Member Reviews

I am incredibly grateful to the publishers for bringing this delightful novel into my life. It was a sweet and tender read that took me on a journey of discovering new feelings and emotions.

The characters, coming from different walks of life, made their journey to finding love truly special. The way the story unfolded, exploring the depths of their emotions and the beauty of their connection, was truly heartwarming.

I appreciated how the author intricately portrayed the discovery of feelings and the evolution of emotions. The characters' unique backgrounds added depth to the story, making their love story all the more compelling.

In a world where different lives often pull people apart, this book beautifully illustrated how love can bridge the gaps and bring two souls together. I was captivated by the genuine and authentic portrayal of their relationship.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a beautifully crafted love story. It left me with a warm heart and a newfound appreciation for the power of love and connection.

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I'm all for cheesy Hallmark-style romances, but I'm afraid this one was just too much for me.

The writing was distractingly fan fictiony... think along the lines of what you wrote in high school, with Mary Sue and perfect 1-dimensional main characters, extremely unrealistic dialogue (right at the beginning the sister delivers some "as you know, Bill" style blatantly expositional dialogue that no real human would ever say), and just plain old wish fulfillment without nuance. It's overwritten and packed with cliche after cliche (yes, I understand what tropes are, but in this case the prose itself is distractingly cliched). Everyone is constantly chuckling, heaving out sighs, being smacked in the face by emotion, talking out loud to themselves, gasping... it's a lot.

It's so melodramatic - I like emotion in my romance (of course), but come on. At one point, when she barely knows Alex, he texts her that his father is deceased and she clutches her chest (yes, that's how it's written) and tears up. He's a virtual stranger at that point and all he says is that his dad died, he doesn't tell a sad story or anything.

Heather is also conventionally attractive (no, stunning) and yet she's SO insecure when he asks her out, repeatedly saying there's no way he's interested in her because she's a no one and goes compliment fishing to her sister and mom. That would be annoying under any circumstances, but especially here where before that she's presented as an unflappable, confident, no-nonsense kind of hardworking woman. It feels so out of character.

Separately, everyone Hannah is close to is conventionally attractive, including friends. What's in the NC water? Or is this Disney rules: if you're a good person, you're automatically size 0 and hot?

The way Alex and Heather fall in love feels too instalove for me and I just don't buy it. She claims she likes him for their witty banter and humor, but... humor where? Banter where? Wit where? On the page or it didn't happen! The on-page text chats read like teen magazine interviews, so...

Alex, on the other hand, seems to be in love with her because she likes books... he literally tells his friend she likes talking about books and the friend says "sounds like your type." She can't be the first pretty girl he's met who likes books. If the story wants to make this a 'provincial town in France' kind of romance, even the Beast had more specific motivation for liking Belle than her literacy.

Okay, moving on - these are some HORNY people and yet they've never heard of sex (despite being in their mid-20s)?? I like clean romances sometimes because sex scenes don't do much for me and I feel like romance novels sometimes emphasize lust at the expense of love. But this novel does the exact same, only substituting 'lips' for 'dick' (ex: "I can't wait to taste your lips," etc.). They're CONSTANTLY talking about kissing once they kiss, it's the only thing they think about. And yet they never consider sex, not even just as a temptation that they're deciding to resist for ~~reasons~~. 

I won't call this book bad writing, because some people enjoy reading fan fiction, I was just surprised to see this sort of writing in a published novel. It's not like I have impossible standards for prose, I was totally fine with the prose in Twilight and 50 Shades, given what they are! For me, prose only needs to be strong enough to not distract from the story. Unfortunately this did not meet that bar.

Thanks, NetGalley and Thomas Nelson, for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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