I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings. Whew.. this book was a bit spicy. It felt like the author kept forcing the spice and it really didn't just happen. It was a bit slow paced also and did not keep my attention, I had to keep going back to it.

LATE BLOOMER was a sweet, spicy, novel with a very well done audio version.

Opal and Pepper are the cutest couple that I absolutely fell in love with. Opal starts the book as a bit of a doormat (which is generally hard for me to read), but she thankfully gets her backbone together while still retaining a kind generosity and inclination to help others. I love her character finding that line.

And Pepper is all prickly guarded aloofness and I loved her slowly coming to trust Opal and opening herself up to love and care from others. The way these two go to bat for each other is the sweetest!

In the middle the book's pace slowed down and I was struggling a bit to stay engaged, but it picked back up again and had a great ending.

I listened to the audio version of LATE BLOOMER which was narrated perfectly. Both leads had distinct voices and it was easy to tell them apart.

BOOK RATING: ★★★★
AUDIO RATING: ★★★★★

SPICE LEVEL: Rated R / 2-4 descriptive sex scenes, may have harsh language.
CONTENT WARNING: past parent abandonment, past cheating ex, parent steals money
FEELS: 3/5 - You will definitely feel some feels.

God this book was just incredibly impossible to suspend disbelief in. She wins the lottery and then immediately spends it all on a piece of property on FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE, for a business she DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO RUN. And yet again, being an attorney has ruined a book fro me, because none of this is how estate law works. Anyway, I tried to ignore it, but I just couldn’t.

The characters were both really annoying and unlikeable, and their separate neurodivergent characteristics were the entirety of their character. There was no reason for them to like each other other than instant attraction. I listening to the book while shopping and was shocked when they started hooking up - ten min earlier there had been no notice that they were even kind of interested in each other.

So much of this book felt preachy. Like Opal gets worried about not being shaven, and Pepper gives her a long ass monologue about how that has no influence on her attraction to Opal. That’s all fine and dandy, but just let it BE don’t tell me about it for ten minutes. Do we want representation? Yes! Do we need to make it a huge ass thing every time it happens? No! May be a personally issue of mine but whatever.

I’m not a romance reader, and this just felt like it would be a fun, easy read. I got real annoyed real fast.

LATE BLOOMER by Mazey Eddings is sweet, heartfelt, steamy, and funny. As more and more of my friends read and posted about this book the last few months, they all kept noting that it just felt like a “hug” of a book and I couldn’t agree more! I loved Opal and Pepper so much and found myself relating to each of them in a way that had me smiling and rooting for them throughout the whole book! I absolutely loved the plot and tropes and I cannot wait to read more of Mazey’s backlist!

LATE BLOOMER may have a (stunning) floral and spring-vibey cover but this book is so cozy that it’d be the perfect fall/winter read! 🩷

I just finished this adorable opposites-attract romance, and it was such a fun read! 🌸💕 The premise—a lottery win and a flower farm—was super unique, and the slow-burn love story brought all the warm, happy vibes. 🌻✨

While I loved the book overall, I found the dual POV in the audiobook a bit tricky at times. The female narrators’ voices were similar, so if I wasn’t paying close attention to the chapter headings, I’d sometimes lose track of who was speaking.

This is a grumpy sunshine, opposites attract, sapphic romance with neurodivergence rep.
The "surface" conflicts were easily resolved, no real struggle. It was ok, not bad, not good.
I received an advance review copy of this book for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Amazing. Stupendous. Wonderful.. Perfect for lovers of 'Delilah Green Doesn't Care' and I always love a book that has good autism rep in women. It's so rare.

Review withheld until the end of the boycott of St. Martin's Press Imprints ended with Readers for Accountability. The boycott ended 8/27/2024.

