Saving KimiBrooke Stanton(Forbidden Romance, #4)Publication date: October 13th 2020Genres: Adult, Historical Romance, Western

In 1906 Oklahoma, nineteen-year-old Kimimela Wallace has always been an outsider in her small town. With a white father and Indian mother, she’s never been fully accepted into either world. Her childhood friend Chayton—Soaring Falcon—sees only the beauty in Kimi, whom he’s pined for his entire life. But an unexpected turn of events pulls Kimi away from Chayton and towards her new boss, widower Alex Randall. Then tragedy strikes, and Kimi must risk everything to save two very different men. But will giving her heart to one of them mean stripping away the one thing she values most—her freedom?

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Reading this book was fine. Just fine. I liked the story enough and kept flipping the pages but always felt like there was something missing that would draw me more to these characters and make me feel more invested in what was happening. It wasn’t until the last 20% of this book where I actually felt like I couldn’t stop reading, which is also why this book ended up being a three star read... ]]> I received this book for free from Disney-Hyperion in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

When Amaya rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning, she fears her rash actions have earned her a longer sentence on the debtor ship where she’s been held captive for years. Instead, the man she saved offers her unimaginable riches and a new identity, setting Amaya on a perilous course through the coastal city-state of Moray, where old-world opulence and desperate gamblers collide.

Amaya wants one thing: revenge against the man who ruined her family and stole the life she once had. But the more entangled she becomes in this game of deception—and as her path intertwines with the son of the man she’s plotting to bring down—the more she uncovers about the truth of her past. And the more she realizes she must trust no one…

Scavenge the Stars wasn’t entirely what I expected it to be. I think it is being marketed as a fantasy which it was decidedly not. I am not sure I can even pinpoint any fantastical elements? But I am making an educated guess here and assuming that the sequel will have a lot more of those elements. 

Reading this book was fine. Just fine. I liked the story enough and kept flipping the pages but always felt like there was something missing that would draw me more to these characters and make me feel more invested in what was happening. It wasn’t until the last 20% of this book where I actually felt like I couldn’t stop reading, which is also why this book ended up being a three star read instead of 2 or 2.5 stars. 

I think one of the biggest reasons I struggled with falling in love with this book was I had trouble immersing myself within the world Sim had constructed. I couldn’t quite visualize it and my brain would keep trying to fill those gaps with images that did not match the story. There wasn’t much work done not just to visually build the world, but also to give it a background. Like there is history of war and territorial disputes mentioned and I wished we’d dwelled a bit more on that.

There also wasn’t a lot happening in the book. It’s a slow book that takes its time peeling back the layers of the mystery, secrets, lies, etc. That isn’t to say that the book was boring? Just slow. There is a lot happening aside from plot stuff – character development, etc. 

Except that I also felt like Amaya was not the best at her disguise as the countess. She kept making choices that put her disguise at risk!!! That said, I did actually like her as a character. I enjoyed how driven she is; even if that drive occasionally led her to make frustrating choices. She was also compassionate and smart, and just generally fun to follow.

Cayo, for all his past and present vices was an innocent, sheltered baby who truly learns SO much over the course of the book. Watching him deal with all the obstacles that came his way, and come out a better, more rounded person was gratifying. 

The two together made a good team and while I wasn’t 100% aboard this romantic ship, I did love their easy friendship and banter. 

More than the main characters though, its the wide array of well-rounded secondary characters that I loved. There are so MANY, with so many different alliances, and they are all so very well written. 

It’s really how everything comes together at the end though that makes Scavenge the Stars a book worth reading. Like I said earlier, the last 20% of this book is truly something. I love a good mystery and I especially love a good twist. Suffice to say, THERE ARE SOME GOOD TWISTS happening and the consequences of those twists…well… 

Even though Scavenge the Stars ended up not being what I expected, I finished the book quite satisfied and very excited to see what awaits us in the sequel. Hopefully there won’t be too much waiting to be done.

3 Hot Espressos

Rhiannon Hunter is at the top of her game. She revolutionized the dating world... ]]> I received this book for free from Avon in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Alisha Rai returns with the first book in her sizzling new Modern Love series, in which two rival dating app creators find themselves at odds in the boardroom but in sync in the bedroom.

Rhiannon Hunter may have revolutionized romance in the digital world, but in real life she only swipes right on her career—and the occasional hookup. The cynical dating app creator controls her love life with a few key rules:

- Nude pics are by invitation only

- If someone stands you up, block them with extreme prejudice

- Protect your heart

Only there aren't any rules to govern her attraction to her newest match, former pro-football player Samson Lima. The sexy and seemingly sweet hunk woos her one magical night... and disappears.

