4 Stars Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron was not what I was expecting from a second chance romance—it was better! Jana Suleiman has never felt like she fit in and the one time she let loose and went out of her comfort zone, she ended up pregnant and brokenhearted. That was five years ago and now the single mom is headed to Serengeti National Park as a bridesmaid in her friend’s wedding. Pretty much everyone Jana knows will be there, including her four year old daughter, her daughter’s dad/Jana’s ex, her mother, her potential new boss, and lots of meddling, judgmental aunties and uncles. Jana still hasn’t forgiven her ex, Anil, for betraying her five years ago, but she recognizes how great of a dad he is to their daughter, with whom they split custody 50/50. Jana’s determined to finally get over Anil and decides to let loose once again. With the help of the bride and other bridesmaids, Jana concocts a list of experiences to get her to get out of her shell and maybe go a little wild while on safari. The more that Jana steps out of her comfort zone and the more time she spends with Anil, the harder it is for Jana to remember why she still hurts over him all these years later and for her to deny her attraction to him.

Like I said, this wasn’t what I was expecting, especially since the description doesn’t really give a clue as to why Jana and Anil didn’t work out the first time around. I understand why that experience left Jana hurt and why she hasn’t been able to let go of her pain for five years to move on. It’s made even harder by the fact that those all around her, including her family, haven’t let her forget what happened to her and Anil. Farah Heron did a wonderful job addressing how generational differences, cultural beliefs, and familial trauma can have lasting and detrimental effects on how we perceive others and how we internalize that to see ourselves too. Jana and Anil’s path back to one another wasn’t straightforward and at times it seemed like they may never get over their shared past, but the HEA was worth the journey. I really enjoyed all of the side characters, especially the #bridalbrigade and the dik-dik pics (iykyk).

I started this book with the intention to read only a few chapter. Well I lied because once I started I couldn’t stop reading!

Jana, her amazing friends, mom and the gorgeous Anil captured my attention and I needed to know everything!

I do wish I was able to get Anil’s perspective at certain points but not having that point of view also added to the angst and had me dying to read for outcomes!

Jana is a kick butt person! She’s a hotness at times but aren’t we all!!? She’s loyal, independent, strives for her goals and when she lets loose she lights up the world! I loved seeing Jana come out of her shell and grow!

I really enjoyed this second chance romance. The coparenting dynamic was great and I really enjoyed the characters so much! I would highly recommend this book!

🐘 As soon as I heard Farah Heron was writing this story, I was super excited. It also immediately made me think of my friend @artbymeezy ‘s "Father and Son" painting.

🧡 I loved this story more than I expected to and that says a lot because I was already really looking forward to this book. It's so nice being able to read about characters that feel familiar and that are experiencing some of the same things I'm struggling with. Thank you Farah for adding our bit of culture to main stream media and for so openly writing about and challenging the norms and expectations we have grown up with and around.

😅 The aunties and Jana's mom are so typical it's frustrating and amusing at the same time. Don’t even get me started on Shelina. Imani's energy is infectious and it's hard not to smile when she lures Mommy and Daddy into various subtle situations. Anil Malek rubs me the wrong way, but I love that Jana loves him and I love the person Jana becomes with him and around him and so I still shipped them hard. The reader's slow burn struggle (despite them having a child together) was so real, and Farah wrote it so well. My favourite was when Jana voiced her own sexual tension/frustrations in relation to being an overachiever. I can definitely relate.

🏷️ Thank you Netgalley and Farah Heron for this e-ARC. Now it’s time for me to go learn how to make mandazi and stare at my own elephant collection while y'all wait for your pre-orders to be delivered!

4.5 stars

I'll admit, what first drawn me to this book was the amazing cover but the book turned out just as great, better than I expected.

This book is a second chance romance between Jana and Anil. Jana and Anil had a brief fling 5 years back which ended very dramatically (Anil was still technically married) and Jana finding out she was pregnant after everything ended.

While Anil was a great at co parenting and a great father to their daughter, they were not really on speaking terms 5 years later.

After unexpectedly vacationing together for a friend's wedding for 2 weeks, things slowly start to change.

Well the book was slow, and even sometimes messy, I think Farah did a wonderful job telling their story. As with most books, I would loved for this to be dual POVs.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

After a whirlwind romance that spans two weeks on two continents, Jana discovers her lover, Anil, is married. She angrily cuts ties with him only to find out weeks later that she is pregnant. Anil proves to be a great father, though, and the next 5 years they co-parent their adorable daughter, while keeping distance from each other.
That is until they are both enlisted as part of the wedding party on a lavish destination wedding in Tanzania.

The synopsis for this book, as well as the gorgeous cover, had me really excited to read it. So, I was disappointed when after the first chapter the story dragged for me. Things did pick up after the wedding festivities began but I had a hard time warming up to Jana. I think this book might have benefited from a dual POV.

I’m rating this book 3.5/5 rounded up since the last half of the book was more interesting and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for this complimentary ARC. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc!

