
Member Reviews

One of the reasons @carolatlovering ’s writing enraptures me is the way she describes feelings: new feelings, old feelings, fleeting feelings and lasting feelings. With the heroines of her work I find myself identifying with different parts of each one. It’s like we’ve all lived the same experiences and as I read the connection that I have to the characters grows. Also I admittedly fall in love with Lovering’s male characters just as quickly as her characters do. I identify with her character’s big hearts and sit in solidarity with them in their weakest moments. The conversations Lovering’s characters have with their friends are the kinds of conversations I wish I had with mine. She makes me want to be part of that friend group.
One of Lovering’s signature styles is writing from different POVs. Actually being inside of multiple characters brains really brings each moment to life.
I get so lost in Lovering’s writing I lose track of time and place. And then sometimes I pause, unsure of how I want the story to continue. And knowingly that it doesn’t always go how I assume. What I’m saying is, she’s one of the greats for a reason, and this third novel is no exception. There are times I speed read through and the pages just turn and turn and other times one line sets me back into refection for hours. Some characters, books, setting just stay with you.
Solene and Hayes. Isabelle and Gaetan. Kya and Tate. Celia and Marco. Lucy and Steven. And now, Molly and Jake.
I can’t wait for you to meet them when Can’t Look Away is released in June!
What are the odds that the new girl in town that you instantly become besties with is married to your retired rockstar ex? Molly meets Jake Danner at one of his NYC shows and they have a hot start. As their relationship heats up so does his career, fast forward 9 years later and they’ve ended up living in the same suburban town married to other people. Is Flynn Cove big enough for Molly and Jake’s reunion?
@carolatlovering #cantlookaway @netgalley

I really enjoyed this! It was fun to see how the present-day mess was created, and how it unravels … I couldn’t put it down.

I read Carola Lovering’s last book, Too Good to Be True, last year and it was a wild ride. This upcoming release, Can’t Look Away, was a wild ride as well. I had listened to Too Good to Be True on audio and expect that this one will also be good on audio because she used a similar style with each chapter going back and forth between three characters. The characters in Can’t Look Away have a complicated history which has developed into a very complicated present. There are themes of love, loss, grief, and revenge.
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As you dive deeper into each of the character’s lives and history, you’ll wonder what went wrong, what’s coming next, and how this could possibly resolve. These characters are messy, complicated, and often unlikable. This is a twisty book and I recommend adding to your TBR if you enjoy alternating perspectives from characters with lots of secrets. This releases on July 14,2022.
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Thanks @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the eARC.
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Lovering is a must read author for me and this book solidifies why. More of a romantic suspense than thriller but it’s totally enthralling. It’s told from Molly as a 23 year old in young love and a present day Molly married to a different guy. When Molly runs into her first love the book takes off in only the way Lovering can do. This book was packed with emotion and heart. Loved it!

Carola Lovering has once again blown me away with her latest novel! Can’t Look Away is a fascinating mix of a love story and a domestic thriller that I found unputdownable! Carola Lovering masterfully builds a storyline that is full of unexpected twists and turns that left my jaw hanging wide open—love that! I found the characters extremely well-developed and enjoyed that we got alternating viewpoints throughout which added so much to the storyline. Can’t Look Away is a 5+++ star novel that I will most definitely be recommending to EVERYONE! Carola Lovering is an automatic must read for me and I already can’t wait to see what she comes out with next!

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Can't Look Away by Carola Lovering.
Oh my goodness, what a delightful steaming vat of upper class foolishness.
Molly is happy and in love with her small family, her daughter and husband Hunter. But what not everyone knows is that Molly once dated super famous band member Jake Danner, who wrote a song about Molly, putting them both on the map. So what happened ten years ago that ended their red hot romance?
Back to present day, Molly enjoys teaching yoga and keeping up with the Jones's, all the while not quite feeling like she fits in. But that all changes when Sabrina appears in her class. Sabrina is cool, different, and just the friend that Molly has been craving. But Sabrina knows more about Molly than Molly could ever guess.
This starts out nice and juicy, the perfect little bit of harmless gossip. But the further in you get the more it goes off the rails until you're like, STOP, I nEVEr AskED fOr tHis! It's a bit too batstuff for me. I love me some drama as much as the next Liane Moriarty fan, but this was just a bit TOO much frosting on the cake.

