"My Kind of Trouble" is a romance written by L. A. Schwartz, here at her debut.

I loved this book! Fast, light and fun, it entertained me so much. The effervescent writing and teasing pace kept me glued to the pages, pushing me to finish it in a few hours. I'm not particularly fond of romance books written in the third person, and "My Kind of Trouble" is written in third person, but I admit that didn't bother me.

The small town of Brookville won me over with its delightful settings and extremely picturesque atmosphere! The accurate and vivid descriptions allowed me to easily imagine the various places and I liked them a lot!

Harmony and Preston, protagonists with their respective third person povs, won me over! Harmony is a skilled con artist, who acts not out of malice but motivated by a kind of sense of justice. Having arrived in Brookville to take revenge on its wealthy mayor, responsible for ruining her father's life, she is ready to create a spectacular new con. Harmony is an ironic, determined, and cunning woman who beneath her deceptions and manipulations hides a good heart and deep scars. I liked her, amused me and found her well delineated! Also I loved her being plus size! My heart, however, goes to Preston, an autistic librarian and piano teacher, totally dedicated to the care of his younger sister and committed to confronting those who want to shut down his library programs and get him fired. I loved Preston and found the representation of autism really well managed! Preston's little sister warmed my heart, but in general I enjoyed many of the secondary characters. The development of the relationship between Harmony and Preston made me laugh, smile and swoon and I can't express anything but kudos!

4.5 stars!

I LOVED "My Kind of Trouble" by L. A. Schwartz! I found it to be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale reading week. The best part about this book is the chemistry between the main characters, Harmony, a conwoman seeking revenge on the man who wronged her father, and Preston, an autistic librarian living in a small town. They have terrific, palpable chemistry with one another. Despite getting together under not-so-honest circumstances, Harmony and Presron quickly find themselves falling for one another, and the motivations that drove them may be altered with their growing emotions. The representations in this book are off the charts good. Harmony is a loud, confident, interesting fat woman portrayed in an unapolgetic, capable, fierce way. I *loved* her character. Even when she does bad things, she's easy to root for because she's only really after one individual person who wronged her. You never really have a dooubt in your mind that she'll do the right thing. And Preston. Good ol', lovable, wonderful Preston. He's sensitive but straightforward, nerdy but serious. I love him, your honor. Schwartz's depection of autism is realistic and is handled with care and tact. I liked all of the side characters as well. On top of it, this book is *funny.* I laughed so hard while reading this! I also admire and respect the underlying plot about reading and book bans. I love how many of the characters team up to fight the evils of book banning and reading censorship. Please give this book a chance. It's romantic, swoon-worthy, compelling, engaging, and feels lived-in.

Thank you to NetGalley, L.A. Schwartz, and Alcove Press for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

So, I was really hyped about this book at first. I mean, the idea and cover were super cute! But honestly, I think my expectations got the best of me. The characters and romance just didn't do it for me. Harmony and Preston were like, totally adorable, but they weren't memorable (to me). And Harmony's whole criminal thing was stressing me out the entire time because I was just waiting for everything to blow up in her face. I don't know, maybe I wasn't in the right mood or something. This book just wasn't my jam, I guess.

This book wasn't for me. The cover was cute and the blurb sounded fun and interesting but I tried multiple times and just couldn't get into it unfortunately.

This was a fun read filled to the brim with moments that made me swoon from the epic representation. I look forward to checking out other books by the author if they have the same caliber of writing!!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, & publisher for allowing me early access to read this book!

As an autistic human myself, I was expecting a lot from this book. I did love Preston, he is the sweetest. All characters are likable. But I felt it too bland at times. It does have a lot of rep and that's awesome, we get plus size rep, autism, lgbtqa+... it also has steam, not much, but it does. The plot was good but it dragged at points.
I can only explain how I felt by saying that this book is good but, personally, not enough to make me want to read nonstop or to be excited for the characters or to know more. It was just good, a plain just good.

Thank you Alcove Press and author for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion ✨️
Publication Day Oct 08 2024

Harmony Hale comes to River City—oops, Brookville—for revenge in this modern, gender-swapped reimagining of one of my favorite musicals, The Music Man. She’s planning her most ambitious con yet—a music festival—and she definitely knows the territory.

But what she hasn’t planned on is the warm welcome she gets from many of the townspeople. And then there’s the town librarian. It’s not long before Harmony knows she’s got Trouble, with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Preston Jones.

You don’t have to be familiar with The Music Man to enjoy this fun and thoughtful romance, but if you are, you’ll spot the many Easter eggs and homages to the original musical.

Steaminess level: Mrs. Shinn would never let Zaneeta borrow this book from the library. Ye gods!

a contemporary romance with plus size conwoman and an autistic librarian. (18+ scenes)

romances like that are to die for! harmony hale, our mc, might be controversial but she does what she feels she has to. our love interest, preston jones, is an incredible older brother who is nerdy, loves working as a librarian, and is a strong believer in human rights.

once our main characters start having encounters the plot starts to get good. in the end, it was so entertaining I couldn't put the book down. I'd consider this relationship as a healthy one although she is conning the city, but believe me I haven't read a romance story as good as this one in a while.

this book is perfect for everyone who loves books with plus-size characters, powerful women, nerdy men, and cons. get this book once it comes out and read it PLEASE!

