CBR18 Book 14: "A Girl Like Her (Deluxe Edition) by Talia Hibbert

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebook Casablanca for this ARC. My opinions are my own. 

Evan Miller has recently moved to Ravenswood, and while he appreciates his job as a metalworker and many of his co-workers, he's less of a fan of the boss's son trying to ingratiate himself with him. Especially once said nepo-baby keeps throwing condescending hints about Evan's next-door neighbour, Ruth.

Ruth Kabbah is shunned by most people in Ravenswood because of events in her past. She barely ever leaves her house, except once weekly, to have lunch with her mother and sister. She's autistic, has very little patience for anyone else's nonsense, and is obsessed with comics. When her new neighbour, a tall, hot, bearded guy, knocks on her door, presenting her with a Shepard's Pie to boot, she is deeply suspicious. On the other hand, she's not going to turn down free food. Her stove was removed after an accidental fire, and she really only lives on cup noodles and fast food. So delicious, home-cooked meals outside of her mother's dinners are a rarity.

Despite Ruth's initial hostility, Evan finds her fascinating and keeps showing up on her doorstep with food. Ruth decides she can lend him comics in return, and is rather surprised that Evan is not only reading them, but is quite happy spending hours discussing them with her. As their friendship grows, so too does the attraction between them, but Ruth's only previous relationship was a very toxic one, so she's wary about getting involved with anyone else. She's both grateful and frustrated that Evan keeps being a gentleman who respects her boundaries and backs off the minute she has hesitations. 

Can Evan convince Ruth that she's not, in fact, a "jezebel" who should be afraid to leave her house? Can he prove to her that she is worth loving, just the way she is?

A Girl Like Her was originally self-published by Talia Hibbert in 2018. Now they have been picked up by a big publisher, and she's had a chance to revise and improve them, and they will hopefully reach a wider market than previously. I have liked, or loved, every novel of Hibbert's that I've read before, but I haven't had a chance to check out the earlier novels that she published before The Brown Sisters series. It's been quite a few years since I read it now, but I thought there were quite a few similarities between this and Get a Life, Chloe Brown. Both feature self-employed plus-size black women who barely ever leave their houses, and handsome, tattooed craftsmen who fall in love with them. Both have neurodivergent heroines (I think all of Hibbert's novels may feature at least one protagonist on the autism spectrum) and heroes who patiently wait for them to be ready to be loved. Despite the similarities, it didn't feel like Hibbert was plagiarising herself, just writing variations on a theme.

Based on the author's note at the back of the book, one of the novellas in the series is being expanded into a full novel, and she's working on improving the second book in the series (about Ruth's sister). I am most likely going to wait until the new editions are out. 

Judging a book by its cover: The new cover of this Deluxe edition feels like the publishers are trying to "rebrand" Hibbert's books to a wider market. The previous editions either had pictures of a couple embracing or just went with a buff, tattooed shirtless dude, leaving the woman out of the equation entirely. All of these previous cover designs were pretty typical of romance, and with this more demure cover, I think they're hoping to catch more of the "women's lit" market. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 70: "In a Second" by Kate Canterbary

Page count: 505 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

This was an ARC from the author. I am very grateful, but my opinions are my own. 

Audrey Saunders has not seen her former boyfriend, Jude Bellessi, since he showed up at the church, only moments before she was due to get married, to ask her to run away with him instead. Because of a whole host of reasons, Audrey couldn't tell Jude why she was getting married, and why she broke up with him in the first place and moved across the country. About a decade later, she certainly didn't expect him to show up at their high school reunion, but there he is, larger than life and handsomer than ever.

While once he was the motorcycle-driving bad boy her parents disapproved of, now Jude is an aerospace engineer and single dad, trying to gain sole custody of his son (it's complicated). He is attending the reunion because he needs a pretty big favour from Audrey, and figures she owes him for the way their relationship crashed and burned all those years ago. Jude's mother was dying of cancer, and he may have lied a whole lot and claimed that he and Audrey were not only happily reunited, but were due to get married. Of course, now Jude's mum is fully recovered and delighted that she will get to plan her son's wedding to the woman he couldn't forget.

Matrimony did not work out for Audrey, and she has no intention of ever getting married again. She does feel like she has a debt to repay, however, so she agrees to play fake fiancée to Jude for a week. After that, she never needs to see Jude again, and she'll go celebrate one of her best friends' weddings. Jude plans to wait a couple of months, then he will tell his mother that they broke up, and that will be that. Neither of them had taken into account flight cancellations, a cross-country road trip, or being trapped in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, in the most depressing motel room you could possibly imagine - which obviously only has one bed. 

This is the third book in the Friendship, Rhode Island series, which all have heroes and heroines who have to go through a fake engagement for complicated reasons. Jamie, who is both one of Audrey's best friends and also a fellow teacher, just laughs hysterically at how optimistic Audrey is about this being a brief transaction, after which she and Jude will never see each other again. By now, it's quite clear that fake engagement equals an eventual happy ever after for all of these women (who all became friends because they worked at the same school). 

All of the books in this series are long; it is very rare that a romance needs to be longer than 400 pages. I thought the plot dragged out for too long in In a Jam, and I thought the plot dragged out too long in this one, too. I understand that there is a whole lot of angst to get through on both Audrey and Jude's part. One of the reasons the book is clearly so long is that Canterbary seems to want the readers to not only get the main romance, but also time to reconnect with characters from previous books. Which is fine, but I'm not sure we needed as much of it as here, and I'm not sure I would care for it much if this was the first book in the series that I picked up. I also don't know if we needed as many complications and obstacles thrown in their way as Audrey and Jude have.

Going forward, I'm now very curious whether Canterbary intends to write a romance starring Jamie, who seems very attachment-averse and keeps taking part in polyamorous orgies. She doesn't seem like the sort of person who will want to settle down with one (or several) people, but I would love to be surprised. What I want most of all right now, and the author seems to be heavily setting up for, is a book about Ruth, one of the sisters of Ryan from In a Rush. She's a prominent supporting character in this one, and has clearly got up to some shenanigans which may lead to a HEA eventually. 

