So Iris and Jude pretty much have nothing in common other than the fact that both of them never thought that they would find their way back to their home town and that neither of them want anything serious. That just makes for an interesting read though because as we all know they obviously have to get serious and fall in love otherwise book worlds just don’t make sense anymore.

For what this was – a cutesy contemporary LGBTQ – it was really good. It was sweet, heart warming and just enough grit to keep you from getting tooth ache and throwing in the towel. The characters are both really fascinating even though a little cliche. I had a lot of fun reading it as I could really relate to Iris as when I was her age I also ended moving back in with my parents just as I though I had earned my independence.

And getting to know the two ladies as the book progressed was a constant pleasure. However I would have liked to have a little MORE. Not quite sure what it was missing but at the end I did end up being just a little underwhelmed and felt like I needed just that little bit extra.

If you are in the mood for a feel good, light romantic read this is definitely for you.

I really enjoyed this book. I went out of my usual wheelhouse and read my first full-length FF romance and I’m glad I gave it a try. This was also a new to me author and I really liked her writing style. I was immediately drawn to Jude and Iris and I felt their relationship developed really well. Jude brought some past hurts and heartbreak with her when she moved back home two years ago. It took her getting to know Iris to open her heart again. Iris was patient with Jude, knowing there was something holding her back from fully opening up to Iris. I loved how Iris found herself and found how to make herself happy in Salty Cove. I loved how their friendship turned to more. I thought their chemistry together jumped off the page, and the sexy times were hot. Most of all, I loved that they found their happiness in Salty Cove together.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars.

The girl next door by Chelsea M. Cameron is a sweet, slow burn romance. Iris has come home to the small-town where her parents still are after not being able to find any permanent work in Boston. Next door lives Jude who has been home a few years after a tragic event occurred in her life. They become friends by chatting on the porch and redoing Judes house together, and then a romance builds.

It is slow burn in the sense that the physical romance doesn’t actually occur until well over 60% of the book. But the feelings are instant. Like first chapter. Which is fine but then the physical romance seems so drawn out by the time you get to it.

I did like both main characters but preferred Jude as Iris could be a bit annoying and definitely stalkerish vibes in the way her monologues spoke of Jude, or how she just turned up, Or even some things she said to Jude about Jude.

This book is short but boy did it feel like a very long read. A book this size usually takes me 1-2 days but this took longer. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe the writing style?

The author chose first person POV for this book. I think that is a bold choice in romance as I feel like there is only so many times I can read pages of monologue about her feelings before I am bored. And it’s two character perspectives both in first person POV. It really did get boring. Also, the author has a very simplistic style of writing which is fine but I don’t think it works for first person POV.

There is a trigger warning for this book at the start. I think triggers warnings are great and needed but it does give away a major plot twist.

All in all this was a sweet summer romance but I think it just misses the mark.

so not every return to a small town from the big city book is bad. and actually, i really enjoyed the girl next door quite a bit. iris and jude find themselves back in their small maine town for different reasons. jude is grieving and iris is struggling to find her way forward in life.

now, here is my only nitpick with this story. allegedly iris is twenty-two and jude is three-to-four years older so about twenty-five or six. how either of them have managed to get all the life experience they claim to have before coming back to town makes no sense. at twenty-two iris would have just graduated school, so would she really have had a series of jobs and failed to earn enough money to make rent? possibly, but unlikely, unless she barely gave her time in boston a chance, and honestly that doesn't seem right. likewise, jude seems to be a lot more worldly than her age would imply.

they might just be real mature twenty-year-olds, but i wish that the author had given their ages something that rang true to both the characters and the back story.

but otherwise, this story is really about coming home and finding the place you were always meant to be and the person you were meant to be with. the way iris peels away jude's protective layers is really sweet and the connection the two characters have just completely works. all in all, just an enjoyable read.

**the girl next door will publish on may 26, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/carina press (carina adores) in exchange for my honest review.

The Girl Next Door follows Iris as she moves home to a small town in Maine from Boston. She's not even remotely enthused about this move back home and feels like a failure. Nevertheless, she is determined to stay at home long enough to save up enough money and find a job so she can move back to Boston. And then there's Jude. Jude lives next door in the home that belongs to her parents. She's in stasis, still grieving something. But as the book moves, we get to see Jude start to open up and Iris start to fit back together the pieces of herself.

