The writing style is okay and easy to read. However, I find the pacing to be too slow for my liking and there's too much description of everything that I sometimes get sidetracked to what's happening in the story. I did not connect to any of the characters as well as their motivations. I can still see this being loved by other readers, though, it isn't just for me.

This is my second book by Kate Clayborn and I loved it just as much as the first. One of the things I appreciate about her writing is that she does a beautiful job depicting characters struggling with issues under the surface. Nora Clarke is dealing with grief after the loss of her grandmother and the inheritance of her lovely apartment community. Will Sterling is a man dealing with an overwhelming job and heartbreaking childhood trauma. When he inherits his uncle’s apartment in the same building, he is ready to rent it out for income. The neighborhood, led by Nora, attempt to resist his plans. Nora takes it to the next level with creative sabotage and along the way the two realize they are developing feelings for one another. Those feelings actually started many years ago for Will but that is another layer of their story.

The side characters in the story are sweet, funny, and unique but nothing can top the connection you will develop for Nora and Will. They have a winding road to love but every turn feels authentic and intriguing. This is a love story with touches of so many other elements. I highly recommend this one to anyone.

Thanks to Kate Clayborn, Kensington Books, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“You don’t have to love people the way you learned to love at first”

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of the opinions are my own and this did not affect my review in any way.

I requested this book from NetGalley without really knowing what it was about I was just in the mood to read a fast paced, fluffy romance novel. I truly enjoyed this book, it was not mind blowing or anything but it was exactly what I was in the mood for at the moment.

In Love at First we follow Will Sterling, who sixteen years ago heard the girl of his dreams. Now an unexpected inheritance has brought Will back to that same address, where he plans to offload his new property and get back to his regular life as an overworked doctor. Instead, he encounters a woman, two balconies above, who’s uncannily familiar.

This book although it is not very impactful is sweet, cute and adorable. When I was reading this book I was able to dive right into the story and care for the characters. The two main characters are strong headed and apparently know what they want in life, which I enjoyed reading about.

Love at First was a cozy, romantic tale which felt a bit like getting a warm hug. It was comforting, heartfelt and made my heart feel tender at times. I wanted Will and Nora to end up together and every time they had an interaction I was swooning.

My only complaint about the book was that I had a hard time picturing that an apartment unit could cause so much trouble. I understand and love the feeling of found family in the apartment building, but I really had trouble picturing that by giving the apartment a makeover people would feel it was disrespectful.

However, taking this aside I was truly invested in the story. The banter between the two main characters made me laugh out loud and made me feel complete. Overall, this is a fast, heartwarming and heartfelt story about what it is like to give love a second chance.

Love at First is a beautiful romance with the most endearing characters!

Will Sterling fell for a girl the second he heard her voice, in the next second, his whole world had changed. The opening chapter immediately thrust you into the story, keeping you on your toes as to what Will overheard his Mom and Uncle talking about. Sixteen years later, and he's inherited an apartment from his Uncle that he never wanted or needed. The dated building hasn't been updated in years. The only bright spot is Nora, the same girl who he caught a glimpse of all those years ago!

Nora loves the old building and its residents. They represent the stability and family that she always craved. Now that her grandmother is gone, she is fiercely protective of the things she holds dear. This doesn't bode well for Will, whose plans to renovate Donny's apartment and rent it out. Nora's plans to sabotage Will conflict with their growing chemistry and sexual attraction.

I absolutely loved the dynamic between Will and Nora! I swooned when Will stepped in to take care of her when she got sick right after trying to mess with his plans. Nora definitely had some issues with change and learning to accept that some things that stagnate, decay.

The residents were such a delight and the bromance between Will and Dr. Abraham had me cracking up! Beautiful, lovely, heart-warming!

4 1/2 stars -Kate Clayborn books never fail to delight. They are always filled with fun, laughter, great characters, and often bring me to tears along the way! I highly recommend anything she writes, and Love at First is no exception. Its a story of second chances and making sure the love of a lifetime does not slip through your fingers again! Nora and Will will such great characters. Highly recommend!

I liked it enough, it was cute. The characters were a little two-dimensional and the plot felt like it was missing something to give it that extra oomph but I enjoyed it. The ‘problem’ (you know the one-the problem in every romance that breaks up the main characters right before the end because they keep getting in their own way) was surprisingly unique and actually made some sense. It’s always nice to have something different in such a formulaic genre. I give this a solid 3.5 stars. I would read this author again.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

A huge thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for acquiescing to my ARC request in exchange for an honest review.

Love At First begins with clandestine cherry tomatoes flung over a balcony and ends with a heartfelt poetry reading. In between is a slow burn romance with a unique meet cute and vulnerable, fully developed main characters.