This was a lovely, 5-star sapphic romance. I loved the portrayal of ADHD and Autism, Opal and Pepper’s friend group (well mostly Opal’s sisters and Pepper’s friend group). Opal, our artistic, bisexual heroine with ADHD starts the novel surrounded by people who take advantage of her people-pleasing tendencies. She wins the lottery in a scratch-off given to her by one of those toxic “friends” and decides to spend her winnings on a fresh start. Enter the Thistle and Bloom, flower farm in Asheville, NC, where Pepper lived with her “Grandmother.” Her bio-mom, Trish, con-artist and awful mother dropped her there as a teenager. Thankfully she thrived under the care of that family member but is gutted at her passing. After the passing of the owner of the flower farm, Trish swoops in and sells the farm to Opal.

Opal and Pepper’s relationship develops under forced proximity, dealing with abusive/toxic parents and friends, a flower design competition and dealing with all sorts of unpredictable things that can happen on a farm.

I get the criticism of Opal being naive but I think that is highly possible given her just general disaster behavior and being a people-pleaser, having un/late diagnosed neurodivergence. The way that BOTH Pepper and Opal grow up and defend themselves and each other is beautiful.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the arc.

After a long string of abuses due to her winning the lottery, Opal decides she needs a huge change of pace...so she impulsively purchases a farm on Facebook Marketplace. She's flummoxed to find the ornery Pepper living there when she arrives. Opal and Pepper decide they can cohabitate for the time being: Opal can use an outbuilding as her art studio for her sneaker-painting business while Pepper continues to cultivate the land and her beautiful flower farm. Tension rises and it isn't long before their distaste for one another turns into lust. This is a swoony enemy to lovers story that is totally immersive. Absolutely lovable characters with history and hope.

Plot: mid. Logic: mid. Sapphic romance: freaking amazing.

The forced proximity is a little absurd, Opal’s logic for her post-lottery win life could have really been a disaster.

But if you accept the lack of logic, the sapphic romance is cute, and the main characters are fully fleshed out. The minds and misguided intentions make sense to each character. I loved the people pleasing, needs a spine, overthinking Opal. I loved the untrusting, hurt, awkward with neurotypicals Pepper.

And the flower farm setting is cute. At the end of the audiobook (and probably also in print or ebook versions) the author has a guide to symbolic meanings of flowers and how they were used to coincide with character traits, states of mind, etc.

So it’s a good 3/5 stars. Enjoyable, but I don’t think I’d encourage anyone to rush out and buy the book.

I did not post a review on Instagram, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble because of the St. Martin’s boycott. I didn’t realize the book belonged to that publisher until after I posted reviews to GoodReads and Story Graph. I’m not sure if I should delete those or not. It will be different when readers are assured of safety and antiracism.

Late Bloomer is such a fun sapphic rom-com! I loved the author's notes, especially the one about all the flowers in the book and their meanings.

Mazey Eddings tends to be really hit or miss for me in terms of her romance books. I was really hoping to like Late Bloomer because 1, it has a STUNNING cover, but also it was pitched as having amazing sapphic representation as well as characters with Autism and ADHD. All three of which relate to me as a reader. But from the very first chapter, I was not a fan. I found the content incredibly cringy and overdone.

I thought the narration and production to be fine, but nothing to write home about.

Cute queer romance but there was not enough character development for me to get invested in the storyline. Narration was very well done.

Thank you to NetGalley and the pubisher for this ARC in exhcange for an honet review.

Loved this book. 4.5 stars! Our FMCs were chaotic and I loved them.
forced proximity is one of my all time favorite tropes!

The narration was so good, I didn't know it was only one narrator.

Mixed feelings overall with this book, I loved the romance and the characters I was super into that, no real complaints from me on that front.

But I didn't understand the core conflict, like at all. Like a large part of the book is Opal buying this flower farm (and therefore the business along with it) that Pepper lives and works on. And Pepper is worried about the debt the farm is in and the orders it has to perform even after Opal buys it. But didn't opal take on that business debt when she bought the farm? Opal's buying it was shortsighted and under researched- the responsibility is on her not Pepper to fix that.
And naturally Pepper wants her land back to work, but now she isn't responsible for the debt she can apply for a business loan and buy it all back from Opal, who is a pushover and probably would have agreed? i dunno the whole thing didn't make sense to me. I'm absolutely not a finance head at all but it felt like the whole conflict of this book could have been solved in one meeting at a bank.

