Avery e Declan se tornaram melhores amigos após se conhecerem na faculdade, eles tem a mesma paixão por esportes, principalmente futebol. Morando juntos, eles passam as noites de segunda com os amigos Mark e Jerome, se apoiam a todo momento e convivem bem. Até um erro de Declan fazer com que Avery dirija durante uma tempestade, terminando em um acidente que a deixa com várias fraturas.

Com as irmãs de Avery dispostas a levar ela para morar com elas enquanto se recupera, Declan se mantém firme em ser o único que deve cuidar dela a todo instante. Ele está cheio de culpa, e ajuda Avery com tudo o que ela precisa, a ampara em momentos de esgotamento e não cansa de pedir por perdão. A cada dia a proximidade entre eles fica maior, e isso pode trazer à tona sentimentos que eles nunca se permitiram sentir e explorar antes.

Tem um tempo que eu não leio um romance entre melhores amigos e foi bom mudar de cenário, é diferente quando os personagens já se conhecem tão bem, e o romance aborda uma outra parte que não é sobre se conhecerem melhor. Avery e Declan são parecidos quando se trata de relacionamentos, ela foi traída por um ex-namorado e acaba vivendo mais para o trabalho, deixando sua vida social de lado. Já Declan também foge de relacionamentos sérios, mas por não ter tido um bom exemplo em casa, seus pais nunca foram fiéis um ao outro e o usavam como peça dentro do jogo deles, por isso ele é adepto a encontros casuais. Essas duas experiências podem ser um obstáculo, principalmente para Declan que costuma se autosabotar quando as coisas ficam mais sérias.

Helena Hunting mais uma vez fez um bom romance, e tem um situação mais perto do final do livro que não posso comentar toralmente, mas que me deixou feliz em ver como ela levou os personagens a se reconstruirem, sem pular etapas para dar o final feliz. Espero que ela escreva livros para as irmãs da Avery, que eu desconfio que podem ser com os amigos dos dois, vou ficar no aguardo.

I really loved this friends to lovers book! In the beginning we see Avery and Declan and their friendship, and see some of their backstory and history as friends. When Avery gets in a car accident and needs round the clock help, Declan volunteers to help. Declan was such a cinnamon roll and those few times he called her babe didn't go unnoticed by me.

When an unexpected comment takes them both by surprise, things get steamy! I loved the evolution of their relationship. They both have their own issues, which they have to acknowledge and start to move forward in a healthier way, so I enjoyed how that was handled as well.

I read this so quickly, in only a few settings. I wanted to keep flipping the page to see how their relationship continually grew. I also loved the friendships and family in this book too. Avery and her sisters London and Harley were so supportive of each other. And Avery and Declan's friends also gave me the warm fuzzy feelings. The last few chapters had me on the edge of my seat wanting to see how this was going to work out, and the pacing of that I thought was perfect.

This was actually my first book by this author and I'll definitely be checking out others in her backlist.

I received a copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Avery Spark and Declan McCormick have been best friends since college and roommates for the past few years but they’ve always managed to keep things purely platonic between them. Then one day Avery is in a car accident and Declan blames himself, so to help his friend and assuage his guilt over her getting hurt, he assumes the role of caretaker. It adds a new dynamic to their relationship and unlocks some romantic feelings that they’ve buried over the years. When they risk their friendship and finally give in to their feelings will they be able to find happiness together or will it all come crashing down?

Overall this was a sweet friends-to-lovers story. Even though Declan’s actions set things in motion that causes Avery to get hurt, I thought he did a good job of trying to make it up to her and proved that he was a good guy and not just the shallow player that he seemed at first. I loved them as friends and I can see how things could progress for them given their circumstances but, I don’t know, I didn’t really get a lot of romantic chemistry between them at times. There was just something that was missing for me. There was also some drama that unfolds in the last quarter of the book that annoyed me a little (poor communication and jumping to conclusions) however, the way they turned things around, in the end, was nice and I ultimately enjoyed the outcome.

Avery and Declan. Trope: friends to lovers. The slow build to Avery and Declan hooking up was everything! I was soaking up every second of Declan helping Avery in her rehabilitation. The sisters and the business drama was less than. I felt Avery's sisters were harsher on her then they should have been. If they lack how to run a business between them then that's something they need to work on. Avery had her own path to focus on. I could see myself rereading from Avery arriving home from the hospital to the pot brownie night over again.