Will had a childhood that has left him with deep emotional scars. He is wary of relationships, skittish of commitment, and has buried his insecurity far beneath a smooth facade. He's a workaholic who has crushed every life goal he had with determination and grit, but he goes home to an empty apartment and defines himself in terms of his career.

Nora's grandmother was the one person in her life who gave her time and made her feel like she was worthy of it. She tries hard to be everything to her friends and her found family, but neglects herself.

When the new tenant in the apartment building admits that he intends to convert the apartment he inherited into a short term rental, outrage ensues. Nora and the other residents launch a campaign to persuade him otherwise.

Somewhere along the way there is Shakespeare, the replacement of an obsolete towel bar, a duo of adorable kittens and a fiery kiss.

This romance about found families and the person that is your home will warm your heart and curl your toes.

Thanks to NetGalley and Keningston Books for this e-galley. This book will be published on February 23, 2021.

This delightful love story is 16 years in the making for Will and Nora. When they finally meet as adults when Will comes to deal with his unexpected inheritance, he meets a host of characters he won't soon forget.

I loved the sweet romance between Will and Nora and the interplay of the supporting cast of characters too. Clayborn writes so vividly that you can picture the people and places she is describing. I have already read another one of her titles, "Love Lettering" but need to read the rest of her catalogue.

Love at First was a cute and sweet little book. Will had a set of parents who were much more interested in each other than they were were in him. His memory of The Day That Everything Changed includes one sweet spot-- a voice of this girl from a couple floors above, obscured by his untreated bad eyesight and tree foliage. Years later, after his uncle dies and he is left to clear out the apartment (NEVER unit), he finally meets the former-girl-now-woman behind that voice: Nora, whose grandmother lived in the apartment building and was the person Nora was visiting all those years ago. Nora refuses to accept that anything should change in her beloved apartment building, as it was the one steady spot she had in her life growing up. However, Will has no desire to have anything with his inherited apartment beyond fixing it up to rent out on a long-term rental website. Clearly, these two butt heads before coming to understand each other.

I enjoyed reading Love at First, but I honestly did kind of forget about it after I finished it. Often I sit and wait to write a review so I can work out my thoughts, and I pretty much almost completely forgot about it altogether. It was cute but meh. Nothing to write home about.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington for the free ARC in exchange for an opinion.

I've loved love lettering and was very excited to get to read her newest novel. I was not disappointed. Loved the characters, loved how much the house they all lived in was a character itself and fektvso comfortable spending some time there.

Author Kate Clayborn continues to award her readers with beautiful stories, loveable characters and strong dialogue. In Love at First, the reader meets Will Sterling, a gangly, slightly self-absorbed teenager on an unexpected trip. Enter Nora Clarke, whose laugh, despite the fact that he can't see her, changes Will's life. Fast-forward 16 years and they meet again, this time face-to-face. Add quirky, but loveable friends, realistic heartache and a meet-cute that will leave the reader with a warm glow at the end. Once again, Kate Clayborn does not disappoint.

I have never read a book by Kate Clayborn that I haven't loved but this one may well be may favorite. I adored pretty much everything about it from the wonderful cast of quirky supporting characters to the super sweet romance that actually had me swooning at hand holding. Hand holding! This is such a beautifully layered story about found family, grief, overcoming your past but still learning from it, love, and so much more. This is one I will be recommending all year.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received a reviewer copy of Love at First by Kate Clayborn from the publisher Kensington Books from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

CW: Death of family members, Neglectful parents.

What It’s About: Sixteen years ago, Will's life changed when his mother took him to his uncle's apartment and he spotted a beautiful girl throwing cherry tomatoes. While his life fell apart that day he hasn't forgotten the girl. Now, at present day, Will has inherited the very same apartment and guess what? The girl upstairs is still there. Nora is grieving the loss of her Nonna and to make matters worse, when a handsome man inherits the apartment below her and threatens the tight knit community her building has by turning the apartment into a short term rental. So it's war.

What I Loved: This book was cute and introduced a concept that was new to me, the idea of a couple being too in love that they neglect others. I think as a child of divorce I constantly see talk about shame that comes with that and damage (something I'm really opposed to, I think my parents tried and just weren't right for one another) so it was interesting for me to see a story of struggle caused by a marriage where people were so in love that they neglected their child. I thought this exploration was fascinating and a challenge I've never seen in a romance before.

What I Didn't Like So Much: What didn't work for me this time was the connection of love story and place. This is typically an element of Kate Clayborn's work (okay I've only read Love Lettering but that book was a love story weaved into a love story of a city). In Love at First, the building is the place that we are supposed to be transported too. And while I enjoyed the side characters, I never felt connected to the building or really got to know the characters that made the building home, even though I felt like I should. I felt like I was supposed to experience a Vanderbeeker style building (children's lit) and we just didn't get that.

