception of seeing his intriguing mystery girl in the garden, he has nothing but bad memories associated with the place and he doesn't like the run-down building or location. The terms of his late uncle's will states that he can't sell the place for the first year, but he's planning on having it modernised and put up for short-term rentals, so he can go on with his life.

Nora Clarke and the other residents of the building where Will has inherited are appalled when they realise that Will wants nothing to do with the place, and is going to use his unit as a rental. Nora is still grieving for her grandmother, whose apartment she inherited and now lives in, having barely changed a thing since her dear Nonna was alive. Having always had a safe haven in the building, and feeling a strong sense of kinship with the other long-time residents, Nora can't understand why Will wouldn't want to be enveloped by their quirky community. She and the other owners decide to try to sabotage Will's efforts as much as they can.

As it turns out, of course, Nora and Will have a lot in common. Both grew up with distant and preoccupied parents, the difference was that Nora had a loving grandmother and the other residents in her Chicago apartment building. Will had no one else and was completely orphaned in his late teens. He's used to having to fend for himself, putting himself through college and medical school through hard work and dedication. He's never had any long-term relationships and seems frankly baffled by the many slightly off-beat traditions that the residents of his uncle's apartment building seem attached to. He's very attracted to Nora, though, even more so after he discovers that she is, in fact, the same person he saw on that balcony all those years ago.

The blurb for this romance describes it as a second chance story, but it's not like Nora and Will have this complicated past and just need to find back to one another. Their past encounter consists of one single encounter, where they didn't even speak or even see each other - Will is the only one who is aware of it having taken place. So it's more of a love at first sight story, as having seen the vivacious teenage Nora all those years ago seems to have made Will uninterested in all other women. 

I liked a lot of things about this book, but unfortunately, the actual romance between Will and Nora is probably third or fourth down on that list. Will and Nora on their own are both interesting and complex characters, both with a lot of emotional baggage they need to work through before being able to commit to a romantic relationship and finding a happy ending. The various supporting characters in the book are all awesome and made the book really come alive. They include Nora's best friend and colleague Deepa (who I will happily read a book about) and Will's starchy superior who's trying to reconnect with his ex-wife. There are the various individuals who live in the apartment building, all of whom are great and act as Nora's extended family and support network. I loved reading about all of them - I didn't really feel swept away by the actual central romance.

Kate Clayborn is a good writer and seems very skilled at writing memorable characters. I still clearly remember and think about several of the protagonists in her Chance of a Lifetime trilogy. There was a lot to like about this story as well, but the romance that should have been front and centre kind of came second to the found family narrative that I found most compelling. It was still a lovely read, and I'll keep my eyes open in case Clayborn decides she wants to give Deepa a book next. 

Judging a book by its cover: It's become quite clear that cute, animated covers for romance novels are the popular thing right now, and this is a really nice example. I may be biased because purple is my favourite colour and just look at that rich plummy colour, lightening towards the bottom. Gorgeous. It may be that I also prefer the covers not to have actual little cartoon people on them. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.  

#CBR12 Books 29-31: The "Chance of a Lifetime" trilogy by Kate Clayborn

A group of three close-knit friends buy a lottery ticket together one night and end up winning a considerable amount of money. Not enough to never have to worry about money again, but certainly enough that they can fulfill some life-long dreams and still live comfortably afterwards.

Beginner's Luck
Page count: 246 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Ekaterina "Kit" Averin is if possible the least risk-averse person there is. She's very happy working as a research assistant at a university, co-writing the occasional article and generally happily hiding her technical brilliance in order not to attract undue notice. She doesn't want fame, she wants stability. When she and her friends win the lottery, she buys herself a house, her first proper home. The house needs a lot of work, which she can thankfully also afford. She isn't expecting the person to help her out the most is also the person who's trying to tempt her away from her safe, comfortable university job.

Ben Tucker is back in his hometown because his father had a bad accident on his salvage yard and needs some help until he recovers from the injuries. Rather than take over the family business, Ben has moved out of state and works as tech industry recruiters for Beaumont Materials. He agrees to try to smooth-talk one K. Averin into joining his company but is surprised to discover that the brilliant tech mind is a beautiful woman, and one who is completely unimpressed with Ben's tempting offers and handsome face. Ben's bosses really want Kit recruited, however, and keep badgering him to persuade her. Initially, he's determined to succeed, but as he gets to know her, since she's a frequent visitor to his father's salvage yard, trying to find pieces to help her refurbish her house, he realises that he may be willing to sacrifice his own career dreams rather than persuade Kit into a job she's not interested in.