Rhi thought she'd buried her hurt over Samson ghosting her, until he suddenly surfaces months later, still big, still beautiful—and in league with a business rival. He says he won't fumble their second chance, but she's wary. A temporary physical partnership is one thing, but a merger of hearts? Surely that’s too high a risk…

The Right Swipe was easily one of my most anticipated romances of the year and yet general existential issues meant I didn’t get around to it before it was released or even immediately after. Alisha Rai became an auto-read author for me after I fell head-over-heels for the Forbidden Hearts series. The Right Swipe is definitely a departure from the general vibe of those books and if you come into this expecting angst and drama and lots of emotions, you won’t get it. What this book is is a light-hearted, incredibly thoughtful rom com. It may seem like a 180 from what I am used to from Alisha Rai but it also seems very quintessentially her. 

Rhiannon Hunter is at the top of her game. She revolutionized the dating world and yet still doesn’t feel like she has truly succeeded. She is always looking for new ways to further her success and become more grounded in this field. What she doesn’t expect is to have to face the man that stood her up after they connected, at a professional conference, while he is working for her rival. 

Samson has had a rough year. More like a rough couple of years. After his uncle passes away, he doesn’t really have much direction. When his aunt presents him with the opportunity to be the face of her company and help with a campaign, he is all on board. He doesn’t expect to run into the girl he unintentionally stood up several months ago, and she is the head of his aunt’s rival company.

While the romance in The Right Swipe is a very slow simmer, the MCs become friendly pretty quickly and it’s so great watching them learn to get to know each other better. There is a lot of external conflict in this book but not so much conflict within their relationship, even if it did get off to a shaky start. Even with Rhi’s truckload of trust issues, Samson manages to find his way into her inner circle and figure out how to be a good friend/partner to her.

Rhi may be a little rough around the edges but I genuinely just clicked with her. Sometimes her issues became frustrating but the way Rai unpacked and handled them made me really feel for Rhi. EVEN WHEN SHE WAS HER own worst enemy. 

Samson, and I don’t say this lightly, was perfect. And sometimes perfection might be too much for other readers but he was perfect. He is kind, understanding, thoughtful and aware that even though Rhi was imperfect and it occasionally interfered with their relationship, she couldn’t always help her reactions given her history. This all makes Samson sound very one-dimensional but Rai still managed to make him a nuanced character. Rhi didn’t completely overshadow him in the character development department.

The Right Swipe, while marketed as a romance, is not necessarily as romance driven as I expected but the character development *chef’s kiss* made it absolutely worth the read for me. I cannot wait to read Katrina’s story and anything else Rai will write.

4 Hot Espressos

The Bromance Book Club Lyssa Kay Adams

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The first rule of this book club: You don’t talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. 

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency... ]]>

The Bromance Book Club
Lyssa Kay Adams

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The first rule of this book club:
You don’t talk about book club.

Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. 

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.

Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

I think any romance reader, upon reading the synopsis for this book, will immediately be sold. Men figuring out how to be better partners by reading romance books?? WHO DOESN’T WANT TO READ that? Safe to say, I dove into this book with high expectations but I was still surprised by how much I ended up completely loving it.

Lyssa Kay Adams paints a picture of a marriage on the brink of falling apart. It didn’t get there because of just one instance of, easily resolvable, miscommunication. Adams puts in a lot of effort to showcase a realistically flawed relationship that needs a lot of work to be fixed and where the fixing won’t be super easy. There is a lot of love between Gavin and Thea but even love means nothing if there is no effort put into maintaining a relationship. I genuinely loved watching these two fall in love again and come out of this better people than they were before. I loved more that their relationship was not black and white and had actual depth to it.

I cannot wait to read some of the secondary characters’ stories and also just to read more of Adams work down the road!

Get a Life, Chloe Brown
Talia Hilbert

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Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion. The next items?

Enjoy a drunken night out.
Ride a motorcycle.
Go camping.
Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
And… do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…

Talia Hilbert is one of those authors I feel like every romance reader loves but somehow I still hadn’t read any of her books. Get a Life, Chloe Brown showed me that I am a giant dumbass for not reading Hilbert earlier. Reading this book was like biting into a still-warm, fudgy, gooey brownie. It is incredibly soft and oh-so sweet. 

