Emmalynn Gallagher threw caution to the wind once—and found herself in the middle of a tornado. Needless to say, she won’t be doing that again. Now she fills her life with plans and to-do lists. Having moved home for a fresh start, Emma’s facing the ultimate re-do list when she abruptly comes face to face with Aubrey Glass, the source of Emma’s teenage yearning. Aubrey wouldn’t recognize yearning if it tornadoed into her face, but she does recognize Emma…even if she wishes she didn’t. Socializing, especially with her past, is Aubrey’s least favorite activity. She’s tender in spots no one can see and would prefer to fade into the background.

Amidst the backdrop of towering shelves of books and the persistent aroma of freshly brewed coffee, Emma and Aubrey navigate their post-high school reunion. With plenty of fumbles and missteps, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll manage to merge their paths, nor does it always seem that they want to…until suddenly, it’s the only thing that makes sense to either one of them.

This started off in a confusing way, and it wasn't until I was ~40% into it that I started getting a feel for the story. It picked up a little then, but I felt like there were some holes in the story - I was disappointed we didn't deal more with mental health after it was mentioned. It's such an important topic.

I've read a few Kat Jackson books, and will continue to read them when I see a new one, but this one was just okay for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

Returning to your hometown with a backpack full of the shards of everything you dreamed your life would be. An in depth exploration of learning how to become an adult taking failures in stride.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Emma Gallagher returns to her home town broken. After two failed college attempts and her dream of becoming a professional field hockey player having shattered in high school, Emma feels like a huge failure. She can’t even bring herself to apply for a job at the local bakery. Her hopes of a future as a baker shrouded in dense, dark clouds. Settling for a job at the bookstore cafe a few stores from the bakery, Emma attempts to find her way again. But where the hell should she start looking? The last person she expected to run into is high school golden girl Aubrey Glass. Emma never really knew Audrey way back then, but always knew she was so far out of her league. To see her now, a shell of her former self, is very confusing. And maybe intriguing.

Audrey Glass is tired of trying to live up to everyone’s expectations. Through high school and later in college, she did everything to make others happy. What is she left with in return? A bruised and battered heart, cement walls around herself as high as the biggest castle and no idea how to get herself to believe in a future again. Cornerstone Bookstore is as close as a home she has ever had, so working there is good for now. That new girl Emma though. Doesn’t she know her from somewhere? She must have been looking at her with her eyes closed then, because, wow, is Emma stunning.

You can always count on Kat Jackson to trick you into entering the deepest corners of her characters’ psyche. It’s always slightly uncomfortable but at the same time so very alluring. Most of us have been there. Trying to figure out how to unburden yourself from past mistakes and learning how to function successfully and maybe even be happy while doing it. Emma and Aubrey are right in the thick of it. So, so scary.

This is not a happy go lucky story, despite the happy ending. It dives deep into the hard parts of being human. The story is told from both Emma’s and Aubrey’s POV. It gives you a chance to really get to know them and see where their insecurities come from. I loved that Aubrey gave Emma all the space she needs to wrap her head around the obvious and very strong attraction between them. Emma, on the other hand, sees through every wall Aubrey puts up and challenges them in a kind but honest way.

The cast of side characters is made up of an eclectic bunch of people. From dark and moody barista Genesis, to Aubrey's awful mom, Emma's laid back big brother and a cast of very attractive college professors. They all help Emma and Aubrey figure things out in their own, unique way.

Pages From The Book Of Broken dreams is another great example of Kat Jackson’s writing talent. Not sugary sweet but a little painful and utterly human. A must read for me!

Emma and Audrey who didn’t really know each other from school but suddenly have a pull to each other. They are both also trying to figure out their lives and possibly their love lives. This was funny but cute and romancy.

I was intrigued by the synopsis of the book—I mean, bookstores and coffee—two of my favourite things!

I found myself getting frustrated the more I read and after finishing the book, I felt more like I had read a memoir than a romantic (somewhat) fictional story. I couldn’t really grasp the character personalities. I felt the narration overpowered the story too much; that I was being told about the characters rather than being shown who they were.

It could have been a wonderful experience. I think more dialogue would have enhanced the development of the characters. And with that, the ending 20% of the book was much more enjoyable as the characters conversed more than in the rest of the book—at least it felt that way to me. Dialogue is so important to the development of characters to me. It makes a story come alive in a way that narration just cannot accomplish. Where narration tells me about the characters, dialogue shows me. Just sayin’.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bella Books for providing this book for my review consideration—opinions here are mine and mine alone.

This was my first book by this author and one I enjoyed.