Kit's dad was an addict and from she was fairly little, Kit was basically raised by her older brother Alex, as the family moved to a new place every year or so. She's never known safety and stability until she herself became an adult. She's very uncomfortable being in the spotlight and remains a research assistant at the university despite having more knowledge and experience than many of the grad students she helps. She keeps co-writing scientific articles with her mentor, who is getting increasingly more insistent that her name should be the main one featured since it's her work that's being written about and lauded. It's thanks to some of those articles that Ben is sent by Beaumont Materials in Texas to recruit her. Taking the job would mean a lot more money, both for Kit and her mentor at the university (they're willing to pay a lot to sweeten the deal). Nevertheless, moving to yet another new place, away from her dream house and her best friends is a terrifying and unthinkable prospect for Kit.

Ben grew up in the little town that Kit has fallen for and wants to live in permanently. He had quite the reputation as a wild child and didn't like the negative attention he was attracting, so moved away as soon as he was able. He clearly loves his dad, and worries about the hard work of running the salvage yard. There's also some guilt there for not leaving his dad with anyone to take over the family business. So when his dad gets injured, he arranges for leave from his recruiter job to go home and take care of his father. Meeting and fairly quickly falling for Kit Averin is obviously not part of his plans. He does seem to find any excuse to help her around her fixer-upper of a house, though, and tries not to think too much about how his and her dreams about the future seem to be mutually exclusive.

As well as Kit and Ben, we get to know the supporting characters of  Zoe and Greer, Kit's best friends (and fellow lottery winners). There's also Ben's dad, and the surly teenager he hires to help out around the yard after the kid tries to vandalise some stuff (without much success). Finally, there's Alex, Kit's older brother, who travels the world as a photographer. Having spent much of his childhood and adolescence basically raising his younger sister, Alex now seems allergic to staying in one place for too long. One of the subplots of the book is the disagreement they have when she wants to share her lottery winnings with him and he flatly refuses to even consider it.

Despite Kit and Ben's seemingly incompatible visions of the future, this was a cozy and comfortable romance without too much drama. Kit's childhood was clearly utterly awful, so the found family she created in her friends and the security she looked for made perfect sense to me.

Luck of the Draw
Page count: 300 pages

Rating: 4 stars

When she unexpectedly won the lottery along with her two best friends, cutthroat corporate attorney Zoe Ferris quits her job, having long been uncomfortable with the sort of things she has to spend her days doing. Of the three women, Zoe is by far the one most comfortable financially, and despite her grand promises to herself about travelling the world or making a distance, Zoe doesn't really do a lot once she quits her job. Eventually, she realises that the only way she's ever going to feel better about herself is if she makes amends for a lot of the bad behaviour she exibited in her past life as a high-powered lawyer. She makes a "guilt jar" with the names of everyone she feels she's wronged in some way, and determines to try to apologise and make peace with each and every person whose name is on the little slips of paper, from her harried former personal assistant, to the barista she frequently yelled at and so forth.

The slip of paper she draws out first is that of the O'Leary family, however. A family Zoe dreads facing because of the horrible way her company handled the case of their son's wrongful death. She remembers both the wife and husband crying at the negotiation table. She goes to see them, only to discover that they've moved to Florida, and their remaining son, Aiden O'Leary is living in their house. He's not interested in her apology, but since she's so hell-bent on doing anything to gain some measure of forgiveness, he asks her to pose as his fake fiancee over the next couple of months instead. Aidan wants to buy the campground he and his brother used to spend their summers at and turn it into a rehab retreat in his dead brother's memory. Yet the couple who still own and run it are very conservative and all the other potential purchasers are married couples with solid families. As a single man, Aidan's certain he won't stand a chance. So he gets Zoe to agree to help him. Of course, he wasn't expecting to fall for the beautiful, intelligent woman who he was determined never to forgive.

Luck of the Draw has a bit of an enemies to lovers feel, as Aiden is certainly very antagonistic towards Zoe, to begin with. Initially, the couple only spends time together on the weekends they're going up to the campground where they pretend to be a couple and listen to the various other buyers' pitches for the future of the property. Once Zoe has decided to be a fake fiancee, she's certainly going to be the best and most supportive one she can be. While Aidan is reluctant to listen to her, at first, she makes a lot of good suggestions for how he should pitch his idea to the current owners. She also uses all of her considerable people skills to charm and socialise with the current owners and other guests up at the campground.