Judging a book by its cover: This is my favourite of the Friendship, Rhode Island covers so far. It doesn't hurt that it's pretty much all shades of purple. The violets are a lovely touch, once it becomes clear what the colour and flower mean to Audrey. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR17 Book 30: "Along Came Amor" by Alexis Daria

Page count: 512 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge: Diversity

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon for this ARC. My opinions are my own.

Ava is nursing her hurt feelings over the dissolution of her marriage in a hotel bar, when a handsome man approaches and offers to make her a better drink than the one she currently has (she made a face when sipping it). The man clearly has bartending experience, and after a brief conversation, Ava discovers that the charming man in fact owns the hotel she's currently in (not to mention a whole chain of them). Ava decides to do something entirely out of character for her, and agrees to a one night stand with Roman, which turns out to be a lot more memorable than either of them expected.

Roman Vasquez barely ever takes time off; he lives and breathes for his business empire, always striving for more and better. Yet the chance meeting with the downcast, but lovely Ava at the bar makes him uncharacteristically order his assistant to clear his entire schedule, and while they agreed it was to be a one-time thing, the two continue to meet up every few months or so, when Ava is feeling especially upset and dejected. At first, Roman doesn't mind being this beautiful woman's comfort hookup, but with every new meeting, he begins to fall more and more, and wants to pursue a proper relationship with Ava. He's always been hard-working and goal-oriented, and now his goal is to win Ava.

Ava has a very meddling family with a lot of strong opinions, and was basically made to feel like it was her fault that her husband cheated and that their marriage dissolved. She therefore wants none of her friends and family to find out about Roman, to avoid endless speculation and mean-spirited gossip about a relationship she doesn't see leading to a long-term future anyway. So it complicates matters rather a lot when she discovers that Roman is the best man at her cousin Jasmine's upcoming wedding (where Ava is the Maid of Honour). How is she going to keep their hook-ups secret when she can barely keep her eyes and hands off him every time he is near, and now they have to spend a lot of time together wedding planning?

This is only the second Alexis Daria novel that I've read, the first one being Take the Lead, a reworking of her debut novel. That was a perfectly good read (although I remember very little about the plot a year later), but it took me much longer to get through than many romances, since the plot and characterisation weren't really grabbing me. That is certainly not the case in this book. Eva is a really interesting protagonist, Roman is an excellent foil for her, and from their first meeting, I just wanted to keep reading to see what would happen next. 

Some of the supporting characters in this story are the couples from the previous two books in the Primas of Power trilogy (both of which I own, but haven't gotten round to reading yet). While Ava's cousins Jasmine and Michelle are ride or die for her and would support her through anything, it's quite obvious that most of Ava's family are really toxic and constantly make her feel like a failure. In contrast, Roman's mother and sister (who both live with him in his swanky apartment, at his insistence) are extremely supportive of him - they just want him to find a better work-life balance (in fact, get any sort of life outside of work) and do so much for them. 

I read this book after having finished some books that were either frustrating and rather boring or merely fine. So it's possible that my very high rating of this is because it was just so delightful to find an entertaining and well-written book as a palate cleanser to those other ones. I'm pretty sure that if I re-read it, I'll stand by my rating, though. It's not a full five stars (Ava takes a bit too long to wake up and realise that Roman is perfect for her), but this book balances some heavy themes and a lot of emotional topics in a good way. It's rare to find an author who can skillfully balance genuine emotion and romance, with cringeworthy embarrassment, cathartic long-overdue emotional confrontations with overbearing family, and still manage to include more than one laugh-out-loud moment. Yet in the final chapters of this book, Daria manages to do just that. 

That excellent balance also makes it possible for me to ignore the "baby in the epilogue" of it all (much easier to do now that I'm no longer involuntarily childless). This book seems to have more endings than the movie version of Return of the King, but I guess that might be natural, since this book finishes up Daria's entire Primas of Power trilogy, and it doesn't just show us Ava and Roman's continued happiness, but what happens to the other two couples, as well. Now that I've read and thoroughly enjoyed this, I'm absolutely going to add the previous two books in the series to my reading list over the summer. 

Judging a book by its cover: I really like the style of the covers for this trilogy, making the covers look like old-time movie posters. They're all distinct and suitable for the book in question, but eye-catching with bold colours, and the couple front and centre in a passionate embrace. I'm so very ready for the drawn covers to move on to something else, but these are better than a lot of other romances out there right now. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 37: "Not in Love" by Ali Hazelwood

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Rue Siebert has never wanted a relationship, she's finds men to hook up with on dating apps and has a strict rule about one night only. When her latest date is interrupted by her drunken brother and the night doesn't end the way she expected, she breaks her rule and gives the guy her phone number. Nevertheless, she doesn't expect to see him again.

Unexpectedly, she sees him again as soon as the next morning, when he is part of the venture capitalist firm, which may be taking over Kline, the food science start-up where Rue and her best friend work. Rue's boss and mentor, who she really looks up to, claim that the company will be fine, but Rue is worried. She grew up with a lot of instability and uncertainty and has finally achieved financial stability and has a career she enjoys. This possible takeover is threatening all of that.

Eli Killgore and his business partners have very specific reasons for wanting to take over Kline and have worked for nearly a decade to get where they are now. What he was not expecting was seeing Rue, the mystery woman he hasn't been able to forget after their brief, interrupted date. With the power dynamics so drastically altered, Eli should put Rue out of his mind. Rue, on the other hand, keeps being warned by her mentor to stay away from all of the venture capital people, but every interaction she has with them is pleasant and all of them seem to have science backgrounds and be genuinely interested in the work that's taking place at Kline. They don't just seem like heartless capitalists, only worried about money and the bottom line.

Even though they should stay away from each other, Eli and Rue can't seem to avoid ending up close together, and even after allowing herself one night with Eli, Rue no longer seems able to stick to her 'one night only' rule, because she is as addicted to Eli's company and attention as he seems to be to hers. Whether they have any sort of long-term future together is another issue - Rue doesn't do relationships, Eli is part of a group who seems determined to destroy her boss' career.

I may have to give up on my hopes of Hazelwood ever writing a short, dumpy hero, but at least in this book, the heroine is also tall. In another break from her earlier books, the hero hasn't been broodingly pining for the heroine for years, which I also appreciate. Here we get a heroine who is used to having to fend for herself and is unused to and to begin with, incapable of being taken care of, and that is a trope that always seems to melt my heart. The hypercompetent people who do so much to stay in control and take care of everything and everyone around them (although in Rue's case, she's a rather stand-offish, introverted, and most likely neuro-divergent grump, so there aren't that many people in her life for her to take care of), and then find that special someone who only wants to be there for them and care for them. 