Who Should Read This: People who love romance, people who love stories about community (maybe it will click more for you), people who want to take a risk on new tropes

Quick Summary: A cute romance

I’m one of the few Clayborn fans who enjoyed Love Lettering, but didn’t love it. The story is excellent, but this graphic design/hand lettering obsessive had a difficult time getting out of her head and just enjoying the romance.

Despite my response to that novel, I had extremely high hopes for Love at First. After all, I AM A CLAYBORN SUPER FAN, friends. Ms. Clayborn crafts romance novels that give me a lovely glowy feeling as I read them. They’re gentle and quiet and charming and hard and frustrating and full of big and small - tiny, almost - bittersweet and tender moments, and - look, they give me all the swoony feels, and I AM HERE FOR ALL OF IT. Fortunately for us, Love at First satisfies the brief on every level.

When Will Sterling was sixteen years old his life changed. Always in the periphery of his parents grand and obsessive love for each other, he’s a happy kid despite their selfishness. He’s accepted that their love leaves little space for him and he keeps himself busy with sports and school, girls, and trying to see clearly through his increasingly unreliable eyes. But his world takes an abrupt turn after his mother takes him on a surprise road trip and introduces him to an uncle he never knew he had. Asked to wait outside after the conversation between his mother and her brother heats up, he’s distracted by the blurry appearance of a girl on the balcony above him. Her voice and laughing commentary (to an unseen person within the apartment) captivates him, and he’s nearly convinced himself to say “hi,” when he overhears part of the conversation taking place inside the apartment. The conversation changes the trajectory of his life.

Eleanora Clarke was raised by busy parents obsessed with their work. They loved their daughter, too, but work ranked higher in the hierarchy of their lives. Fortunately for Nora, she had her Nonna to shower her with the care and attention they didn’t. Nora spent summers and breaks with her grandmother, and grew up knowing and loving the other tenants in her small condominium. Her ‘family,’ helped raise her into the woman she is when Love at First begins. They’ve also provided her with solace and comfort in the months since her beloved Nonna passed away, and Nora moved into her grandmother's apartment. Her new home is familiar and comfortable, and despite her lingering grief, she’s happy to live amongst people she loves. But her contented life takes an unforeseen turn after Dave, a downstairs neighbor, dies, and then leaves his apartment to a nephew he never knew.

Oh reader! You know who the nephew is don’t you? It’s Will! Slow your happy roll - because grown up Will has zero desire to live in his uncle’s former home - a home he only visited once. A visit that marked the brutal end of his childhood hopes and dreams.

Ah, but this is a Clayborn story isn’t it? Fans will already know there’s more to Will than meets the eye, and more to Nora than just her relationship to a group of close-knit, quirky condo owners. What starts off as a somewhat adversarial relationship - Will hopes to offer his unit for short-term rentals until he’s able to sell it (his uncle’s will specifies he must keep it for at least a year); Nora doesn’t want strangers in and out of the aging building - eventually segues into an friendship and love affair. But that takes time and in that time we get to know Will and Nora, the eclectic characters who inhabit the building, and a couple of other secondary characters that change Will’s life. Friends, it’s all a delight.

Will’s childhood - his relationship with his parents and the aftermath of their deaths - taught him the skills that make him a great doctor: an ability to keep people at a remove while still offering comfort and care; to maintain a calm and cool demeanor in chaotic situations; and an ability to push through even the most difficult situations - but they’re little use to him when he meets Nora, the girl he pined after as a young man. He never forgot her - or that day, and when he meets her again, his feelings unmoor him - they’re messy, intense, chaotic, consuming, and scary. His parents once had a love like that, and it nearly destroyed his life. Unable to handle how he feels, he does what he knows best - holds himself a remove, trying (and failing) to “fix” himself and move on from her. Help comes from an unlikely source - Gerald - an introverted and socially awkward doctor/co-worker also trying and failing at love.

Nora doesn’t know what to make of her unwelcome attraction and obsession with her new nemesis Will Sterling. Unfairly handsome and polite and kind and generous and interesting, he proves immune to every attempt she makes to sabotage his efforts to convert his unit (she HATES that word) into a short-term rental. Nora struggles with her attraction to Will, and the more she gets to know him, the harder it is to hate him. When she finally sees the apartment after he’s cleaned and renovated it...it triggers an impulse to reexamine her own life and jettison some of the anchors keeping her from forging her own path forward. Asking him for help signals an end to her attempts to sabotage him, and secret late night renovation assignations soon give way to a different sort of assignation altogether...and send Will into an emotional spiral.

Well, that’s the plot. But if you know Ms. Clayborn at all, you know there’s so much more to this story. The significance of family - the one we’re born into and the one we find for ourselves along the way - anchors this powerful love story. Both of these richly realized characters are powerfully shaped by the relationship they had with their parents, and its effect on the trajectory of their lives as adults. Will’s childhood pain is expressed in the solitary, aloof person he is when he inherits the apartment; and Nora’s own childhood - difficult and lonely, too - is fundamentally different because of her beloved nonna, the family of building tenants who also love and care for her, and her equally important friendship with co-worker Dee. Much like Will has defined himself as a loner, Nora has defined herself by the people around her. They learn from each other, and take the best parts of themselves with them as they create a new life with each other.