This book is like a weird cross between Robin Hood and the Fyre Festival. I liked the characters well enough but I always get nervous with books where one MC is keeping a huge secret from the other MC because that can only turn out badly. Harmony is a conwoman but she's not a regular conwoman, she only cons those who deserve it. This time her target is rather personal, a wealthy tech guy who made his wealth off of a stolen idea from Harmony's late father. The con she's running is a bit weird and frankly I'm a little shocked she's made it this far without getting caught. I really liked the hero and while I'm not an expert in autism rep, I think it was handled pretty well. I liked the romance too but I just didn't love the side plot and the whole running a con thing and I wish the people she was trying to get revenge on did get what's coming to them because they were really terrible people.

Totally loved this.
My friends told em to read it and she was not wrong

Loved the story
The characters such a fast and easy read

I absolutely loved this book! Representing not only a main character that had extra weight as well as the other being autistic was not only an unexpected but heart touching duo.
Harmony being a con woman but only going after targets who "deserve it" falling for autistic Preston, who is raising his little sister, was really tugging on my heart.
It took me about 1/4 of the way to really get into the story.. it was well written. I just wasn't sure I was truly interested in reading this. 1/2 way through the book, though I was hooked and needed to read the rest. This romantic story is unlike anything I've ever read, and I loved it. The ending was perfection and made me so happy. The spicy scenes.. um.. WOW 🌶

My kind of trouble is a romcom style novel focusing on curvaceous conwoman Harmony and Autistic librarian Preston. Harmony has arrived in the small town of Brookville looking to exact revenge on the towns mayor for his part in her father’s downfall when Harmony was just a teen. Librarian Preston is raising his younger sister solo and dealing with complaints from the mayors wife about his library programs and diverse books. The story’s main focus is the relationship between Harmony and Preston but the author also shows how diverse library programs benefit those in the community, and the many facets of someone who is autistic like Preston and his sister Lacey.
This is a fun, enjoyable read with a little spice and alot of heart.

unfortunately this was a dnf for me. i made it a couple chapters in but couldn't get into it. something about the characters i couldn't relate too. the FMC being a grifter was a little off putting for me personally.

In "My Kind of Trouble," conwoman Harmony Hale goes to a small California town to track down the businessman/mayor who ripped off her father years earlier. She plans to rally the townspeople into planning a music festival with promises of community-building and money raking, to then back out later and force the mayor to give up his money to save face. Can she get the locals on her side, including the local autistic librarian to loan his land for the fake festival? Will she get her revenge in the end?

I DNF'd this book at the 50% mark. I would've done it sooner, but I wanted to have a little more to base my review off. The FMC, Harmony, is godawful from the start. She's the main character in the story, but she's an antihero-villain, who considers herself a Robin Hood of sorts. She reminds me of Billy McFarland of Fyre Festival fame (The Party that Never Happened), out to rip people off. The author paints Harmony as having good intentions of only taking money away from other con artists, however, she's using two autistic people to get ahead, as well as countless townspeople. Even if these people get paid back in the end, they will have learned they can't trust anyone and feel used/abused/ripped off. If this had been the only time Harmony had ever tried a con, I might've been able to overlook it, but she makes a life doing this and I just couldn't get on board with her as the main character. I couldn't stand to read more to watch her eventual redemption arc. It's a NO for me.

*** I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. ***

I had a great time reading this title. I loved the body positivity without it being the main plot, just part of her character. As a librarian, I also want the space I'm in to be a safe space for all and have discussed challenged titles in length. I found this to be an easy read and really enjoyed it. Wish the resolution was a bit different but no surprise.

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.

I love how so many authors are making a point for their books to inclusive and showcase characters of all different kinds. In this book, there is plus-size rep, autism rep, LGBTQIA+ rep, and more. Outside of the love story (this is a romance story after all), the author speaks to the importance of libraries existing for EVERYONE and serving all races, genders, abilities, etc. This message seemed especially fitting as it's Banned Books Week.

I quite enjoyed this story. The love story was *chef's kiss*, the small town atmosphere was immaculate, and I loved the underlying con of the whole thing. Preston & Harmony were a great balance for each other. They see each other for exactly who they are and don't try to mask themselves in order to fit in better. Plus their chemistry was combustive.

This was a fun, quick read. The pacing was great, and I loved how the author wrote Harmony ingratiating herself into the small town. I would read more by this author.

This book was just so much fun. I also found the autism representation to be phenomenal. I am an autistic parent with an autistic child and Preston’s struggle with the school system and avoiding ABA was so incredibly relatable. This romance felt so fresh and I would highly recommend it!

This book is perfection. An absolute delight and one of my new favorites moving forward. It's been a while since I've seen a character that is a hopeless romantic because honestly, we always see the same type Of characters that are barely different & Preston's Chapters were my favorite ones. All in all, so glad I pre-ordered my copy!!

This was such a fun book. Musical theater fans will love this twisty take on The Music Man. It’s light, sweet, spicy, and neurodivergent - what’s not to love?