Eli is good at caring, he has been taking care of his younger sister since their parents died when he was a teenager and she was much younger. His life has taken a lot of unexpected turns, and he has had to work hard to get where he is now. While he and his friends are now venture capitalists, they tend to buy up failing businesses, not to destroy and gut them, but to help the business do scientifically or technologically useful things. There is a personal aspect to their interest in Kline, the company Rue works for, but it's also nice to see a nuanced portrayal of wealthy money people, instead of the usual uncaring suits who only want results, or to destroy people's livelihoods for profit.

It tends to be much easier for me to review a book I didn't much like than one I loved. I have also not made it easier for myself by waiting nearly two months after finishing this one to review it. I don't remember all the reasons I loved this book (and the main reason I haven't re-read it is that I like doing that via audiobook, and I really disliked the narrators of this one), but I'm going to try. There are some great supporting characters in this, like Eli's younger sister, Rue's best friend, Eli's business partners who are also his friends and seem close enough to be a found family for him. There's a very good dog. There's the couple cooking together (I also love this) and because Rue and Eli both seem rather overwhelmed by the attraction between them, they have this thing where they share something really negative about themselves, like the worst things they've ever done or thought, seemingly hoping they will scare the other one away. Of course, a lot of these things just expose how vulnerable they are and how difficult their lives have been up to the point where they met each other, and it was a really nice touch.

By now it's clear that no matter what Ali Hazelwood writes, I will pre-order it and probably love it. I understand why her books are not for everyone, but for me, this worked on every level and I think it may be her strongest novel yet. If you have tried Hazelwood before and disliked her writing style, I can't promise that this will change your mind, but she's clearly evolved a lot as a writer since publishing The Love Hypothesis (her weakest book, in my opinion). I will be impatiently awaiting her next book, whether it be paranormal or regular contemporary romance. 

Judging a book by its cover: Hazelwood is lucky enough to get cover artists who actually seem to depict the characters the way they are actually described in the book (certainly not a given) and they're usually portrayed in a loving embrace of some kind. I think the artist here has managed to show how besotted Eli is with Rue, while she seems a bit more restrained. In case you didn't know that Hazelwood sets most of her books in a STEM environment, the artist has also helpfully thrown in some test tubes with mysterious liquid there on the side of the couple - science! There were apparently several special editions published of this book, with various extra art and bonus features. If you go to Hazelwood's Instagram account, there are pictures of the other images, all of which are very good. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 21: "Role Playing" by Cathy Yardley

Page count: 331 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR16 Sweet Books: Cozy

48-year-old Maggie's son has recently moved away to college and now she's stuck in the big house she got in the divorce some years earlier, in a town where she barely knows anyone. She's unapologetically grumpy and doesn't actually want to expand her social circle. She worries about her son in college, however, and keeps trying to challenge him to socialise and make friends. He turns the table on her and demands that she do the same. She has absolutely nothing in common with the women her own age, but reluctantly goes to a couple of parties to be able to send her son pictures as "proof."

50-year-old Aiden moved back to his home town to take care of his ailing father, and now that his father has passed, he is trying to care for his demanding mother, without much help from his brother (who also happened to marry Aiden's ex-fiancee after dumping Aiden rather spectacularly once she discovered some things about him that she didn't like). Aiden blows off steam by running a guild in an online roleplaying game, and when Maggie joins, they strike up a friendship. Due to a series of misunderstandings, Aiden thinks Maggie is a senior citizen (it doesn't help that she keeps saying she's old enough to be his mother). Maggie does think she's old enough to be Aiden's mother, since she believes him to be a twenty-something community college student. 

Because of this misunderstanding about their respective ages, even when their online chats take a more flirty direction, neither are seriously considering actually doing anything about it. When they eventually do meet, and realise that they're age-appropriate for one another, there is still complicated emotional baggage in both of their pasts that make taking a new chance at love and a relationship a very tricky thing. 

This book came highly recommended by two people whose opinions about books I always trust, narfna and Emmalita, because they rarely, if ever, steer me wrong. Both were very complimentary about this book, and they were not wrong. Both Maggie and Aiden are great characters, and now that I'm a lot closer to 50 than to 30, it's not the norm to find romance novel progagonists my age. It's nice to read about people who have actually lived a little before finding their HEAs.

I almost wholeheartedly loved this, but the whole complication surrounding Aiden's ex-fiancee, now sister-in-law just got a bit too melodramatic. The whole thing felt too over the top, and hence I am withholding half a start. That's not to say that I might not upgrade the book upon a re-read (that frequently happens). This is my first Cathy Yardley novel, but it clearly won't be my last (for one thing, I own several of her earlier books, and do need to keep chipping away on that TBR list). 

Judging a book by its cover: I'm sure Leni Kaufman might make bad romance covers, but I have yet to see one. This cover is so pretty, and she's captured the characters so well. Everything about it screams cozy. I also really like using the full moon as the O in the title. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR15 Book 62: "The Marquis Who Mustn't" by Courtney Milan

Page count: 328 pages

Rating: 4 stars

This is an ARC I received from the author. My opinions are not influenced by my free copy. I have also already pre-ordered the book.

Official book description:

Miss Naomi Kwan has long wanted to take ambulance classes so that she can save lives. But when she tries to register, she’s told she needs permission from the man in charge of her. It would be incredibly wrong to claim that the tall, taciturn Chinese nobleman she just met is her fiancé, but Naomi is desperate, and desperate times call for fake engagements. To her unending surprise, Liu Ji Kai goes along with her ruse. 

It’s not that Kai is nice. He’s in Wedgeford to practice his family business, and there’s no room for “nice” when you’re out to steal a fortune. It’s not that the engagement is convenient; a fake fiancée winding herself into his life and his heart is suboptimal when he plans to commit fraud and flee the country. His reason is Kai and Naomi were betrothed as children. He may have disappeared for seventeen years, but their engagement isn’t actually fake. It’s the only truth he’s telling.