Love at First is the kind of novel that sucks you in from the very first pages, frustrates and challenges you, and eventually makes you sigh in satisfied, swoony happiness. As usual, Clayborn’s world-building is brilliant, and much like her atmospheric NYC in Love Lettering, her Chicago is rendered in exquisite, fascinating detail. The condominium - a microcosm of the world around them - is as much a principal character as Nora and Will are, and important secondary characters enhance and enrich this story from start to finish. No minor detail is overlooked, and poetry - like the signs and letters of NYC in Love Lettering - provides a love language that helps bring Will and Nora together. Le sigh. Oh, it’s so well done.

Love at First is the gentle and powerful love story you need after the chaos of 2020. It’s superb, and I highly recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley, author Kate Clayborn, and Kensington Publishing Corporation for an E-book arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
4.5 stars
For those who are fans of "Love Lettering," this is definitely a must read! This book follows Will Sterling, who happen to hear a voice sixteen years ago from the apartment above and fell in love. But before he can put a face to the voice, he leaves with his mother. This chance meeting has never been far from his mind over the years. When his uncle passes away, he inherits his uncle apartment, but not wanting to make a life in a place that holds painful memories, Will decides to rent out the apartment. As he begins to remodel the apartment, Nora Clake, a current resident, is not willing to let Will get away bringing in strange people into this close-knit building. Will their friendly feud bring their connection to an end or will it be the second chance at love?
This book was such a cute story! I loved Will. He had a painful childhood due to neglectful parents. I could understand Will's need to make his job his entire world in order to fill the void left from his family. Nora and the other building residences were so great! Their closeness really made me fill so warm and cozy that it made me want to live in such a place. The light sabotage/pranks made me laugh aloud at their cleverness. The development of their relationship was realistic and heartfelt. Overall, I believe this book is the perfect book for the Valentine holiday! I can't wait to read more books by this author in the future.

Love at First Sight is the second novel that I’ve read by Kate Clayborn, the first one being her sparkling and heartwarming romance Love Lettering. I feel such joy and wonder when I finished this book and I read through the night to do get to the end but I also lingered on every word and every encounter and every feeling that Will and Nora experienced. Love at First Sight will have you laughing and crying, emphathizing with every regret and hurt and joy these characters had. And its not just the main couple that gets your attention. Its the whole ensemble cast of the apartment building, Will’s boss and Nora’s co worker/bff who will no less leave you breathless with laughter. Love at First Sight gives you that near heart stopping joy of finding the one but them teaches you that you need to be able to work on it to realize its full potential. Will and Nora will definitely leave you wanting more of their own brand of happy ever after.

Love at first...sound?

This was a really cute story. Will and Nora were just adorable characters, and the neighbors? Even cuter! I loved them all. Whenever there's communities such as this in a book that are around the main characters, it always adds an extra layer of fun to the story. Especially when they're older adults and have no filter and tons of opinions!

This is my first book from Kate Clayborn and I can say with certainty that I love her writing style and the dialogues in the book. I loved Will's characters in particular and his characteristics and personality, the way he was written was amazing. I look forward to more stories and heart-felt characters from you in the future Kate!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the earc in return for an honest review.

Will and Nora...the classic enemies-to-lovers characters. It starts when he sees her on the balcony as a teenager. What are the odds their paths will cross again? After his uncle leaves him his apartment that happens to be in the same building as hers, the chances are pretty good. The story continues on with a story of overcoming past sadness and finding new joy.

I loved the side stories with the various neighbors in the building. And I loved the sweet, warm, cozy feeling reading this book gave me. Though a little slow at times for me, I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fun rom-coms and wants to have a smile in their hearts.

Thank you to Kensington Books, NetGalley and Kate Clayborn for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

This book was absolutely perfect to me. I can't say enough good things. Nora and Will were perfect, I loved all of the other residents in the building. The secondary love story with Will's boss... adorable. Seeing Will and Nora overcome their individual issues on their own and by helping each other was *chef's kiss*. I stayed up late for 2 nights to keep reading this book and by the end I was smiling and crying. I haven't loved a book this much in ages. Can't wait to now read everything Kate Clayborn has written.

I guess it’s going to be an annual thing now where Kate Clayborn publishes a book and I read it and it becomes my first 5-star read of the year. Last year it was Meg and Reid from Love Lettering and this year, I fell hard and fast for Nora and Will.

This was a delightful read from start to finish and I hope you read it so you can understand what I’m about to say: I would die for Mrs. Salas. That is all.