You definitely need to be in the mood for a slow burn going into this book, because it takes a while for the two of them to admit to each other that there are feelings there. But they both spend a good amount of time pining. I think the book reads really slowly because it doesn't feel like it adheres to romance pacing, but at the same time I enjoyed that. I feel like we really got to know Jude and Iris. I also felt like the ending seemed right, although I still have logistics questions, which is just a thing I seem to spend too much time thinking about. I also really liked Iris' parents and the fact that her dog's name is Dolly Parton. Overall, I think I would recommend if you like slow burns and character development to be at the forefront of your romance.

Also, quick aside, it turns out I really like books with home renovation in them so... That's new and weird.

CW: grief, discussion of high school difficulties with being out and rumors and bullying

Meh
Iris is forced to go back to her home town after not being able to find a good job after college. When she sees the girl next door, her interest is piqued. Jude came back to Salty Cove two years ago. She has such pain in her heart that she just wants to be alone. When Iris moves back with her dog, Dolly Parton, she finds herself unwillingly opening up…

I had real mixed emotions about this book. I wasn’t overly fond of it but it was ok. I felt like it lacked any sort of true feelings and there was little excitement (action) or real emotions in the story. I did like Jude’s part of the story, finding herself coming out of her shell and wanting to live again but I couldn’t stop thinking of Iris being just out of high school…. She was barely out of college but seemed so immature for some reason. The sexy bits were good and the story wasn’t awful but I had expected more.

DNF @ 27%

This book would probably be 3 stars with how it’s going for me so far, but I’m honestly so bored I don’t wanna keep trying. I was looking forward to a sweet contemporary lesbian romance, but I feel like nothing is happening. There’s attraction talked about between Iris and Jude, but the chemistry doesn’t seem to be there. Like, this felt like a quiet causal story, but…not the kinda quiet that’s enjoyable for me, just the kind that makes me bored. YMMV.

I think the best way to describe Cameron's The Girl Next Door is as a quiet summer romance. Not a lot really happens, the focus being on the characters more than anything. The story focusses on Iris returning to her hometown after being unable to afford living in Boston, and she reconnects with her next door neighbour, Jude. They strike up a newfound friendship and later a romance, partially finding solace in the other being the only other queer person they know in the tiny beach town they grew up in.

The best way to describe the Girl Next Door is as something simple. There isn't much conflict at all in the book. Other than Iris being desperate to move back to the city and Jude rejecting her own feelings for Iris due to personal tragedy.

I would say overall I enjoyed this book. It's an easy to read romance. There were a few things that didn't work for me. I personally don't think the chemistry wasn't developed enough for there to be satisfaction when they finally kiss. The conflict they are both experiencing also almost takes a backseat where I don't think it could've impacted the plot as much as it could've.

I also felt that when we found out about Jude's tragedy, it was an emotional whiplash. I think it would've worked better if we the audience had found out about it sooner than we had. That's more of a personal gripe as I don't like it when tragedy from the past is just thrown on me as a reader. I think knowing about it sooner would've made Jude's intentions make more sense rather than it being treated as a footnote when she has come to terms with the tragedy. I think that took away from the book and the wider potential to Jude's character.

I'm happy to see Chelsea M. Cameron get a traditionally published sapphic book as I've read and enjoy all of her f/f books. I will continue to read her books, but I don't think this is exactly a standout in her catalogue. I would still recommend it as I see people enjoying this more than I did. If you're a fan of quiet romances, I would recommend it. If you're a fan of Cameron, I would also recommend it.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review – many thanks to Netgalley and Carina Press for sending this to me!

Chelsea M. Cameron is an author I read very regularly – I find that their books are reliably fun, cute and low-angst, and I always know what I’m getting myself into with their stories. However, most of their books are self-published and I have definitely noticed some slightly lacklustre editing. I have often felt that their books would be amazing if they were a bit more polished. When I heard they were getting published by Carina – my favourite romance press – I was excited to see how working with an editor would impact their writing and whether there would be a noticeable improvement in their work.

In some ways, this book really shone, and there were several aspects of it that leapt off the page more strongly than in Chelsea’s other books. Firstly, the description was great here. It was very evocative and painted a great picture in my mind. Chelsea Cameron has a pretty simplistic writing style but I definitely felt that their descriptors were very effective – the setting in particular was really strong and grounded, which isn’t something I’ve noticed as much in their previous books. The Girl Next Door is set in a small seaside town in Maine, and the setting is such a huge part of the book that it’s almost like another character in a way, and it feels very colourful and bright – a perfect beach read in a lot of ways.