Naomi works hard to help her parents run the inn in Wedgeford and rarely says or does anything that could be perceived as making trouble. She feels plain and unappreciated and while she's received several offers of marriage, they're all from men who clearly just want someone to cook and clean for them. She fears becoming just like her mother, who seems to live an unexciting and quiet life, in a loveless union with Naomi's father. She's not entirely sure why the handsome man she ran into by accident in Dover has agreed to pose as her fiancée, but he seems to see things in her that no one else has.

Liu Ji Kai is the son of a disgraced con man who swindled most of the adults in Wedgeford and fled into the night, abandoning his six-year-old son to face the wrath of the villagers. Kai has worked since he was fourteen to distance himself from his odious father. He wants desperately to repay all of the inhabitants of Wedgeford who suffered for his father's actions, but the only way he can think of to do so is to commit one last audacious fraud, after which he will need to leave the country and disappear. 

While he was young, his father arranged a marriage between Kai and Naomi. So Naomi asking him to pretend to be her fiancée isn't really a lie. He also thinks that once Naomi's friends and family discover his return and that he's supposedly a serious suitor to Naomi, they're going to warn her away from him immediately. He is very clear to her that he's not to be trusted and that he is an excellent liar, but he also spends weeks restoring the abandoned cottage in which he once lived and starts doing pottery, all while refusing help from anyone in the village. He insists on paying for all his meals at the inn, and once he actually gets his kiln working, he keeps making beautiful pottery and keeps insisting the villagers take some for free, as it would only be going to waste otherwise.

Kai keeps being surprised that while a few of the villagers are understandably upset and distrustful of him, the majority seem to welcome him back and try to make him comfortable as part of the community. Kai is so deeply aware of the wrongs his father did, and while he has spent half his life living away from his father and trying to undo the man's mistakes, he still hears his father's cruel and unforgiving voice in his head. He desperately tries to keep himself apart from the townsfolk in general and Naomi in particular. Kai has lived his entire life holding himself separate from those around him, never allowing himself to create any bonds. Attachments just lead to complications. He knows he's going to leave Wedgeford after his audacious fraud is complete, he'll never actually be able to marry Naomi - so he has to keep from falling for her (good luck with that).

Naomi is fully aware that Kai has some sort of grand plan and that he's not telling the entire truth about his stay in Wedgeford. However, just like everyone else in the village, she sees how honest and hard-working he really is, and having accepted the fact that she might not ever find someone to love or marry, she is pragmatic about the fact that while Kai might not stay forever, he sees her and cares for her like no other when he's around. She feels a few months of being loved and happy is better than a lifetime of mundane chores and loneliness.

Naomi is forced to reevaluate a lot about herself and her family and the ideas she's had about her little world. While her self-esteem and self-image are rather warped at the beginning of the story, she trusts her own instincts and despite him constantly warning her away, Naomi trusts Kai and believes him to be a good and caring man. No matter what his words about being a liar and a fraud say, his actions prove time and time again that he is honest, hard-working, and stubborn to a fault. He never accepts any kind of kindness or gesture of help from anyone and spends so much time keeping himself apart from village life.

Kai's life has been pretty awful since he was a young child. Abandoned in Wedgeford for months after his father ran off, having stolen the life savings of many of the townsfolk, he was entirely reliant on the charity of others to survive. His father eventually came to collect him, but kept uprooting him from new homes, because they kept having to flee and create new identities. Once Kai became somewhat older, his father demanded that he help out in the fraudulent schemes and punished him harshly every time he made a mistake. Even when he tries not to, Kai has internalised his father's lessons too well and refuses to believe that there is anything worthwhile about himself. He is so prepared for being shunned in Wedgeford because of the past, but entirely flummoxed when people start trusting him and wanting to include him in things. He is ruthless about himself and reacts way worse to kind treatment than abuse and harsh words.

Chloe and Jeremy, the protagonists of the first book in the series, The Duke Who Didn't, do eventually appear in the story, but not until about two-thirds of the way in. It was lovely to catch glimpses of their married life and the comfortable existence they've made for themselves in Wedgeford. While I really enjoyed this story, I didn't love it as much as I did Chloe and Jeremy's love story. There is quite a lot more angst in this story, and it takes Kai a long time to acknowledge that he deserves love and can make a happy ending with Naomi. If it didn't hit me quite as much in the swoony feels as the previous book, this is still a Courtney Milan novel. If you've liked any of her previous books, this is well worth your time.  The first book made me intensely hungry, this one taught me a lot of fascinating things about pottery.

Judging a book by its cover: I think this cover is lovely, even if the people on it look a bit stiff. The passionate embrace on The Duke Who Didn't felt more natural. Nevertheless, there are attractive Asian people embracing, and the woman doesn't appear to be wearing a photoshopped wedding dress. I will happily take it over many of the alternatives.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 37: "The Heart Principle" by Helen Hoang

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her longtime boyfriend announces he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides that if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.

That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second, and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex—he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just started to understand. However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that, they also have to fight for themselves.

OK, so anyone looking for a light-hearted, fluffy romance read should very much look elsewhere for their fix. Ms. Hoang took more than three years to finish this novel because she was going through a lot of the same things as her protagonist Anna in her actual life. In her afterword, Hoang writes that this book is half memoir and the hardest thing she's ever written. She was going through severe writer's block and autistic burnout because her mother got severely ill and required a lot of intensive care from her family. In the novel, it's Anna's father who gets very sick and is taken home by his family to be nursed by his close family members. This happens when Anna is already struggling with anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed autism. 

The early parts of the book, when Anna and Quan first meet and get to know each other are the easiest to read, even with Anna's perfectionist struggles to master her music. However, as the challenges keep building for the couple, the book also gets a lot heavier in its subject matter, and it actually took me a full 18 days to finish this book, despite its relatively low page count, because I kept having to put it down and didn't really want to come back to it too often, since the struggles Anna has in her personal life, and the difficulties she and Quan have to make their relationship work were really kind of bumming me out.

Nevertheless, Hoang is a good writer, and the heavy topics in the book feel all the more real since they're based in part on the author's own experiences. I don't regret reading the book and finishing the series, and I deeply sympathise with Ms. Hoang for having to go through such a hard time - but she probably got a better and more heartfelt book out of it in the end. 