Avery and Declan have been friends since college and are currently roommates. When Avery has a car accident and is laid up, Declan steps up to take care of her. He feels guilty because he was supposed to be with her when it happened. The constant close proximity and let’s just say some compromising situations, has them looking at each other in a new light. Can they move from friends to a committed relationship? How do their pasts shape the future for them?

My Thoughts:
A friends to lover’s romance with a little steam, need I say more! The characters are likeable, the story flows well and the progression from friends to lovers felt natural. A highly recommended read!

When Sparks Fly will grab you by the shirt and have you feeling all the feels! Avery runs the Spark House with her sisters and is determined to make it successful, but it takes its toll on her love life. Then we have Declan, Avery's best friend and roommate. These two have been friends since college and roommates for a while they have a routine down to a science. However, lines start to blur for these two when Avery is in an accident that leaves her with needing constant care until she heals. Declan has always been a lady's man and never takes anything serious, until Avery's accident. These two dance quite the tango with each other, push and pull, and feelings start to get confusing with all the time they spend together and don't forget the proximity. Avery and Declan have been friends, but will they cross that line and give the sparks a chance to ignite or will their pasts and future plans stop them before they even start to burn? Avery and Declan will steal your heart and leave you wanting more of these two and the Spark sisters!

When Sparks Fly is a new friends to lovers romance from Helena Hunting. I love a good friends to lovers story and this one was great! Avery and Declan have been friends and roommates for years. There might have been feelings years ago, but it's been a platonic relationship. Until it wasn't! Avery needed help recovering from a bad car accident and Declan needs to be the one to take care of her. All the time spent together twenty four-seven reignites the attraction they let go of years ago. Now it's on fire! But they are still friends and roommates and not sure what happens when life gets back to normal. Declan has some baggage he needs to work through and Avery needs to give him time to figure it all out! I loved this story. It was fun, sweet, sexy and emotional!

This is a hard no from me. I was bored right from the beginning, the characters are not developed enough, I found them very one-dimensional. There was not enough development of the main love interests and their past. They live together and have been friends for a long time but in the beginning it's completely platonic. So it goes from nothing to something, despite Declan not being very nice or considerate to Lottie whatsoever. All the characters to me felt young and immature, this felt like YA the way it was written, but with adult characters. There was also way too much describing and chatter and not enough action moving the story forward. I felt this story was unbelievably predictable and I couldn't buy into it.

Helena Hunting always understands the assignment. This book had my crying and laughing I was so invested in the story which at times pulled at your heartstrings. I would really like to see books for each of Avery's sisters but we will see! Can't wait to read more Helena Hunting in the future!

I mean who doesn’t love a good friends to lover’s romance!? – this is one of my favourite genres in romance. This has all the best bits of a romcom, the laughs, the drama and of course the feels!

I loved Avery and Declan I thought they were very well matched even though Declan had a buttload of baggage to work through, I thought how this evolved was done really well, his character goes through a lot of growth which really helped him feel like a fully flushed person at the end.

Of Avery had her own stuff going on but thing I loved about her was how understanding she was of Declan’s behaviour, things really wouldn’t have worked out if they didn’t have all those years as friends behind them as the core foundation of their relationship.

Overall this was a freaking awesome read, HH romance books are something special and alway enjoy the wit and humour she manages to inject into her stories no matter how much drama is going down.

A small town romance that is light on the heart. I enjoy this author’s writing style. It’s a story to make us swoon and feel good. Not too much angst and drama. Just the perfect amount. Standalone with an HEA.

Friends to lovers is one of my favourite romance tropes so it's no wonder I was so excited about reading When Sparks Fly, the latest novel from Canadian romance author Helena Hunting. I've been reading her books for years now and they're always enjoyable. Some more than others but that's par for the course when an author has a bazillion books published! This latest one, just published today, kept me entertained throughout and I had a good time reading it.