The characters themselves were also great. We don’t spend much time with the side characters, who felt a bit two-dimensional at times, but Iris and Jude are very well-written and felt like real, complex people. I particularly enjoyed Jude’s characterisation, and her struggle with grief plays a huge role in the story. That side of things was done very well; it was sensitive and powerful, and a very realistic conflict, I felt.

On a slightly cheekier note, I also really enjoyed the sex scenes. That’s something else Chelsea Cameron doesn’t shy away from in their books, and I felt that the smut added a little extra something-something to this book – it brings some much-needed spice to the table and helps us get to know the characters a little better as their mischievous side comes through. Good sex in romance helps to move along the plot, and that was definitely achieved here.

In terms of the things I didn’t like about the book… it was kind of basic. That’s kind of what I expected – to me, the term ‘girl next door’ doesn’t exactly fill me with excitement; it sounds safe, sweet, predictable… and that’s what this book was. There’s no real plot here: Jude and Iris hang out at Jude’s house, eat food, decorate, and wander around town, and that’s all that really happens. Even the character work doesn’t do anything really groundbreaking – Jude slowly starts to overcome her grief, which was great to see, but Iris doesn’t seem to go through much development at all, aside from giving up her dreams of returning to the big city to stay in Salty Cove with Jude. For someone who claims to love and miss Boston so much, she gives up on it very rapidly and appears perfectly happy to settle down in a town that she was desperate to leave at the start of the novel, and we’re not really shown why she might have grown to love anything about the town except for Jude.
This lack of excitement contributes to the frustrating pacing; for such a short book (the requirements for Carina Adores titles state that they can’t be over 65k) it feels painfully slow. We crawl through pages of saccharine hang-outs while Jude and Iris sit on the porch drinking beer and hang out with the dog, with no real development until the end comes rushing up to meet us. The only glimmer of conflict – a promised ‘no strings attached’ friends with benefits deal that turns out to have many, MANY strings – is snuffed out immediately, and suddenly the two are madly in love. All I can say is that must have been some GOOD sexy-time, because apparently that’s all it takes to seal the deal and make the characters realise that they’re destined to be together.

In addition to this, while I did notice an improvement in a lot of aspects of the writing, there was a lot of telling instead of showing, particularly in Iris’ chapters. She’d run through lists of very boring actions: ‘I made myself a sandwich. Then I sat down and ate it whilst talking to my parents. Then I washed the dishes and went to bed. I woke up the next morning and brushed my teeth, then walked the dog.’ It started to annoy me after a while – if her actions are relevant, describe them. If not, leave it out. This happened a lot with conversations too, as she’d start a conversation and then trail off with ‘we talked about this thing.’ Again: if this conversation is important, SHOW ME, and if not I don’t need to know. First person can be a little hard, I feel, because there is so much of the ‘I’ involved – I did this, I did that. It’s easy to fall into the trap of repetitive sentence structure, and not so easy to climb out of.

Overall, this book was fairly quick to get through, and if you’re interested in something that’s fast and has little
conflict, it definitely delivers. I’m glad Chelsea Cameron got to work with Carina and will continue to support them and their work in the future.

This a slow burn that had me at the edge of my seat, waiting for the explosion for over half the book!

Iris has just moved back in with her parents in a small East coast town. She’s failed at adulting and has returned to re-group before heading back to Boston and the big city lifestyle.

Jude is living next door to Iris’s parents. She was given the house by her parents. She has also recently returned after suffering a tragedy and is hiding out in her hometown. She doesn’t socialize and work by herself on a lobster boat. Everyday is the same, until Iris’s dog, Dolly bounds over to her one day…

This was a slow romances, Jude is wounded and Iris is unsure of herself and her reception from Jude. I loved how these two kept coming together (somewhat unwillingly by Jude), but every time, they made each other or part of their lives better. It was an uphill battle for sparkly positive Iris to pull Jude out of her shell that she was hiding in!

As alway, Carina Press delivers the happily ever after I crave! A cute read that I totally recommend!