Judging a book by its cover: As animated romance covers go, you could do a lot worse. I love the bright red background and the subtle heart behind the elegant woman, seemingly traced by a rider on a motorcycle is a nice touch. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 17: "Chick Magnet" by Emma Barry

Page count: 302 pages

Rating: 4 stars

#CBR15 Passport Challenge - Different genres (contemporary romance)

Readers of my blog know that all my reviews are crossposted over on the Cannonball Read, which celebrates its fifteenth anniversary this year. I have been a participant since year two. To celebrate these momentous fifteen years, a comment diversion was suggested - where we were challenged to write fifteen-word reviews. No matter the length of the book, the review could only be fifteen small words. Now, long-time followers of my blog know that I have trouble writing a single sentence in fewer than fifteen words, let alone a full review. Nevertheless, I decided to use the comment diversion to try to help myself through my review backlog (which is now on 12 books and counting). So until I've caught up - my book summaries are going to be very short and succinct, and then I'll try to say what worked and possibly didn't work so well for me in the books.

Chick Magnet: Hot, but struggling small-town vet and earnest chicken influencer fall in love after the pandemic.

If you want a longer summary, there are over two hundred reviews of this on Goodreads. This book was recommended to me by my good friend and fellow romance aficionado Emmalita. There were so many parts of it that I liked, but I really couldn't get past what a central part chickens played in the story. I don't like birds. I have always found them pretty creepy. That I frequently got dive-bombed by seagulls every summer visiting my grandmother in the west of Norway probably didn't help. I'm very fond of eggs, they're very tasty, but I really don't like chickens. I find them unnerving. So the fact that Nic's whole life revolves around chickens was somewhat of a downside to me. Now, this is unlikely to be a big deal for most readers, but I still wanted to explain why this wasn't higher than four stars for me. 

Will is very handsome (described basically as a big, blond viking) and really loves the job he's doing as a small-town vet. However, with the pandemic massively reducing the number of clients his clinic receives and so many more customers ordering their pet supplies online, he's really having a hard time making ends meet. He feels awful about not being able to keep his business afloat or being able to afford to pay his employees. It takes him quite a while to face up to the depression that he's feeling as a result of this. While he tried to resist, he watched his new neighbour Nicole "Chick Nic" Jones' videos about chicken keeping and was taken with her beauty and charm. Her videos caused a lot of people to adopt chicks during the pandemic, and then get bored with them as they grew bigger and harder to take care of. Hence he's a bit judgmental and dismissive when he first meets her, and pretty rude when she comes to his clinic with a sick chicken. 

Nic has moved across the country to escape her emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, who broke up with her in a video that went viral. His gaslighting and lies convinced even her best friend that Nic was the villain of the piece and she needs a fresh start. She meets Will when chasing an escaped chicken in the rain, and finds him rather attractive, but his rudeness when she's vulnerable and terrified for the health of her chicken makes him seem a lot less appealing. 

However, they live across from each other, and it's hard to avoid each other in a small town. They strike up a friendship and as they get to know each other better, they try to help the other, making their lives easier in whatever way they can. Nic is pretty nervous about getting involved with someone new, based on her previously very toxic relationship. Will is depressed enough and feels like so much of a failure that he doesn't seem to realise that he deserves to be loved. Neither of them is healed by the power of love, but both of them feel better when they spend time with the other person.

Emma Barry is a good writer and her characters feel like real people, even the ones who are less nice. While Will gets along well with his sister, he has a strained relationship with his father and brother, and as his clinic keeps getting closer to bankruptcy, family dinners get more and more difficult for him. Nic has chosen to move to the town where her beloved grandmother once lived but has no real connections there. Thanks to Will, she meets a lot of like-minded people and can work on setting down actual roots in her new hometown.

The author herself apparently keeps chickens, so I get why she writes so affectionately about the birds and keeping them. As I mentioned, this is unlikely to be a big issue for most people. This is a lovely book, which deals with several heavy topics in a sensitive way without ever making the book seem too angsty or challenging. 

Judging a book based on its cover: With cartoony covers still being all the rage in the publishing world, you don't see a lot of naked man chest anymore. So I appreciate this book doing its own thing and giving the female gaze some eye candy. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR15 Book 2: "The Stolen Heir" by Holly Black

Page count: 368 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Wren thought she was a normal human girl until the night when scary monsters out of a nightmare came and claimed she was in fact their daughter and had to come back to Faerie with them. Lord Jarel and Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth rip away her human glamour and make sure that Wren sees her human parents reject her faerie self (bluish skin, blue hair, mouth full of razor-sharp teeth) with horror and disgust. The cruel faeries, accompanied by the fearsome Stormhag threaten the lives of Wren's human family, and though only nine years old, Wren is forced to go with them to keep her loved ones safe. 

In the Court of Teeth, she is Queen Suren, but queen in name only. She is kept captive and tortured both physically and emotionally until she's barely a shell of her former self and an angry, vicious feral child. Her faery parents keep her literally chained and controlled with a magic bridle and their plan is to marry Suren to Prince Oak, heir to the Greenbriar Throne, and then have him (and probably Wren/Suren) murdered, so they can be High King and Queen. Their plan fails spectacularly, High Queen Jude publicly chops off the head of the giant serpent that used to be her husband and saves not only High King Cardan but increases his power and their joint hold on Elfhame. During the brief time of negotiations and attempted betrayals, Wren/Suren gets to know Prince Oak a bit better. He doesn't seem scared of her and treats her with kindness, but after the Battle of the Serpent, as it comes to be known, Suren is still forced back to the now disbanded Court of Teeth, with Jude having ordered that henceforth Lady Nore and Lord Jarel need to obey all of Suren's commands. Terrified and despondent that she couldn't find safety in the High Court, Wren basically nopes out and runs away to the human world, living homeless in the woods and trying to engage with Faerie as little as possible.

At nineteen, Wren survives by foraging for food in the woods, eating leftovers she finds in rubbish bins, or stealing food from the house of her un-family (what she has learned to call her human family), who she's unable to let go of. She can never forget the horrified reaction of her parents (even though she now knows they were spelled to react so badly) and she fears that they or her former sister would react just as badly if they saw her again. Nevertheless, she keeps creeping around their house, breaking in when they're asleep. Wren has discovered she has the power to dissolve spells and curses if she works hard enough, so she tends to try to save foolish humans from faerie curses when she's able.