Here's the book's description:
Running the Spark House, a hotel/event space that has been in her family for years, has been Avery Spark’s lifelong dream. After years of working hard and making personal sacrifices, Avery and her two younger sisters have turned the Spark House into the premier destination in Colorado Springs. Avery is living her best life—she works with her sisters and loves every minute of it, she has a great group of friends, and she lives in a fantastic condo with her best friend Declan. She might not have any love in her life, but she's happy.
But everything comes to a screeching halt when Avery is in a car accident, leaving her immobile for weeks. After nearly losing Avery, Declan insists that he will be the one to take care of her while she recovers. However, as Declan becomes Avery’s caretaker, lines begin to blur.
Avery and Declan have been best friends since college and always had an attraction to one another, but when she ended up dating his best friend, Sam, they successfully stamped down any feelings they may have ever had for one another. Now, as Declan and Avery spend more time together, they each begin to wonder what would’ve happened if she'd dated him instead of Sam. What starts as a friend helping out another friend turns into foreplay and, before they realize it, they recognize how deeply they care for one another. But when things get serious their past threatens to destroy everything they have built.
As I said at the top, I love reading romances where the main characters are friends who eventually realize they have romantic feelings for each other. And Hunting worked this trope really well. I don't like it so much when the feelings are unbalanced or have been unrequited for too long. In the case of Avery and Declan, they settled into the friend zone first, never bothered to explore the little spark they had in college, and then Avery started dating someone else and they moved on. There were no pining moments from either of them until the feelings hit them at the same time when they were put into such an intense situation after Avery's accident. The romance was so natural and I absolutely loved reading it.

What I didn't really love was how boneheaded Declan was about his "relationship issues." I think that just kind of stems from the fact that I can't personally understand someone using their parents' relationship as an excuse - and I say this as someone whose parents divorced when I was really young. It just seemed like a cowardly decision for him to use that as a crutch and an excuse and I was proud of Avery for having those hard conversations and doing what was right for her, even though it hurt.

I really liked how close Avery and her sisters were (I also loved the friendship dynamic with Avery, Declan, and "the guys"). I do wish that we had had more time with the three of them together and really getting to know the other women but I'm pretty sure the reason we didn't is 1. that would have made the book enormous and 2. this is the start of a new series from Hunting. Which I'm OK with! Even though I wasn't WOW-ed by this book, I still liked it enough that I'd like to check back in on the characters. Anyway. Back to the sisters. I have a younger sister and we're really close (though not physically - she's always off working in far flung places!) so I like reading about characters who have great relationships with their sister(s) too.

Some important trigger warnings to note: a car accident (with deaths of other people in the crash but no characters we "meet"), toxic parental relationship, and death of parents in the past.

When Sparks Fly was a good read, not a great one. But I think if you're a fan of contemporary romance with some heat and heart, you might want to consider picking up Helena Hunting's latest novel. I'm looking forward to Starry-Eyed Love, which is about Avery's sister London and will be out next spring!

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, St. Martin's Press, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

I'm very much a go in blind type reader. Truth told, I was a couple chapters in before I glimpsed at the description and saw friends to lovers. And let me tell you, I was NOT disappointed. Best of friends. Avery and Declan click. They work. They make sense.
Helena brought me a heartfelt story that left me feeling so happy.

I am posting an honest review after reading an advance reader copy (ARC) of this story.

I am on the fence about this story. I came to care about the characters almost halfway through. For people approaching 30 Avery & Declan lived like they were still in a college dorm, frat house mentality. I found it annoying. They're both very messed up about relationships, due to parents, friends and cheating partners. Declan is so afraid of turning out like his parents that he becomes a one-night-stand guy. Ugh. They redeemed themselves by the end so there is a HEA. My disinterest in the main characters is the reason I've given only 3 stars.

#HelenaHunting #WhenSparksFly #StMartin'sGriffin #contemparyromance #friendtolover

After her abusive marriage, Aurora Sherborne, the now widowed Countess of Radcliff, has decided to avoid love and emotional entanglements at all costs. With her three best friends married and starting their own families, she is beginning to feel lonely and want a child of her own, but that means a marriage of convenience with no feelings attached.

Garrett Winslow, now the Duke of Corwin and grieving the loss of his beloved father, has loved Aurora since they were children. He hasn’t been back in England long from his world travels, but the distance didn’t lessen his feelings for Aurora in the slightest. Unfortunately, she keeps him firmly in his place as her brother’s best friend, leaving Garrett to use every bit of tenderness he possesses in an effort to show her the love and happiness they could have together.