The Girl Next Door by Chelsea M. Cameron is scheduled to release May 26th, 2020.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harlequin and the Harlequin Publicity Team. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Blog link: https://pinkcowlandreads.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-girl-next-door.html

#TheGirlNextDoor #ChelseaMCameron #NetGalley #pinkcowlandreads

What I would not give for a sapphic romance that actually made me feel something aside from complete and utter boredom. I just want some intensity from them, some kind of personality, instead of feeling like the whole thing is completely dry.

Instead, I get lumped with this.

I have written blog posts about sapphic romances and emotions. I know not to expect anything much along those lines (as harsh as that may sound. The only sapphic romance that has ever really made me feel anything was This is How You Lose the Time War). And yet, I go in again and again, vainly hoping that this is the one that won’t bore me to death.

I think the problem is, in sapphic romances, there’s a lot of day-to-day activities. Like, life goes on as before, except there’s someone else along for the ride. But there’s no change. So what you get, like here, is trips to go mattress shopping where all they talk about is mattresses and bedframes.

In contrast, romances that are actually good generally involve a change in day-to-day life. There are several I can think of, where the introduction of a love interest prompts life to shoot off in a different direction, to which the protagonist must adapt.

What the focus on day-to-day life tends to do for me is make the romance incredibly dry. Heck, it makes the story dry. And because of that, it reads more like people making friends, not people falling in love. There is zero tension to the story, zero intensity. And above all, zero feeling.

In this one, I was told a whole lot that Jude was heartbroken, but I never felt that heartbreak for myself. Ditto when it came to the romance. I was told they were in love, there was a hunger for each other, and so on. I felt none of it.

It probably didn’t help that all I really wanted from the writing here was a complex sentence. Please, I am begging, I cannot read three or more simple sentences in a row. It just sounds like a pre-schooler wrote it. (Same with saying something then, mere paragraphs later, repeating it. I haven’t forgotten what you just said, I promise.)

And above all, there was never any tension that might have formed a potential roadblock to their relationship. Like, there was never even a hint that they might have to overcome something to be together (barring Jude’s heartbreak which, as I mentioned before, seemed somewhat wooden).

Which means that, in the end, the overwhelming feeling I have about this book is one of mind-numbing boredom.

All roads lead back home.
When you crack open the heart of this story, it reveals everything that encompasses life and the journeys it takes us before we return to where we belong.

Twist of fate and being dealt with the harsh realities of life brought both leads back to Maine, a place they grew up yet wanted nothing to do with. Two people who wanted to be hidden from sight due to their respective pains and failures found themselves drawn to each other. Life is capable of taking but it also has its own way of paying back.

I loved that the characters were given a second chance at life and love.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review of the story.

A woman moves back home - a place she never wanted to be - to hide from a broken heart.

A woman moves back home - a place she only expected to be on holidays - when she loses her job and runs out of money.

Two only children who happen to be gay, nothing more in common at first glance.

Chemistry is instant, understanding - not so much.

This is a sweet love story, well written with a plot that moves at a consistent pace. I would like to see more from this author.

I was excited when I saw the announcement for the new Carina Adores line and even more so when I saw that one of the first books was an f/f romance. Like the title suggests, it’s a cute small town romance, slowly-paced and with a very slow burn romance.

“I thought I was going to kick the dust of this town off my feet and never come back. I didn’t care where I went, as long as it was anywhere but here.”
Our eyes locked and I had one of those moments when you connect with another person and they can feel it too, and you don’t know anything else in this world but how that person understands what you’d been through. They got it. Jude got it.”


Iris may be back in her hometown of Salty Cove, Maine, but it’s only temporary. As soon as she’s able to save up enough money working over the summer at the local seafood restaurant, she’s heading back to Boston. At least she has some nice eye candy living next door to her parents’ house. Jude’s been back in town, living at her parents’ old house, and working a lobster boat by herself for two years. By herself being the key part, as she’s isolated herself from everyone, and that’s the way she likes it. That is, until Iris moves in next door and Jude can’t see to keep away from her. As the summer continues, it’s obvious there’s something between them, but can both Jude and Iris let go of the past long enough to see what’s right in front of them?

“Jude wasn’t like an oyster. You couldn’t just shuck the truth out in one motion, getting right to the good stuff. Jude was a lobster: a hard outer shell that was difficult to crack that covered squishy insides. No doubt she’d built up that shell for a reason, and it was going to take a damn good reason for her to let someone in.”