Then one night, the Stormhag is coming for her, and to her surprise, the one who rescues her is none other than Prince Oak, all grown up and very formidable. He claims to need her help, as Lady Nore has reclaimed power in the North, now using dark magic to animate hideous creations from sticks, snow, and the body parts of the dead. She's clearly building an army and will be looking to Elfhame for revenge and conquest. As the deeply reluctant heir to the throne, Oak has spent his adolescence making himself into the perfect target for all the assassins coming for the royal family. He's taken it upon himself to stop Lady Nore and rescue his captured father, former Grand General Madoc. He needs Wren, as she is the only one with the power to control her mother. 

While the thought of going back to the Court of Teeth and seeing Lady Nore again fills Wren with dread, she also can't allow the psychotic creature who claims to be her mother to succeed in her sinister, necromantic plans. Nor can she forget that she and Oak seemed to be friends for a very short while as children and that he's now grown into a very handsome, charming, and manipulative young man, who's clearly not going to hesitate to get her to agree, one way or the other. Bogdana, the Storm hag, catches up with them before they've gotten very far on their quest, and shocks Wren/Suren with the truth of her "birth". Faeries can't lie, and Wren, who's never exactly been happy in her own skin, comes to doubt herself further. 

She reluctantly accompanies Oak and his two companions. Tiernan is Oak's bodyguard (not that he gets to do much guarding, the way Oak throws himself headfirst into danger) and Hyacinthe, their prisoner, is a former soldier of Madoc's, now under a curse and able to give them information about the Ice Needle Citadel, as he served Lady Nore there for many years. Tiernan clearly doesn't trust Wren one bit, and Wren is only too aware that Oak has several hidden agendas and if his pleasant looks and manners are a deception, she could end up a captive in the Court of Teeth once more. Faeries can't directly lie, but as a result, they become very skilled at twisting the truth, and Oak, for all that he is only seventeen, has clearly been hardened by years of near-successful assassination attempts and interacting with two-faced courtiers. Desperate for love and belonging, Wren is all too aware that if she's not careful, she'll lose her heart to his honey-tongued words, and considering all the pain and loss she has suffered so far in her short life, she doesn't think she'll survive the pain of having her heart broken by the prince.

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of this book for months and months, since it first came to my attention that Holly Black was writing more from her dark and twisted Elfhame universe. Toxic and damaged as they are, Jude and Cardan shouldn't work as a couple, yet ended up doing after all and after such a feat, Black (whose writing I was already pretty enamored with) owns my eternal loyalty. Turns out, that shocking and brutal as the opening to The Cruel Prince is for Jude and her sisters, Wren/Suren has it SO much worse. Seriously, Jude and Cardan played mind games and tried to kill one another before they kind of reluctantly fell madly in love with each other, and both got some serious baggage growing up in Faerie. Neither of them had to face a fraction of the f*cked up sh*t Suren has to go through before she's even 12 and when you add to her torment some of the stuff she eventually suffers in this book - let's just say the girl has my metaphorical sword and I wan to eviscerate anyone who harms a blue hair on her head henceforth. 

In interviews, Black has said that this is the first part of a duology, and while Wren/Suren is our point of view character in this book, the next book is Oak's, and we're going to see a lot of the same events that we see in this one through his eyes instead. While all of the books in the Folk of the Air trilogy were sort of exhausting because Jude and Cardan are really extreme personalities and not necessarily pleasant people to spend time with, in this I loved Wren from the start, but was also very aware that there were clearly a whole lot of things under the surface, and people waiting to double-cross or manipulate and all sorts of twists and turns, and even when a lot of things became clear, it's obvious that there is so much more going on that we won't know about until the second book. Based on how this book ends, I cannot imagine that Oak's book won't also continue the story, because if Wren and Oak's relationship ends where this book left it, I may have to burn some things down. 

As of now, I've rated this book four stars, but which rating it's ultimately going to end up with very much depends on whether Black can deliver with the second part of the story (which based on her previous novels, I'm pretty sure she can). There is no release date for Oak's book on Holly Black's website and I don't even know if she's started writing it yet. So I guess I'll just have to pine listlessly until the next book comes out, hopefully early next year. 

Judging a book by its cover: Is it a cage? Is it Wren's hidden willow den in the woods? I love that the cover image easily evokes both images. I'm also guessing that since this cover is mostly white (some of the limited special editions are all black), Oak's book is going to be mostly black. Although based on the way he's described in this book, maybe the theme will be heavy on the gold instead. It'll be interesting to see in a year if my prediction holds true.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR14 Book 51: "Season of Love" by Helena Greer

Page count: 390 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Ten years ago, Miriam Blum cut all ties with her entire family, including her eccentric great-aunt. Now she turns antique junk into creative and incisive art and has a loyal following on Instagram. She has a beautiful and wealthy fiancée and while they're never going to share a passionate romance, they love each others as friends and support one another. Miriam is working towards finally opening her own art studio in Charleston when she is informed that her great-aunt Cass died (no one had even told Miriam that Cass was ill) and she drops everything to go to her aunt's large Christmas tree farm in upstate New York to sit shiva. She's terrified at the prospect that her father might be there, but also needs to see her remaining relatives.

Once she arrives at Carrigan's, her aunt's big farm, she discovers that Levi, her childhood friend not only dated her cousin and former best friend Hannah for years, then took off and broke her heart, but that Hannah has been pretty much running the farm with the assistance of the capable and rather hostile Noelle. Noelle found a warm welcome, a second (more supportive family) and a new home at Carrigan's and cannot understand how Miriam could have hurt everyone so much by just disappearing for a decade, cutting herself off from everyone. The fact that Miriam seems to be welcomed back by everyone with open arms, her long absence forgiven without any consequences, riles Noelle up even more. Luckily, Miriam won't be staying long - she'll go back to her art scene in Charleston and marry her perfect lawyer fiancée and Noelle won't have to deal with her or admit to her very inconvenient attraction to the woman.