Can't look away is a story of love, suspense and reflection on 'the one that got away'. Told from 3 different perspectives and shifting from present day to 2013-2016, we learn about Jake and Molly's love story. But Jake and Molly don't end up together. The use of parallel timelines and multiple points of view work well for this story. The author is skilled at building tension and slowly portioning out details so the reader can work out what exactly happened that Jake and Molly ended up so far from where they started.
This is a fast paced and well-written novel full of enigmatic characters and fun NY details. I enjoyed the contrast of light and dark in this story. A good read for the psych-thriller fan who has a soft spot for love.
Thank you to the author and publisher for the opportunity to read and review this ARC,

I love this author and I loved tell me lies - i am well aware that book didnt hit the spot for everyone, and if you didnt like that one you may not like this one.
But i think Carola Lovering really captures the nuance of young love and just that spot between youth and adult.
This book starts with Molly in her youth and in love with Jake. It bounces back and forth between her present day marriage to Hunter and the story is basically how she got from one to the other.
I would definitely not call this book a thriller and that may be where some of the negative reviews come from, though Sabrina is definitely dark and possibly a little out there, you dont really know what shes going to do nothing that youd find in your typical thriller here. I do think she got a happier ending than she deserved but i blew through this book and loved all of it. I felt the pain of the young heartbreak and the security that comes from finding something solid. Thanks to netgalley for the review copy!

This was a captivating story from the beginning. The story kept me guessing and the characters were interesting.

This has a little Daisy Jones and the Six vibe with a sprinkle of Single White Female. Molly and Jake have been together a long time and he is the famous front man of a rock band. Molly struggles to write a novel and fit her life around Jake’s life/band/tour schedule. This is told in alternative gas perspectives and back and forth in time. I really enjoyed it and hope you pick it up!

An extremely romantic psychological thriller. Did I really just write that, yes, as it’s the only real way to describe this astonishing novel which will stay with long after you finish. The authors last novel was one of my favorites and this might nudge that one out.

Lovering has this incredible way of sucking in the reader, and this book was no exception. I agree with other reviewers that this is more of a domestic drama than a thriller, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I found most twists to be predictable, but it was still bingeable and worth reading!

Review posted to blog: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend.com/
While this was not exactly Too Good To Be True, Can’t Look Away, was somewhat entertaining, (even if it took place in a fictional Connecticut suburb (which is something I deplore!)).
In Can’t Look Away by Carola Lovering, we get to see Molly’s life first hand, in both the past (in 2013) and the present (in 2022).
In 2013, Molly was a 23-year-old New Yorker who fell head over heels for Jake Danner, the lead singer of Danner Lane. Doomed from the start these two never got the storybook ending they were hoping for.
In 2022, Molly is married to a man named Hunter and is living in fictional Flynn Cove, Connecticut, an extremely wealthy suburb. Here, Molly quickly becomes besties with a woman named Sabrina who wants more from Molly than just friendship. Sabrina has means and motive and she will not be deterred.
Life in Flynn Cove should be idyllic but secrets run amok in this tiny little town and Molly’s perfect little life is about to take a drastic turn.
A CRAZY domestic suspense that kept Kaceey and me absorbed from the start. If crazy is your thang, this just might be the book for you.
Thanks to NetGalley and Kejana Ayala at St. Martins Press for the arc.
Published on NetGalley, Goodreads, and Twitter

**This is not the type of thriller that you think it is**
It WAS thrilling, but it was more of a drama than a thriller, at least in the way that I approach thrillers. I absolutely loved how the story unfolded and even though I knew what the big reveal was going to be fairly early on the impact of it was just as devastating as if I hadn’t picked up on the clues. I absolutely recommend for lovers of thrillers and dramas alike, it was a quick and easy page turner and I was not disappointed.
I’m happy that I requested this ARC on netgalley, it was a great winter break read.