Emmalynn Gallagher is back home after some mishaps at college and etc. She doesn't expect to be working in the university bookstore or living her in her brother's spare room. The last person she expected to see was Aubrey Glass who is a few years older than her and the object of her crush back in high school.

Aubrey Glass is back in her hometown after swearing she wouldn't be back, but life happened and she came home with her tail between her legs. She sees Emma and recognizes her and wishes she'd gotten to know her better in high school.

Aubrey and Emma clash at first then become friends while Emma struggles with her identity and having feelings for a woman while Aubrey is terrified to open up her heart again. There was a lot of back and forth, but both their struggles were written well along with their backstories.

It was enjoyable book that I would recommend. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I want to be annoyed by it. There’s something about setting a book in a bookstore, or about a writer, that feels … lazy? A little cheap? Like, of course I like bookstores, I’m reading an actual book. Shooting water in the proverbial barrel, as it were.

As may be evident from the title Pages from the Book of Broken Dreams, we have both a bookstore and a writer featured prominently. Main character Emma is interested in neither of those things, a non-reader, non-coffee drinker who looks for work in a bookstore cafe. Our object of interest, Aubrey, however, ticks both of our boxes and we’re off to the (wind-assisted) races.

This is not an easy book. There’s no meet-cute where the two immediately fall in love, traumas and hardships aren’t resolved with a kiss and some heavy petting. The novels feels like it deals with real people with real issues, trying to figure things out.

Pages doesn’t take shortcuts. It’s actually much reliant on 90s music for its references than literary (or popular canon) knowledge. It seems to take care to earn every new plot progression, every lingering glance, every stolen kiss. It’s so slow-burning it might as well be called incremental smoldering, but it works. The tension between Aubrey and Emma ratchets up slowly, but there’s enough chemistry and repartee to sustain through.

I know we’re supposed to suspend disbelief for fiction, but I do want to call out why I like to refer to as “fixing yourself on someone else’s dime.” Both of these ladies have issues that they should definitely be seeing counselors or therapists about. While I’m happy they got together and can support each other, it’s not healthy to rely on one other person for everything. (Incidentally, this note directly ties into Aubrey’s backstory, making it all the more perplexing.)

Also, I know this is a college town for a liberal arts school, but is literally everyone in town a lesbian?

(I just re-read that sentence, and I withdraw my objection. Mea culpa.)

Pages from the Book of Broken Dreams is a deeply felt journey through two women’s attempts to heal themselves and find strength in one another. For that, I’d say it’s worth cracking the spine.

This was the slowest of burns if there ever was one! At some point it was just too slow for me but I am glad I managed to finish the story.

Emma and Aubrey both work in Cornerstone, bookstore / coffee cafe. Turns out they are old aqcuintances from high school who sort of knew each other but not really. I found it odd how their past played a role in their journey as there hardly seemed to be any interaction between them and Aubrey at first didn't remember Emma at all.

These two come with bagage and there are like a lot of pages dedicated to the issues they had to deal with but for me it was a lot of details and not a lot of deeper meaning how it changed them. Maybe I lost some attention with all the details.

I enjoyed going on the journey with these MC's but there were so many side characters and hot older women that it kind of took me out of the story. There's no way there are so many hot sapphics running around in a small college town. I do get that if there were, they would probably know each other like they do in the book.

Maybe I was hoping for something else in this story or something more, I'm not sure what, but I have to give 3 stars as it took way too long with way too many details and way too many side characters.

An ARC was provided to me via Netgalley in return of an honest review.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

what Emmalynn Gallagher and Aubrey Glass never realised was that they would end up back in the town where it all started for them... they both needed a break and a do over....

what they never realised was that they would end up back home and working in the same place but such is life

emma who hated coffee but had a knack for being the best barista in town and aubrey loved working in the book store as she loved books and knew where a book was when a customer asked for it...

as they both tried to work out their next steps in life.... life would make things interesting for them along the way

a compelling story and i was routing for emma and aubrey as they travelled through their painful (at times) lives

This is a messy book to review. I have given 4 and 5 stars to all the previous books I’ve read from this author and was happy to return to the college town she has used as a setting previously. But this begins so slowly and throws in a muddle of characters. It took till the 40 percent mark for me to have the people figured out and yet not much had occurred story-wise. I could have summarized the plot to that point in a few sentences.

Emma Gallagher returns to her hometown to start over. She wants a degree and hasn’t fit in or succeeded at her two previous schools. Aubrey Glass was a golden girl in field hockey and played it in college. She returned home broken, with a degree that she isn’t using. Both end up working at the local bookstore. Aubrey loves losing herself in the stacks and Emma is a barista in the coffee shop. Each is trying to figure their way forward.