Both Reed and Chloe have a truck load of baggage. They trust very few people and are a bit prickly on the outside. But, even with all that, it was amazing how easy their relationship felt? I love the patterns they fell into as they got to know each other and I loved seeing them both push each other to be their best selves. The way race, class and chronic illness is handled in this book is also top notch.

Basically, if you love happiness, and want to read about two people who get off on the wrong foot but slowly come to mean everything to each other, YOU NEED to read Get a Life, Chloe Brown. 

Not the Girl You Marry
Andie J. Christopher

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How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days gets a millennial makeover in this romantic comedy by USA Today bestselling author Andie J. Christopher.

Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy, internet media company instead of covering hard-hitting politics. Fed up with his fluffy articles and the app-based dating scene as well, he strikes a deal with his boss to write a final piece de resistance: How to Lose a Girl. Easier said than done when the girl he meets is Hannah Mayfield, and he’s not sure he wants her to dump him.

Hannah is an extremely successful event planner who’s focused on climbing the career ladder. Her firm is one of the most prestigious in the city, and she’s determined to secure her next promotion. But Hannah has a bit of an image problem. She needs to show her boss that she has range, including planning dreaded, romantic weddings. Enter Jack. He’s the perfect man to date for a couple weeks to prove to her boss that she’s not scared of feelings.

Before Jack and Hannah know it, their fake relationship starts to feel all too real—and neither of them can stand to lose each other.

Honestly, as much as I wanted to love this book, and as much as I didn’t actively dislike it, I cannot say that it blew my mind? It’s just.. okay… there is nothing spectacular about the writing or the characters or the romance itself. I would not even know that this book was a genderswapped How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days if it wasn’t marketed as such and I actually forgot about that for most of the time I was reading this book. 

Jack Nolan is such a … nice guy… to the point where it feels almost forced and like he has no other personality besides this? Hannah has a lot of self-esteem issues and constantly feels like she isn’t enough. I am pretty sure she also has internalized racism she hasn’t dealt with yet based on how her character was written but this was never addressed. Which is fine! I just felt like a lot of her self-esteem stuff was never actually addressed because it was bigger than just guys not seeing her as marriage material. 

Their romance also felt like it was too fast and given that I wasn’t really on board with the characters themselves, I wasn’t totally invested in their romance either. 

I think that, if you need a light-hearted rom-com, this book is certainly worth reading and I am sure there will be people who love it more than I could. 

I thought I would spend most of the book missing Nevada and Rogan, and while I certainly missed them, Catalina brought something new to the table and I really enjoyed watching her journey unfold. 

Three years have passed since Wildfire and Catalina is now head of house. The three protected years that Baylor house had are... ]]> I received this book for free from Avon in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ilona Andrew comes an enthralling new trilogy set in the Hidden Legacy world, where magic means power, and family bloodlines are the new currency of society…

In a world where magic is the key to power and wealth, Catalina Baylor is a Prime, the highest rank of magic user, and the Head of her House. Catalina has always been afraid to use her unique powers, but when her friend’s mother and sister are murdered, Catalina risks her reputation and safety to unravel the mystery.

But behind the scenes powerful forces are at work, and one of them is Alessandro Sagredo, the Italian Prime who was once Catalina’s teenage crush. Dangerous and unpredictable, Alessandro’s true motives are unclear, but he’s drawn to Catalina like a moth to a flame.

To help her friend, Catalina must test the limits of her extraordinary powers, but doing so may cost her both her House–and her heart.

While I was incredibly taken in by the world that Ilona Andrews had built with the Hidden Legacy series, I was still somewhat skeptical about how I’d take to having a new main character at the helm and especially a younger main character (Catalina is only 21!) As soon as I started reading though, all those doubts I had faded away and I instantly fell in love with these characters and the world again. 

I thought I would spend most of the book missing Nevada and Rogan, and while I certainly missed them, Catalina brought something new to the table and I really enjoyed watching her journey unfold. 

Three years have passed since Wildfire and Catalina is now head of house. The three protected years that Baylor house had are coming to an end and the vultures are about to descend on them. Catalina is now head of the house and is shouldering a burden similar to Nevada’s from earlier books. When a case involving a family friend finds Catalina, she finds it hard to say no even when warned about the dangers of taking it on.

It was so easy to fall into this mystery and watching plot points unfold and I was so happy to be reunited with the Baylor gang. I love how supportive this family is of one another and I genuinely want every single one of them to get their own spinoffs.