The first part of this book was lovely and drew me in so much. Garrett charmed me to no end, and I loved him as a hero. He was sweet and sensitive, but he never felt weak or emasculated and I would love to see more heroes like him. My issue here was with Aurora. I’ll start by saying she went through an absolutely hellacious marriage to a monstrous man, but I don’t think that excuses how she treated Garrett. On numerous occasions she enumerates Garrett’s fine qualities and how different he is from her former husband, how good of a man he is, how he would never treat her that way, etc. She then goes on to say she could never marry him because he loves her, and she doesn’t want that. She would rather risk a husband who has no feeling for her and would treat her like an object. This complete lack of logic was maddening for me, especially as poor Garrett is just there having to suffer seeing her court other men, who are of course terrible, but she somehow can’t see this. I just wanted to shake some sense into her and even her friends grew frustrated with her nonsense. It also frustrated me that she told Garrett she would never remarry and listed out understandable reasons, even though they were still hurtful for Garrett. Where she lost me is when she suddenly decided right after this conversation that she needed to have her own children and find a man with which to enter a loveless marriage. All of her previously reasonable fears just flew out the window to be replaced with nonsensical thinking and a problem that was almost entirely of her own making. On top of that, she treated Garrett terribly, taking advantage of his friendship, and then grew incredibly jealous when he received attention from other women, even when he wasn’t reciprocating it and had been blatantly honest about wanting to marry her. Thankfully she did come to her senses eventually, but not until after Garrett had suffered much heartache and not until nearly the end of the book, leaving things to wrap up in a rather abrupt fashion in my opinion.

All in all, I loved Garrett, I enjoyed that this book was mostly driven by conversation over action. I enjoyed the dynamics between this endearing friend group and would love to know more about the sparks that were flying between Helen and Geb and if Prudence can find a new HEA after the loss of her husband. This one was just negatively affected by the heroine for me, but the hero was awesome and made it worth reading.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Great! Really enjoyed this! Avery and Declan are awesome together! I ate this book up. Funny and sexy and very fun. This is just what I needed!

Declan and Averys' story was super cute and fun. I love how Hunting adds different quirks to all her heroines and makes them pretty relatable and realistic.

I love the cute, illustrated cover and the colours look gorgeous in Kindle! I wouldn't say this is my fave Helena Hunting read but that might be because friends to lovers isn't really my thing.

However, I'm so glad I gave this one a shot because it did impress me. I loved Avery's sensibility, reason and logic. She's a smart, driven and ambitious girl. She's also kind and forgiving with a great sense of humour.

Declan was so sweet and caring and attentive in his care of Avery that you can't help but SWOON a little. The way he knows what she needs and when and his care of her likes and dislikes just shows how in tune he is with her and really signifies that they truly were friends before ever becoming anything else. He did frustrate me a little too, make no mistake about that, but he's a guy. What man isn't downright infuriating sometimes? And I loved his ability to own up to his mistakes and make up for them. He was a man in every sense of the word.

The steam factor in this one was incredibly hot, by the way 🔥

With Hunting's signature humour and light heartedness, When Sparks Fly is a great Fall read and I'd definitely recommend it to fans of the 'friends-to-lovers' trope.

*Reviewed by Ali at Fallen For Books.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a cute friends to lovers romance. Helena Hunting writes the friends to lovers trope so well!

Avery was a relatable character to me because I also love and play soccer and the importance of friendships. I loved Avery and Declan’s friendship. The fact that they share the crossword puzzle warmed my heart. Declan is such a loyal friend to Avery especially when he drops everything to take care of her while she recovers. Declan helps Avery through her anxiety slowly during her recovery and I loved that he took the time and understood what she was going through.

I loved watching the build up that led Avery and Declan realizing their true feelings for each other. This book was a good friends to lovers romance and it had me laughing at times along with my heart bursting.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved seeing Declan and Avery slowly realize they belong together. Everything they had every wanted was right in front of them the whole time. Of course there were times the was some frustrations but ultimately they figured things out. The opening scene with the hobbyhorses was really entertaining. I still chuckle thinking about it.

I love how Helena can write something sweet but also add that much needed heat. I enjoy her small town contemporary books, and find it a nice change up from her norm!
I'm excited to see what this series has in store for us!