Zoe's best friends are not exactly enthusiastic about how she's chosen to spend her weekends, but remain supportive because they respect her wishes. Aiden's closest co-workers in the EMT services also think the fake fiancee plan is a bad idea. Things certainly don't get any easier once Zoe and Aidan start falling for one another. Zoe hates having to lie to the very nice couple that own the campground, Aidan hates keeping things from his parents. He doesn't think they'd react well to knowing that the unfeeling harpy who outlined their dead son's legal settlement is now someone their remaining son is falling for.

Since quitting her job and winning the lottery, Zoe has been aimless and without purpose. Once she starts opening herself up a bit more when away with Aiden, she begins to have ideas about how she can best help others going forward. She figures out what she'd like to work with and how to continue making amends, in some ways, to the society at large.

Aidan has obviously in no way fully processed his grief about losing his twin. The fact that his brother was a drug addict, so the decline was gradual and there were many instances where Aidan feels he maybe could have stepped in and made his brother stop, but didn't, certainly doesn't make it better. He comes to realise that a lot of the hostility he feels towards Zoe is obviously because of the guilt he feels about his own inability to do something for his brother while he was still alive. It also becomes clear that he believes buying the campground and turning it into a rehab facility is the only way he can really atone, whether he's actually the best person to be developing such a place or not.

Both the protagonists in this book have a lot of unresolved issues and need to work through a lot of pain over the course of the story. Their happy ending felt all the more deserved once they got that far. 

Best of Luck
Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

When Greer Hawthorne wins the lottery with her two best friends, not only does she get the opportunity to pay off a lot of her family's debts, but she can finally complete her college education. With her dream job secured after she graduates, Greer is devastated to realise that because she's missing one arts credit, she may not be allowed to complete her education after all. Her only chance is a photo course offered by one of the department chairs, or she won't be graduating.

Alexander "Alex" Averin was only really planning on staying in town a couple of days for his sister's wedding, but when he has a panic attack during the rehearsal dinner and Greer helps him work through it, suggesting he see a therapist she can recommend, he decides to stick around for a little while. When it also turns out that to get into the photography class that can give her that coveted arts credit needed to graduate, Greer may need some help from a world-famous photojournalist, there's all the more reason for him not to go away on new adventures. He's very much trying not to notice how attractive his sister's best friend is, but the more time they spend together, the more difficult it gets.

Greer struggles with a chronic illness and an over-protective family who have had to sacrifice a lot for her health. That's one of the reasons why she's so determined to pay her parents back and help her siblings when she wins the lottery. She's also determined to get a degree, secure herself a good job and find a place of her own to live, since living with her sister still feels a lot like being checked up on all the time. Discovering that all of her dreams may be ruined by one missing course, shortly before graduation is gutting to her. She doesn't really want to use her friendship with Alex to convince the department chair to accept her, but she's run out of other options.

Alex spent much of his childhood raising his younger sister Kit. Now he travels the globe taking pictures in some pretty dangerous areas. While he's been trying to ignore it, he's been struggling with his mental health for a long time, and the panic attack just before Kit's wedding just makes it impossible for him to ignore any longer. He understands that unless he can get the anxiety and panic attacks under control, he's unlikely to be able to continue his career as he used to. Having always been deeply self-sufficient and independent, it's difficult for Alex to admit to vulnerability and accept help, but for some reason, when Greer offers it, he doesn't see it as pity and listens to her advice.

I'm not a huge fan of sibling's best friend/best friend's sibling romances, of which this is clearly one. I thought Greer and Alex in many ways were more interesting as separate people than as a couple, but the book was really interesting when it dealt with both Greer's quest for independence and Alex' struggles to improve his mental health. I'm always a big fan of people addressing their mental health in a serious manner instead of just brooding about their secret pain. Therapy should be normalised and feature much more in both romantic and other contemporary fiction.

Judging the books by their covers: The cover designers have been pretty good about finding cover models that more or less match the protagonists of each book. Each of the women being placed in front of a wall of some sort is a nice common motif and each of the women's body language also says quite a bit about their attitudes and confidence, especially at the start of the books.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.