This was a surprisingly heavy read for me! I went into it thinking it was just going to be all light and fun, which there was some of that, but there were some heavy emotions throughout too. This secondhand romance deals with infidelity, co-parenting, trust issues, lying (by omission but still), etc. This was a good contemporary romance that had adventure and fun but also had some complexity to it!

JANA GOES WILD is a really emotionally resonant and complex book set against a 2 week distinction wedding in Tanzania!

Jana and Amil had a 2 week fling before she found out he was still married. A few weeks after that, she found out she was pregnant. For five years they have co-parented their daughter, but now mutual friends are getting married and they’re both in the bridal party. What could go wrong?

JANA GOES WILD is a book about a second chance romance, but it’s also a book about letting go of pain and choosing forgiveness, as well as getting out of your shell and learning new ways to be. As part of her journey, Jana has to choose to step out of what’s comfortable and safe if she’s going to have the chance of a happily ever after. Trust is hard, but I think the author paid off this story in a really great way. I really liked this and I’m interested to try other books by this author. 4.5 stars

I think this book is the second in a series but I hadn’t read the first and it was fine. Re: cheating—Amil cannot find his wife to serve the divorce when he and Jana get together. He just neglects to tell her that.

Heat level: 2🌶️ like 1 and a half sex scenes.

I received this ARC from netgalley and this is my honest review. JANA GOES WILD comes out May 2, 2023.

My dream vacation is to go on an African safari, so when I saw the cover to this book I was drawn to it. When I read the blurb about them going on safari through some national parks I was hooked. I’ve only traveled to US National Parks, but ugh I want to go to all of them around the world and now especially in Tanzania. I started following each hotel/park Farah mentioned in the book on Instagram!

Jana and Anil are an intense second chance romance. They had a whirlwind 2 week romance that ended in two broken hearts due to Anil’s lies and with Jana getting pregnant. They have co-parented for 5 years and their daughter Imani is both of their pride and joy. However, Jana and Anil barely talk. They do everything for Imani and nothing for themselves or each other. Until they both wind up at a friends wedding in Tanzania for two weeks and the force proximity is forcing their relationship to change.

They were a great couple and given everything they went through the first go around it was great to seem them work past that and find love again.
Thank you @netgalley and @farahheronauthor for the ARC!
Release Date: May 2, 2023
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Man I loved this book! I loved the characters, I loved the setting I loved the story. This book gave me Crazy Rich Asians vibes with the excessive ness and the large group/family but with a different setting and story. If you liked CRA I think this is the next book for you!

Rounded up from 3.5. This was another well-written book by Farah Heron. I especially enjoyed the setting and her love letter to Tanzania, as she calls it. It was fun to revisit these characters, and she did a good job of humanizing Jana and Anil and making them likeable.

Unfortunately, the point the book makes of constantly discussing how Jana needs to be more vibrant does, in fact, highlight the fact that the book itself is not as vibrant as Kamila Knows Best. In book one, the drama was tempered by a lot of joy and silliness brought by Kamila. It’s absolutely OK that Jana is serious and introverted, but for me, it meant the story left a little to be desired as far as the tone of it went. It’s a very good book, but not necessarily as enjoyable for me as its predecessor, especially with the last bump in the road drama thrown in at the end.

Pub date: 5/2/23
Genre: rom com (second chance romance, co-parenting)
Quick summary: Jana and Anil are co-parenting amicably after an accidental pregnancy - will a destination wedding in the Serengeti bring them back together or drive them apart forever?

This is my first book by Farah Heron, and I enjoyed it a lot! The setting was so fun, and I loved seeing Jana and Anil's dynamic. The safari provided plenty of entertainment and awkward moments as Jana and Anil were thrown together, and their friend group and Jana's family members also livened up the story. There's also a work subplot - Jana's potential future boss is on the trip too, and the last thing she wants is for him to find out about her and Anil's backstory. I was glad to see Jana learn to stand up for herself and what she wanted.

The only downside of this one - there was a bit too much third act breakup/miscommunication for me. But oh well, such is the romance reader's life. If you enjoy second chance romance, this is a fun one to pick up!

Thank you to Forever Publishing for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First of all, I would like to say, this is the nicest cover I have seen in a while. How adorable! Farah Heron is a master of Slow Burn adult romance. She had me rooting for our main couple, even when I didn’t particularly like Anil. I felt so deeply for Jana, dealing with being a single mother and the cultural ramifications of that. In her heart she loves Anil but how can you love somebody when you don’t trust them? What’s so important and lovely about this book is that family relationships and friendships are what give us the confidence to grow and become better. I would also like to note that this book really taught me something about a culture I knew so little about (South Asian Ismaili Muslim community) and this setting in Tanzania was gorgeous!