Of course, Cassiopeia Carrigan loved to meddle and match-make, and once her will is read, it turns out she has left the Christmas tree farm in equal shares to Noelle, Hannah, Miriam, and Levi. Not only did she go back on her promise to leave it to only Noelle and Hannah, but she also hid the fact that the farm was financially struggling and that she wants all four of her heirs to work together to save the place (and in the case of Hannah and Noelle, their home). Miriam is flabbergasted, Noelle is furious, Levi is off somewhere in the world, unable to be reached - while Hannah is just exhausted. Miriam understands the shock of the other two women, but after some consideration, might just have an idea to save Carrigan's and make it a financial success, she just needs to get her cousin/former best friend and her cousin's new best friend (who seems decidedly anti-Miriam) to agree to let Miriam stay, at least until Thanksgiving. 

If this seems like an overly detailed plot summary, relax, all of this is revealed within the first 20% of the book. The story is told through both Noelle and Miram's points of view, starting with Miriam getting her upsetting news and moving on with the plot at rather breakneck speed. Despite pretty much every single character in this story having a trailers worth of emotional baggage, trauma to process, and due to Cass' recent death, recent grief to work through, this book feels like a warm hug, and even though there are absolutely sections where heartbreak, alcoholism and/or severe emotional abuse is covered, it never gets too heavy or angsty and I never once had to put the book down because it was overwhelming me with the sads.

Helena Greer is basically writing a pretty standard romantic comedy here, but the protagonists are both lesbians, and one of the protagonists, as well as much of her actual and found family is Jewish. Obviously, because Cass owned and ran a Christmas tree farm, there are a bunch of both Jewish and more traditionally Christian holiday traditions explored, in a really cozy way. I would happily have read an entire book about any of these characters and was delighted to discover that the next book will be about Hannah and her globe-trotting ex, Levi. I also hope that Miriam's amazing BFF Cole gets a book of his own because he was a scene-stealing marvel and I refuse to believe that he can be contained as only the supporting role in someone else's novel. I would also like Miriam's ex Tara to get her own book, as she was a pretty awesome lady, who just happened to have her 'marriage of convenience' partner go off and fall for someone else. 

As well as being a lovely, rather slow-burn romance, there is such wonderful friendships and although very few of the family connections are biological, it shows all the more how important it is to have people who love and support you. A lot of queer people have experienced rejection from their born families, and have had to find their new families elsewhere. This is absolutely the case for both Noelle and Miriam, who have a lot of things in common while they are also extremely different. 

The whole book is peppered with pop culture references that seem like they were tailored especially to me. I take this to mean that Helena Greer and I would get on like a house on fire, and not only would I be great friends with all the various characters in this book, but I would be a perfect best friend for Ms. Greer. So you know, if you're in the market for that, Ms. Greer, send me a message!

It's a shame I read this so late in the year, as it very likely could have ended up in my top three favourites of the year over on Cannonball Read otherwise. It will absolutely be in my top ten and I will be impatiently awaiting Hannah and Levi's book sometime in 2023. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I still think the trend for cutesy cartoon covers should be over soon, please, this one is really quite adorable. Both Noelle and Miriam look pretty much exactly as described, and Kringle the cat is also in the picture. The couple wrapped up in a garland of coloured lights with small signifiers of most of the characters' Jewish background seemingly floating in the air around them, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that this book is very Jewish and also very queer. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR11 Book 90: "The Flatshare" by Beth O'Leary

Page count: 336 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:
Tiffy Moore and Leon Twomey each have a problem and need a quick fix.

Tiffy’s been dumped by her cheating boyfriend and urgently needs a new flat. But earning minimum wage at a quirky publishing house means that her choices are limited in London.

Leon, a palliative care nurse, is more concerned with other people’s welfare than his own. Along with working night shifts looking after the terminally ill, his sole focus is on raising money to fight his brother’s unfair imprisonment.

Leon has a flat that he only uses 9 to 5. Tiffy works 9 to 5 and needs a place to sleep. The solution to their problems? To share a bed of course...

As Leon and Tiffy’s unusual arrangement becomes a reality, they start to connect through Post-It notes left for each other around the flat.

Can true love blossom even in the unlikeliest of situations?
Can true love blossom even if you never see one another?
Or does true love blossom when you are least expecting it?

This is one of those books that I saw on a lot of "Must Read" lists earlier this year, and I will not be surprised if it's on quite a few of the best of the year lists for various review sites either. As contemporary romances go, it has an unusual premise. The two protagonists don't even end up in the same room together until more than halfway through the book (and what a scene it is!). Initially, Leon has a girlfriend, not that he seems all that into her. She's the one who insists on handling all the rental stuff with Tiffy, not entirely comfortable with her boyfriend sharing not just his flat, but his actual bedroom and bed (Tiffy and Leon agree to sleep on separate sides of the bed). The agreement is also that Leon stays with his girlfriend during the weekends, so Tiffy can have the flat.

Tiffy has a toxic ex-boyfriend, Justin, and two extremely supportive best friends, Mo and Gerty. They both clearly utterly hated Justin and are willing to help her with money if it means she has a safe place to stay. Tiffy doesn't exactly make a lot of money in the first place, and has even less, since her ex is insisting she pay him back a bunch of money as well. Hence she ends up with the rather unusual rental arrangement, while merrily going about her job, trying not to think about her former boyfriend (although he does seem to pop up now and again, in all sorts of strange coincidences).  It takes Tiffy months and months to realise just how controlling, manipulative, emotionally abusive and gas lighting Justin was, and she falls apart a bit when she finally does start remembering all the things her brain conveniently shut away.

While Leon's girlfriend seems to be impatiently waiting for him to resign himself to the fact that his brother Richie is in prison now, and won't be getting out, so he can work less and spend more time with her. Once Leon realises that she doesn't, in fact, believe that Richie was wrongfully accused, that's pretty much it for their relationship. He still keeps finding other places to stay during the weekends, though, so Tiffy can have the flat.

In contrast, Tiffy is wholly convinced of Richie's innocence, having spoken to him early in her stay in the flat, and later having corresponded with him. She convinces one of her two BFFs, a very successful criminal lawyer, to look into the case, which seems to have been pretty badly mismanaged by

While the two roommates never meet, they draw conclusions about the other based on what they find around the flat, and they keep leaving Post-It notes (at first one or two, soon a whole load) to communicate. As the months pass, they have long conversations via Post-It. They get to know each other's likes and dislikes and become friends, even though they've never met. Then, once they finally do, there is definitely a spark there, but Tiffy has a lot of emotional healing left to do, and Leon has far too much experience with toxic relationships thanks to his mother's dating history to try anything with a woman who's fully ready.