With all that said, Pepper and Opal are super cute. I want the stories of Opal's sisters now too. Loved the romance, loved all the characters. 3.5/5 rounded up

The audiobook narrator didn't quite work and the MC was unsufferable. Didn't work for me unfortunately.

Opal and Pepper, I will not stop thinking about you two for a long time. I loved the opposites attract aspect of this romcom. The book is cozy and fun but also covers some heavier topics (which Eddings outlined in a content warning at the start of the novel) and that just makes it feel all the more real. There was seamless neurodivergent rep which made me feel seen. This is a perfect sapphic book to read during Pride Month, like I did, or at any time of year! The narration is really well done as a bonus. Thank you to NetGalley for the audio ARC!

Really cute Sapphic romance! Also nice to see the neurodivergent representation. It definitely has its cliche moments, but it's a really breezy, sweet. and hot read! Thank you so much for the advanced audiobook, the narrator was also wonderful!

Late Bloomer
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Author: Macey Eddings

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: Winning the lottery ruined Opal Devlin's life. She may have been able to leave her dead-end job, but now she's getting endlessly bombarded with people knocking at her door for a handout . . . and she can't seem to stop saying yes.

Opal realises she has a chance to follow her own dreams, and decides to spend almost all her new money on a failing flower farm in North Carolina where she can start her painting business. But her plans for isolation soon go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Boden is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states that she's the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and she isn't moving out.

There's not much else they can do except strike up an agreement of co-habitation, but they're soon butting heads at every turn. While they each have a reason to stay, can these two opposites find a way to plant some roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?

My Thoughts: All I saw was Mazey Eddings, and I said YES without any other information. I LOVE her books. Even though I am a straight person, I do enjoy reading queer romance, I think it is a tad more emotional, more combustible, and just more. I have a few queer romance authors I follow and Eddings is definitely one of them. Opal just won the lottery and now all of the sudden, everyone is her friend, and wanting a handout. Opal makes a decision to follow her dreams and buys a flower farm in Ohio, and spends most of her lottery winnings on this farm that she plans to sell her unique paintings out of. Lo and behold, upon arrival at her newly purchased land, Pepper is working in the field and claims she is the rightful owner of this flower farm, that was her grandmothers. They come to an agreement to live within the same place for the summer and re-evaluate at the end of the summer. The butt heads, cannot get along, and each has a reason to stay. Will they make it? Can they find some common ground? This follows the tropes of queer romance, forced proximity, enemies to lovers, opposites attract, and sunshine/grumpy.

This was a fun sapphic queer romance. The story is a dual narration between Opal and Pepper, from their respective perspectives. The combustible tension between Opal and Pepper is evident at the very first meeting. The angst among them is palpable. The cottage core vibes really fit this story perfectly. Opal and Pepper were chaotic, while being whimsical. Both Pepper and Opal were neurodivergent, yet the author approaches their character paths in different ways, which I loved. Both Opal and Pepper’s character had tremendous growth separately and together, it was so beautiful to watch. The author also does a tremendous job at balancing tender sweet moments with funny lighthearted moments.

Opal is a sweet, fun, lovable character that exudes sunshine. Pepper is loyal to a fault, cautious of others, and is hard to get to know, however, when she lets you in, you are in for life. The chemistry, even the angst chemistry, was off the charts for these two. The characters were created with depth, witty banter, chemistry, intrigue, and were creatively weaved throughout the story. The supporting characters of Opal’s sisters, and Pepper’s best friend really did elevate the story and hopefully an opening for another book. The author’s writing style was complex, multifaceted, steamy/spicy, swoony, engaging, and just brilliant. I loved the pop culture references throughout the story. The author does a great job with the autism and neurodiversity representation. There is also the heavy topics of grief and healing that the author approaches with grace.

I had the pleasure of having both the digital and audio ARCs for this novel. The narrator, Ellie Gossage, does an amazing job at voice variation, breathing life into the character distinctions. The pitch and flow were on point. Her voice was smooth, easy to listen to, and I was able to listen at 2x speed and had no issues keeping up. I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend to anyone who loves Anita Kelly, TJ Alexander, or Alison Cochrun.