The barrage of side characters is weird. I liked cameos like professors Lewes and Jory from ‘The Roads Left Behind Us’ (March 2022). But I didn’t need to know that everyone is lusting and crushing on them. Genesis, who runs the coffee shop (I think she is added for humor) is obnoxious. She openly laughs at and mocks insecure Emma. She was more of a toxic character than Aubrey’s much married mother. And what is the point of younger women resembling physically older characters to whom they weren’t related. It is unexplained and odd.

Both girls have some trauma and disappointments. I wanted to see them healing from them and moving forward. Jackson is usually very sensitive in dealing with mental health. Here it is mentioned then ignored. The story picks up more in the second half. Aubrey helps tutor Emma for her English class. And there are a few good conversations and sparks or romance. Overall I didn’t enjoy reading this book. I’m rounding up based on where it ends up and my liking for the author's previous books.

When the main characters are on the younger side it’s always a bit hit and miss for me liking it. For me, this book was a big collection of hit and miss.

To me a book is at its best when you feel like you are experiencing everything alongside the characters, in this book there so much telling going on that I never get to that part of being their with them.
What I found the most annoying is that both these main characters resemble older characters in this book so much and how each of the mains has a crush on the older version of their possible partner. And it kept being stated just how hot these older women are… I mean…

This book for me is a collection of missed opportunities. The main characters, even at their young age, have a bit of a history. We get told both in about 2-3 pages each and that’s it. A depressive episode because of events in one’s past? Let’s just not make this character appear for a bit and no one will ask either, it’s good. It could have been so much better, these are just some examples that don’t quite hit the mark for me, there are many more.

This book was more miss than hit for me and I can’t give it more than 2 stars.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. Thoughts below are my honest review.

At this point, I think I've read (and deeply enjoyed) most of Kat Jackson's books, aside from the odd one that did not appeal to me. She does a fantastic job with older characters and I've enjoyed all her romances about them but sadly this one is one of the outliers than I did not enjoy much.

One of the things I did not enjoy is the sheer number of characters from said other books that I enjoyed that turn up and actually have minor subplots in this book. It all begins to feel a bit like jumping into a late stage MCU movie where I saw the first few years ago and so am not quite sure on the specifics of those characters. A cameo in such cases is great and will either be enjoyed by people who have read previous books or it will just go over their heads if they haven't. In this case, there is far too much involvement and discussions with characters we have met in other books and it doesn't really need to be there. Even more so because it gets old after a while: our young main characters' jaws dropping at how gorgeous every single other older gay woman in the cast is, even the ones who have partners. What I would give for some variety: perhaps a plain, everyday person who is not intensely beautiful or even someone with a different body shape or ethnicity for variety.

Additionally, can I just say that this whole university town needs to do a 23andMe check because it is incredibly weird to have not one but two sets of women who look similar enough to be mothers and daughters but are in fact completely unrelated. I understand that the purpose of this is that if an MC likes this older, unavailable woman, surely this younger version of the same looks will appeal to her. It just comes across to me as weird and honestly a bit shallow, but that may just be my reaction to this odd little connection that is explicitly made in the book for each of the two MCs and two older women in the supporting cast.

The other large gripe I had was that I couldn't quite get a good grip on the main characters because there is a great deal of telling instead of showing. A major depressive episode? We'll just join their point of view again when they're pulled out of it so that we don't really get to see or understand what she's like during that time and understand her trauma response. Main character has a long-standing and unrequited crush on her boss and landlady who looks very similar to their newest employee? Let's skip over dealing with any of that completely. Have a traumatic response to the supposed mean girl who caused the injury that ended your dream sports career? We'll just gloss over that completely and have a throwaway line about how that's fine later. There are many examples, big and small, of things happening off screen and we either never mention them again or they're just talked about after the fact.

Honestly, though, the biggest oddity for me was the lack of consent around that first kiss with the MCs. Deeply confusing to just behave in this predatory fashion with someone who, as far as everyone knows at this point, is straight. Even more confusing when there is a big show made late of the recipient being ready to start a relationship or decide on her sexuality and share that information with a potential partner. The main characters never actually managing one single reasonable conversation just exacerbates this problem for me and the whole time it feels like they are completely unsuited to communicating even basic needs and thoughts to each other, until we suddenly arrive at the ending.

All that said, this was a decent book and certainly not bad, but deeply disappointing to me for the above reasons and because I have read other books by Kat Jackson and given them five stars and added them to my favorites list in the past, some of which involved the side characters in this book.