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so good. I applaud how real it was, how messy and how well the characters are written. They are really complex, they are hurting and they are so conflicted by their feelings. It read like a real life relationship with all of the mess that sometimes comes with it. It got frustrating seeing the lack of communication but to be honest, that made it feel real.
The crazy circumstances that kept them apart were so sad, but I understood Jana and her hesitation to trust again. I also deeply felt her frustration as a woman being blamed for the actions of others.
I really enjoyed this read and I was ecstatic to see them work things out after so long!

A pleasant second chance romance. I liked both the characters and the setting showcased here; this was a very unique wedding experience to read about and I really enjoyed the ethnic infusion, with the recipes at the end providing the perfect book capper. It was easy to feel sympathetic toward Jana given everything that had happened regarding her relationship with Anil and what a difficult position she was put in by multiple others on this excursion. After a while, several of the story beats started to feel a little repetitive and I yearned for Jana and Anil to have an honest, open conversation. However, I ended up becoming invested in this couple and enjoyed reading the resolution to their story, complete with a grand gesture involving ABBA. I'd love to pick up Heron's previous book to learn more about Kamila and Rohan, who were both a lot of fun here.

I loved this book!! It was a great addition to the series and I am recommending that everyone read this book!!. I cannot wait to read another fabulous book by Farah Heron. Loved this book so much!!

When does a scandalous man deserve a second chance?

After uptight non-profit manager Jana unwittingly becomes the other woman in her coworker’s affair, her reputation is in tatters. Things take a turn for the worse when she finds out she’s pregnant with his baby.

Five years later, she’s a single parent clawing her way back up the nonprofit ladder, but emotionally, she hasn’t emotionally moved on from the consequences of their brief affair. She pledges to be no one’s fool ever again.

When Jana and Anil both find themselves in the bridal party of a mutual friend’s safari destination wedding, the one-time lovers and current coparents are forced to re-examine their feelings. Set over the course of two weeks in Tanzania, I appreciated the spark between Jana and Anil was a slow burning ember rather than an inferno suddenly roaring back to life with their forced proximity. He works to earn her trust again.

Amusing but not ‘laugh out loud’ funny, it was charming. Especially Anil’s interactions with their 4 year old daughter. While I didn’t read the first book in this series (Kamila Knows Best), this book works as a stand-alone with a lovable South Asian cast.

There are two very mild love scenes, but a decent amount of chemistry between the characters as their safari vacation progresses and Jana decides to “go wild” to prove she can be a vibrant woman, and see herself as more than a reserved mother.

One criticism: I don’t demand a ton of believability in a romantic comedy, but I didn’t buy group of 30 professional, highly successful adults all taking a fortnight out of their busy schedules to travel to another continent for a wedding. Even accounting for their affluence, it stretched the suspension of disbelief, so that cost it a star for me.

3.5 / 5 stars

Wow this one was complicated! I think it’s one of the messiest plots I’ve ever read, but I enjoyed it so much. It has been my first book by Farah Heron but I don’t think it’ll be the last because I’ve loved her writing and how addictive it is.

This is a second chance romance with a twist since they had a kid after a fling, so even though they haven’t seen each other much, they have always been communicating because of their daughter. Jana and Amil had big bad blood between them after the reasons why their fling ended (which I’m not gonna say, obviously). When I say their relationship is complicated, it’s not an understatement. I could sympathize with Jana, but I also could do it with Amil. This is not an easy situation to pick a side. What I loved the most about this romance is that it takes them a lot of time and trial and error conversations to get to the solution. I loved that they didn’t fall into bed without at least acknowledging their problems first. The bad blood was too thick to get cleaned up soon, but they manage, and it felt very realistic.

Imani was the absolute sweetest kid. She was so funny and adorable. I love that Jana and Amil always put her first and ever since the moment she was born, they never let her suffer the consequences of their problems. Both Jana and Amil were the most amazing parents separately, so together they are a perfect team.

I picked up this book because the cover was irresistible, but the inside was just as good!

Rating: 4/5
Steam level: Open door, 1-2 scenes, low level of detail

ARC provided by Forever and NetGalley. Opinions are my own!

I've read several of Farah Heron's books and I always end up feeling the same about them -- fine. The books are fine. I have nothing to complain about it, I just don't have anything to rave about.

This is a follow up to Kamila Knows Best which I've read but couldn't remember very well. You don't need to have read it to understand this.

2-2.5 stars. It pains me to write this as I adored Kamila Knows Best, but this was hard for me. It had many of the wonderful hallmarks of a Heron treat, like beautiful descriptions of food and scenery and zany friends and family members whose antics add levity and charm. I had two main issues that contributed to this being a no for me--first, it's very slow. Things picked up somewhat once the wedding events got started, but even then the plot didn't feel like it was moving forward at all. I just didn't feel the momentum which is what I want from a romance. Second, Jana was hard for me to root for. She'd dealt with some tough shit, I'll give her that, but it felt like Eeyore was narrating this story. The focus of so much of this was how tired and stressed she is of the challenges of her life. Overall this was a miss for me but I'll still read whatever Heron puts out next.