Iris is frustrated and embarrassed that she couldn’t cut it in the big city, and knows it’s just a matter of time before her reasons for being home are blasted all over the small town. She misses her friends, the food, and the anonymity of city life, especially when it comes to her dating life. She’s also just so sweet and awkward, and her instant attraction to Jude just makes both traits worse. While Iris basically embarrassment-flails her way into explaining why she’s back home, Jude refuses to tell her story and is initially quite rude. But Jude starts reaching out to Iris almost against her will, from inviting her to have a beer on her porch to cooking her lobsters she caught herself. Jude’s very reserved and has very good reasons for her isolation (which are ever so slowly revealed to both the reader and Iris), but she’s a marshmallow on the inside. I mean, Jude may be the type to wear a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle, but she also hangs Winnie the Pooh quotes on her bedroom walls. She can’t resist Iris’s sunny, giving nature, and slowly, ever so slowly, Jude’s shell begins to crack.

“She was too sweet and vibrant to be stuck in this dull town forever. She could never be happy here. I wasn’t happy here, but I wouldn’t be happy anywhere so it didn’t matter.”


Iris and Jude’s relationship is very slow burn. There’s a lot of mutual pining, complete with “oh no we can’t,” “she’s too perfect/beautiful for me,” etc. While they may have started out with nothing more than instant physical attraction, they also build a good friendship based on sharing food together and redecorating Jude’s house. A lot of the tension comes from the fact that Iris doesn’t plan to stay in Salty Cove, and also that Jude seems extremely emotionally closed off. It’s over half the book before they even kiss, and even then the parameters are set at a physical-only relationship.

Despite the content warnings, this is a pretty comforting book. It’s slow and sweet, full of Iris’s dog’s antics, her supportive family, and small town goodness. I really liked Iris’s parents and her interactions with them. Rather than hold it over her head, they’re understanding about her being back home and mostly just want to help her out. She responds by cooking dinner for them (and even trying to get them to eat kale). I especially loved her dad who’s obsessed with reading YA books and who the local librarian jokingly calls her best customer. Even Salty Cove is different than she remembered, as there’s now a queer group that meets at that local library.

There were a few things that didn’t work for me. The story is told from the first-person POVs of both Iris and Jude. I usually like this POV, but I don’t think it works so well when you have a secret, like Jude’s, that you’re trying to slowly reveal. Also, after all that buildup to their relationship, I was disappointed in the sex scenes. They seemed a bit rote to me and lacking in emotional intensity.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but didn’t love it – it’s somewhere around a 3 to 3.5 star read for me. I do think this would make a good beach read, especially if you can get your hands on a lobster roll to go with it!

I received this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This was a cute romance. It is sweet with no major angst. While this didn’t blow me away, I did like it. I was surprised that I think this is actually my first read by Cameron. I liked this story enough that I still want to read Style and Marriage of Unconvenience.

This is a story about two different women who ended back in the small Maine town they grew up in. Both women never wanted to come back, but life had other plans. (I must admit I didn’t feel sorry for them living in a small beach town like Cabot Cove.) Will these two women bond due to their predicaments or is their pasts too much to overcome?

If you can, I would suggest not reading the trigger warning that is in the beginning of the book. I’m all for trigger warnings for subjects that could really negatively affect a reader, but I think this one is being overkill. It ended up being a reasonable big spoiler so I hope Carina might take out the warning before this book is published.

This book is a quick read. It is a novel, but it is about as short as you can get and not be a novella. The page number of 320 on the Goodreads books page is way off. Because this is a quick read, the romance happens pretty fast. It not insta love, but it is quick. There is no real angst, only a little “we can be together, no we can’t” conflict but that was it. While it took me a bit to warm up to the characters, once the book got moving I liked both of them and was hoping for a HEA.

This was a perfectly nice read. I wasn’t overly excited about it but my interest was piqued enough to read more from Cameron. I think people looking for sweet, low-angst reads will be happy with this.

An ARC of this novel was sent to me by NetGalley for reviewing purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I love this book! I'm a big fan of all the WLW stuff Chelsea writes, and it's no surprise that I love this one. It's very romantic and I want more of Iris and Jude!

Dogs bring people closer and this book is totally proof of that, if Dolly Parton wouldn’t have run over to Jude they wouldn’t have had their reunion. Yes the dog’s name is Dolly Parton and I loved every minute with every scene of that dog. The squeaky toys are exactly how my daily life is at home with squeaky toys.