Kat Jackson writes really well, that’s always a given. Her books usually dig deep and this one is not an exception. It’s not a breezy read but it has it’s sweet moments. Jackson doen’t skimp on character development and this is the case with Aubrey and Emma. A good read.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bella Books and leave this review voluntarily

This YA story of Aubrey and Emma, is sweet and, stormy at times. They have not seen each other since high school and both end up back in their hometown.
Aubrey has wounds from her past that she would rather not think of talk about and Emma has her own feelings about high school and the loss of her dream.
Through witty banter and good character development the author draws us into the story. Their developing friendship and attraction leads to healing and coming out.
A good read.

I received an arc from NetGalley and Bella Books and leave this review voluntarily

Although I have thoroughly enjoyed past Kat Jackson books, I could not make it past 20% in this book. The material was nebulous and confusing. I also didn’t really connect with the characters.

I received an ARC from Bella Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

21-year-old Emma has just returned to her hometown after a disastrous attempt at post-high school life in Philadelphia. After moving in with her older brother, and in desperate need of a job, she takes a position as a barista at Cornerstone Books. Emma hates coffee. It’s obviously the perfect job for her. It is, though, because she finds herself in the midst of a group of people who inadvertently push and pull her along, becoming the impetus for Emma to rediscover herself. 24-year-old Aubrey has also returned to her hometown after her own self-implosion. She hides out in Cornerstone, taking refuge and existing rather than moving towards her once bright goals. As Emma and Aubrey evolve, they also begin slowly drifting towards each other. Romance eventually ensues.
This is my fifth Kat Jackson novel and I feel like her books should have some newly derived genre that’s a mash-up of character growth and development, self-realizations, and a dash of romance. The romance is there and is a major component of the novel. In fact, it’s a driving force for some of the eventual changes undergone by the main characters. If you go into this book, though, expecting some schlock romance, dripping with saccharine sweet plot lines, you’re going to run into some issues, namely that Jackson does not write those types of books. Her books are about people moving through their own processes and growing. In general, it makes the romances she writes a lot more realistic (except for the fact that everyone is gorgeous). It’s also something that I usually crave in a romance. Jackson’s characters work through at least some of their issues before they embark on their romances. I’ve read a lot of reviews where people mention the lack of work characters have done on themselves, so I know I’m not the only one looking for that approach.
Pages from the Book of Broken Dreams is all about character growth. For the first roughly half of the book, the romance is a very light thread that moves between Emma and Aubrey. Both characters are mired in their own worlds of self-immolation after not achieving instant success at their life goals. Jackson does a really good job of portraying that early 20s, I’ve-been-told-for-my-whole-life-that-college=success, panic and depression when life does not match that expectation. When the romance does get going, there are myriad bumps in the road, some born out of the journey that the characters are on and some from the youth of the characters. Aubrey makes some stupid decisions. Emma hasn’t fully computed that having crushes on girls means she might be just a little gay. It keeps them from being fully together until they both get over their collective issues and the final connection is delicious.
If you are someone who has read a few Jackson books, one of the things that you will notice is how different this book is from the others, not in genre (that mixed genre is pretty much a Jackson staple), but in the voice she has given these two characters. Yes, they are both sad and disillusioned with the way their lives are going, but neither has fully lost the belief in possibilities and exuberance of someone in their early 20s. Jackson manages to place the characters in their age range without resorting to stereotypes. They actually frequently defy those. Aubrey was the popular jock who prefers quiet DND level RPG video games and analyzing poetry to partying. Emma is the sensitive baker who hates poetry.
Overall, Pages from the Book of Broken Dreams is a great story about two women in their early 20s who find themselves and eventually each other. You should grab a copy when it comes out.

This was a surprisingly deep romance, the two main characters both had a lot of issues and perceived failures to own up to and overcome. They work hard throughout the book to grow, mature, and figure themselves out, which is very realistic of people their ages. The romance was sweet and I enjoyed the banter between the characters. I did get a bit annoyed by the hot and cold nature of their encounters sometimes but overall this book was very enjoyable and I'd recommend giving it a read, 4.5/5 stars rounded up.

Not a super easy read. I really had to dig in to grasp the whole concept but was worth it in the end..

Thanks for the opportunity to read!

I was really confused by the start of this book and wasn't really sure what was going on, it took till about 33 percent for me to get on top of what was happening. From then though I really began to like the characters and the chemistry and struggle taking place. It grew on me for sure but there was just something about the beginning I couldn't get my head around. I loved the ending with them going back to how they originally met.