Catalina is a formidable new main character and I loved that while both her and Nevada had a lot of similar struggles, Nevada’s laid the foundation for hers and Catalina often had to make choices Nevada would never consider making. Both sisters had a strong head on their shoulders and would do anything for their family but sometimes the way they’d go about doing that differed. Basically, while Nevada and Catalina had a lot of similar characteristics, they didn’t read like carbon copies of each other and I appreciated the effort Ilona Andrews put into distinguishing the two from each other. 

I think one of my biggest qualms with this book was that I didn’t quite buy the romance. Alessandro and Catalina had a 15 minute interaction 3 years ago and that is somehow forms the basis of their entire relationship? Idk, it just… didn’t quite fit for me. I think that as individuals, I appreciated both of them a lot and think they work very well together, I just… wasn’t sold on their infatuation based on a 15 min interaction. I do love them both though and hope to see their romance develop more in the sequels.

That said, I am absolutely sold on this spin off series and cannot wait to see where the sequels will lead us. I also wonder if we will see more of certain grandmother and where that could go.

4 Hot Espressos

Little White Lies took me a while to get invested in but by the time I was 10% into Deadly Little Scandals, my eyes were... ]]> I received this book for free from Freeform in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

"Think of the White Gloves like the Junior League-by way of Skull and Bones?"

Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret. When her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite, and all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group's ranks may have the answers she's looking for. Things are looking up... until Sawyer and the White Gloves make a disturbing discover near the family's summer home--and uncover a twisted secret, decades in the making.

No one is quite who they seem to be.

HOLY FUCK THIS BOOK. Omg. What the fuck are words anyway??? This book does not pull any punches whatsoever. There are many many MANY twists and my head is still spinning from trying to figure out what I just read. Jennifer Lynn Barnes is known for her mysteries and her mysteries are why I keep coming back to her. Deadly Little Scandals, in my opinion, is unlike some of her previous stuff in terms of how major plot points unfold and the punches we are thrown. I cannot quite decide if this is a good thing or a bad but it is definitely a thing.

Little White Lies took me a while to get invested in but by the time I was 10% into Deadly Little Scandals, my eyes were completely glued to the pages. We are thrown right into the action and the pacing is very quick.

As I reflect on the book though, I feel like a lot of the exciting plot stuff came at the cost of relationship arcs? A lot of the characters from the previous book simply had no page time in this one and I genuinely missed the found family vibe of Little White Lies. There wasn’t as much of an opportunity for us to see relationships develop further. I could see that these characters were still interacting because they were attending the same events but there wasn’t much dialogue so it didn’t feel the same. 

Having said that, Lily and Sawyer’s relationship was absolutely on point in this book. They had a lot of ups and downs and I enjoyed this new, complex, exploration of their friendship (and SISTERHOOD.)

So, if it wasn’t already clear, a lot of crazy shit happens in this book. I could not have imagined at all that this is where Jennifer Lynn Barnes was planning on taking us and part of me still isn’t sure if that is a good thing or bad?? Because I felt like a lot of the twists in this book made it so that a lot of minor plot points from the previous book were completely brushed under the rug with no questions whatsoever. 

Yeah, I am not sure whether I loved or just really liked Deadly Little Scandals but one thing is for sure, this book absolutely packs a powerful punch and I was squealing with excitement the entire time I was reading it. Deadly Little Scandals is a sequel worth reading and I am very very sad that this might be the last time I ever get to see these wonderful characters. On the plus side, it means I might get to meet new JLB characters soon!

3.5 Hot Espressos

Olive and Ami may be identical twins but are opposites in every other way. Ami is the lucky twin whereas Olive can never seem to catch a break. When, at Ami’s wedding, everyone but Olive (and the bridegroom’s brother, who she hates) gets extreme food poisoning from eating bad seafood, it... ]]> I received this book for free from Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

I am not entirely sure what I expected diving into The Unhoneymooners but I ended up absolutely loving it. Christina Lauren’s books are extremely hyped but I never felt a particular need to read them until I saw the synopsis for The Unhoneymooners. My general distrust of hype made me worry I’d end up not liking the book, especially because I had just DNF’d another hate-to-love romance. INSTEAD, I was cackling and swooning and generally having a great time. 

Olive and Ami may be identical twins but are opposites in every other way. Ami is the lucky twin whereas Olive can never seem to catch a break. When, at Ami’s wedding, everyone but Olive (and the bridegroom’s brother, who she hates) gets extreme food poisoning from eating bad seafood, it seems like Olive’s luck might be beginning to turn. Ami pushes Olive into going on her honeymoon and soon, Olive finds herself in very close quarters with a man she thought she hated?