Can't Look Away is billed as a mystery/thriller and I don't think it is. I would say more domestic drama. There was nothing surprising at all in the novel, but it was entertaining, Molly falls in love with musician Jake when they are in their twenties. They have an intense, fast romance that ends abruptly. Flash forward and she now lives in rich Flynn Cove, CT with her husband and daughter. She befriends Sabrina, who is new to town. But... Sabrina knows a lot more about Molly than she's letting on and becomes obsessed with Molly.
I actually like the scenes with Molly and Jake a lot and the dual timelines between present day and when Molly and Jake were a couple.
Good choice if you're looking for an obsessive drama.

This author does a great job with the creepy female trope. In this one, a woman is basically stalking her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, even after she is no longer in the relationship. I don't want to give anything away. This is a psychological thriller and it's pretty creepy. I definitely recommend this one. I had a hard time putting this one down.

Loved this book! There were so many different time periods and characters involved and really enjoyed the plot. Wish there was more in the epilogue to give a little more insight to Mollys marriage and where it stands In more detail, but still really good book

I really enjoyed the book, "Can't Look Away" by Carola Lovering. I went into the book thinking that it was going to be more of a psychological thriller with a woman stalker. While that was definitely part of the book, I think that the book had more of a love story focus. At some points during the book, I felt like the story was slightly repetitive and some parts probably could have been removed without losing the main storyline. Overall, a solid book with very well developed characters. I would definitely read other books by Carola Lovering.

In 2013, Molly Diamond is a struggling NYC artist working as a barista as she completes her MFA. At a concert one night, she locks eyes with the lead singer of the band and her life changes forever once they connect.
Fast forward to the future and Molly is happily married to Hunter, having moved to the suburbs. But she's lonely, surrounded by cliquey country club wives, and struggling to conceive her much wanted second child.
Enter Sabrina, who joins the yoga studio where Molly's teaching and confesses her own struggles with infertility. As the two immediately hit it off, Molly's thrilled to finally have a new friend. But Sabrina has ulterior motives for moving in so quickly on Molly, and as her secrets unravel, the ones Molly's tried so hard to bury come to the surface as well.
I struggled with this book. The writing is good and breezy and I read it quickly, but honestly? I hated the characters. It's almost as if this book sprang from the prompt,. "write about the most immature people on the planet and give them generic problems and cliched characteristics." If this were a novel that I had bought or borrowed for anything other than a review, I would have DNF'd it early.
Additionally, this is shelved as a mystery/thriller and secondary as women's lit. One of the most frustrating things as a reader is coming into a book with expectations of a genre. This is absolutely women's lit, albeit of the Lifetime movie variety, but there is nothing "thriller" about it. And that was a huge disappointment.
Special thanks to the publisher for making this available to read in exchange for a review on NetGalley.

Carola Lovering's TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE (2020) was one of my fav books of the year, but CAN'T LOOK AWAY was even BETTER! The main character, Molly, is an aspiring writer who just needs some help believing in herself. She meets Jake, who will soon be a famous musician, and who whirls her off her feet while encouraging her to be the novelist she wants to be. But we KNOW things do not end well... we just don't know how or why.
In a second timeline, we see Molly with Hunter, her husband, and the father of her child. But worlds collide when Molly friends Sabrina, and Jake comes haunting from her past. The reader tries to understand how these stories are interwoven, and while it's very much a drama between characters, there's SO much tension. I turned the pages super fast and finished this book in just a few days (fast for the mother of a toddler!). This is an excellent new book from Lovering, and I can't wait for her next one.
This is the sort of book that will have you buying every book in her backlist, trying to get that same rush of "what now?" and once the book is over "I miss these characters!"