Jude is just so broody and I loved it, the broody lead characters always get me. I know why she locked her heart up and it was a valid point but her moody broody attitude was perfect. I like that she didn’t have to talk much to make a point but let Iris do all the talking. It seems most relationships are like that one is very talkative and one is quiet. Her attitude starts to change throughout the book and I like to see her slowly come out of her shell and maybe start to change how she looks at life.

Iris on the other hand is completely the life of the party, I sometimes think it might be her way to hide her hurt. She is just trying to figure out where to go in life from here, nothing is working out the way she thinks it should. I like how she just gives Jude her space to figure things out that was a really mature and supportive thing to do even though I’m sure it sucked on her end. I adored her relationship with her parents, her dad and his addiction to reading all kinds of books was so cute.

I’m starting to really enjoy this authors type of writing where the romance is super slow burn but the characters really learn about each other throughout the book. I loved the dog and family dynamic of this book, not even the blood family but the work family in this book was super cute. I wouldn’t mind having stories on some of the side characters in this book.

Having read and LOVED Carina Adores' other new release this month, The Hideaway Inn, I was really excited to read this book. Especially, as it had a similar set-up of someone returning to their hometown temporarily only to discover sparks flying with someone they went to high school with.

While this book is an easy, lovely, romantic read, it's lacking in any real plot so the characters never really get that much of an arc. There were definitely opportunities for this: Jude's past could have come back to haunt or affect her in a more dramatic way or Iris' high school bully could have been utilised in a way that affected the budding romance.

A bit of a missed opportunity here but still a sweet book that would make an easy beach read this summer.

This was a really sweet romance with a few places where it could've been improved by just one more round of edits. The heroines were sweet and their romance was in many ways believable. I liked the contrast in ages and experiences. For me there was a lack of description that really held me back from a full on love of the book.

I wanted to know more about why Iris loved Boston and why she left. In order for me to believe that she wants to go back I need to experience the place with her. There was also a missed opportunity to flesh out the characters of her parents more. Why does her dad read so much? What makes him tick? What is their financial situation that keeps Iris' mom working? Why does Iris' mom have to work two jobs but Iris thinks she can survive doing just one of those jobs (real estate)?

In the same way I needed to know more about Jude. Take the reader lobstering with her. Let us know more about her grief early on. There is an important tension created when I know what one character is holding back while the other one doesn't. I knew that Jude could fall in love with Iris, but I still don't quite know why she did.

We need more f/f romance so I'll take all I can get. But, that doesn't remove authors from the responsibility of making sure that the reader get's the best possible experience of the story and the characters.

Making it big in the Marketing world is not all it is cracked up to be, as Iris finds out. Iris is fresh out of college with stars in her eyes and believing she will immediately make a difference for an "ethical" company. She'll be able to put her marketing degree to good use and bring forth the "good message".

I wasn't sure what to make of this story after the first couple of chapters. I picked it up because I am always curious to see how a FF romance will go. For me, the story is more about becoming and growth than a romance. The romance felt a bit fast and forced. I understand that this is "girl next door" sweet romance so the instalove theme is expected.

Iris is a girl who is a bit deluded in how the real world works. This journey of her failure to make it in the big city is rough to follow because it is all of her own making. I found it difficult to relate to her because of her unrealistic expectations. The sad part is her life after graduating college is one that so many experience. Fortunately, this story isn't a woe is me and "I can't live the American" dream.

The harsh lesson which forces Iris to come back home is a great start to a new chapter in her life. I liked how her situation compared and contrasted from her neighbor, Jude. Jude is only 4 years older than Iris and yet it seems greater, due to Jude's heartbreak and maturity. This romance between the two is sweet and it brings out the best of each of them.

The personal growth for both Iris and Jude is what made this story enjoyable. Their ability to move forward from their loss demonstrates that all hope is not lost. Their awkward interactions which bloom into a sexy romance makes this story sweeter. I confess the sex parts of this story were a bit too tame for me and I ended up skimming over most of it. I tend to like my ff erotica a tad spicier.

Overall, this story could be a window into almost any 20 something's life. For readers who are overachievers, this story may grate on you. For those who enjoy seeing second chances and a rebirth from the ashes theme, this story is for you.