This was a fast read for me, and while it had some pacing issues, the alternate chapters from Tiffy and Leon's points of view allow the reader to get to know them both really well. The conceit of their communicating via Post-Its makes it almost strange when you realise how long they go without actually meeting face to face.

While the emotional abuse story line, complete with gas lighting and manipulation seemed entirely believable, as did Tiffy's gradual realisation of what she'd gone through, I'm not sure I found Justin's increasingly more crazy antics towards the end of the book all that convincing. This felt like an overly complicated way to create extra tension in Tiffy and Leon's beginning romantic relationship and I did not care for it.

I really haven't read all that many romances that fully entertained me and that I would wholeheartedly recommend this year, but I really liked this book, and will be keeping an eye out for whatever Beth O'Leary does next. Fingers crossed she becomes another Lucy Parker.

Judging a book by its cover: There seems to be a growing trend in cutesy cartoony romance covers at the moment. I like this one because it doesn't feel cartoony or overly cute, but rather elegant. If anything, the painted characters feel almost too simplistic. I'm not sure I would have picked it up in a bookstore based on the cover alone.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR11 Book 64: "Evvie Drake Starts Over" by Linda Holmes

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR11 Bingo: Reader's Choice (in place of Back to School)

Eveleth "Evvie" (rhymes with 'chevy') Drake has packed the car and is about to leave her husband when she gets a phone call that he's been in a car accident. Before she can make it to the hospital, he is dead. About a year later, everyone thinks Evvie has kept to herself, isolated in her big house, because she's overcome with grief. She never told anyone that the town's beloved son, a popular and charming doctor, was in fact an emotionally abusive asshole whom she was in the process of leaving when he died. She doesn't feel grief, she feels guilty - about all the sympathy almost smothering her. About NOT grieving.

Her best friend Andy, single father of two little girls, is puzzled that the good doctor didn't seem to have left any life insurance, he knows Evvie is almost broke. He suggests she rents out her downstairs apartment to a childhood friend of his, former baseball pro Dean Tenney, who needs to get away from the media spotlight and could use some relaxing downtime in Maine. Dean used to be a Major League pitcher, but finds himself struck down by the 'yips' and can no longer pitch reliably. He's tried every possible treatment under the sun, and needs to get away from it all to start rethinking his future.

Dean and Evvie make a deal: he won't ask her about her marriage and late husband, she won't ask him about baseball. As they become more friendly, that rule rather quickly gets broken, though, and Evvie finds that she can tell Dean, an almost stranger, things that she has never felt comfortable sharing with her dad or Andy. The couple of months Dean was going to stay keep getting extended, and gradually, his and Evvie's friendship starts evolving into something more, at the same time as some of the secrets Evvie's been keeping come out and start driving a wedge in the friendship between her and Andy.

While Dean seems to enjoy his time with Evvie and the quiet life in Maine, the rest of his life is back in New York. Evvie claims she is perfectly fine and totally over her former relationship - but can she really fully put her trust in another man after the things her husband put her through?

This book has been on so many 'Must Read' lists this year, and I'm assuming that so much of the hype comes from the fact that Linda Holmes is a well-known podcaster and NPR presenter. She also used to write for Television without Pity back in the day (man, I miss some of those recaps!), but to me, she's a complete unknown. I'm always happy to give a well-reviewed romance a chance, and it didn't take me long to see why this book has become so popular.

As an introvert with social anxiety, I totally understand and relate to Evvie's instincts to stay inside and shield herself from the outside world. Her job is transcribing audio tapes and interviews for other people, which sounds like a fascinating way to make a living, if one that doesn't exactly lend itself to an active social life. In the year after her husband's death, she pretty much only sees her friend Andy or her father, and even after Dean moves in, her interactions with others than these three men isn't exactly frequent.

I found it interesting that there was not one, but two, portrayals of mothers who chose to leave their children behind after a divorce. In general, it always seems to be the mother who has the main custody of the kids, but both Evvie's mother and Andy's wife are more than happy to leave the child rearing to the men and going off to do their own thing, which certainly results in Evvie having a lot of complicated feelings towards her mother and feeling abandoned and ignored by a person she wishes to be closer to. Her father is great, but so caring and protective that Evvie has never felt she could tell him the truth about her marriage, and what she was about to do on the night her husband died.

I also liked that while this is absolutely a romance, with the developing relationship of Evvie and Dean at the centre of the story, the book is just as much about Evvie slowly healing from the emotional abuse she has suffered and learning to become a bit more open and adventurous. This is presented as a gradual and slow change, and very refreshingly, it's not because she suddenly falls in love with someone new, who "heals" her magically with his presence. Evvie just comes to realise how much of the solitude she now has told herself she enjoys comes from the fact that she was being isolated from other people by her husband, and that in fact, her life will be more exciting and richer if she has more people to share it with. Over the course of the book, she also comes to accept that she's not weak for accepting the help from others, including a professional therapist who can help her work through her past trauma better than anyone else.

While Dean isn't really able to "heal" Evvie from the scars brought on by her emotionally (and occasionally physically) abusive marriage, neither is Evvie able to fix Dean's 'yips', for all that she tries and tries. They change each others' lives, and make them richer and happier, and both characters end the book in a much more hopeful place than where they started, but this is not a story where love magically solves everything.

I can see why this book has become so popular, but all the hype made me expect something more than just a well-written contemporary romance. I kept waiting for it to blow my socks off, and to really suck me in, and that never happened. I liked the book a lot, but based on other reviews, I was expecting to love it, and that never happened. It's good, it deals with a lot of important issues, but I doubt I'm going to revisit it in years to come.

Judging a book by its cover: This is one of the many romance novels being marketed for a wider audience by giving it a cute cartoony cover, in this case, there aren't even people on it, embracing and sending the signal that you may catch 'romance cooties' if you read it. This book is a romance, through and through, and it's a shame that other books of similar quality are overlooked because of the stigma associated with the genre.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.