So, I am pretty nit-picky about hate-to-love romance because I always find that they aren’t as intensely hate-to-love as I want them to be, and in many of the cases, the hate is founded on very shaky grounds. While the romance here isn’t as intense as I like my hate-to-loves, Olive and Ethan’s misunderstandings and their dislike of one another made sense.

There is definitely a bit of instalove happening but Christina Lauren writes Ethan and Olive’s interactions so well, and paces them out so well that it makes sense that they fall out of dislike and fall into like pretty quickly. For all the misunderstandings that surround their dislike for one another, once they are put together, alone and in the same room, they get pretty good at communicating their emotions to one another. I loved seeing Ethan and Olive have honest conversations about their feelings. 

My biggest issue with this book is that I felt like the conflict resolution wasn’t satisfying at all?? I could sense the conflict coming from miles away but felt like we needed better explanations and apologies for what went down. People mess up sometimes and that’s valid but having it wrapped up, in the book with a, “oh i decide to forgive him” after being mad for a while was jarring to read and felt like bad writing. 

I will say that given the number of coincidences that happen in this book, it might not be the best read for people who have a harder time letting go of disbelief but I found that it made the book feel very rom-com-y and I enjoyed that. It also makes me wonder what else I’ve been missing out on by Christina Lauren because of my fear of hype. 

4 Hot Espressos

After a presentation that goes very wrong, Alaine is suspended. Her parents decide that maybe spending some time in Haiti will help Alaine redirect her energy so she is shipped off to live with her aunt and her mother – who is also licking her wounds. One of the conditions of her suspension involves her doing an internship at her Aunt’s major non-profit organization and so begins several months of Alaine... ]]> I received this book for free from Inkyard Press in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

When a school presentation goes very wrong, Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti and writing the report of a lifetime…

You might ask the obvious question: What do I, a seventeen-year-old Haitian American from Miami with way too little life experience, have to say about anything?

Actually, a lot.

Thanks to “the incident” (don’t ask), I'm spending the next two months doing what my school is calling a "spring volunteer immersion project.” It’s definitely no vacation. I’m toiling away under the ever-watchful eyes of Tati Estelle at her new nonprofit. And my lean-in queen of a mother is even here to make sure I do things right. Or she might just be lying low to dodge the media sharks after a much more public incident of her own…and to hide a rather devastating secret.

All things considered, there are some pretty nice perks…like flirting with Tati’s distractingly cute intern, getting actual face time with my mom and experiencing Haiti for the first time. I’m even exploring my family’s history—which happens to be loaded with betrayals, superstitions and possibly even a family curse.

You know, typical drama. But it's nothing I can't handle. 

Here is the thing, I like this book but it’s simply too long. At 432 pages, it took me days to drudge through. On top of that, I feel like the book is trying so hard to tackle so many things at once that it fails to really examine any of the issues it presents us with in depth. 

After a presentation that goes very wrong, Alaine is suspended. Her parents decide that maybe spending some time in Haiti will help Alaine redirect her energy so she is shipped off to live with her aunt and her mother – who is also licking her wounds. One of the conditions of her suspension involves her doing an internship at her Aunt’s major non-profit organization and so begins several months of Alaine connecting with her roots and learning about the country her parents left behind.  Along with learning about her heritage and country, Alaine gets wrapped up in trying to undo the family curse and trying to accept her mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. 

First things first, this book is pitched as being written in an epistolary format which had me excited, but it honestly didn’t read particularly read that way?? It felt very much like first person narration with bits and pieces of texts and emails thrown in. For those that don’t really like the epistolary format, this might be a good thing and make you more likely to pick this book up.

I love Alaine’s voice though and I love her discovering and unpacking the long term consequences of colonialism and imperialism during her time in Haiti. There are so many important discussions to be had in this book and I highlighted so many passages. I love that Alaine is allowed to have moments of ignorance which are then corrected by loving elders around her. I love that Alaine is allowed to be genuinely upset by her mom’s diagnosis and does some pretty impulsive stuff as a result.

With the way the book was set up thought, I really expected and wanted more one-on-one time between Alaine and her mother and we never got that. Alaine was struggling with the diagnosis but we didn’t get to see the two deal with what it meant or how they’d repair their relationship in the little time they had left. 

Alaine was also working in a very cool organization that I wish we’d gotten to see more of. Her time at the org was mostly shown as her flirting back and forth with the other intern and never really working on anything?? She makes one or two suggestions that are shot down and that was that. Given that interning at this org was one of the conditions of her suspension, it’s weird we didn’t see more of it.

Also, I am not entirely sure I even understood the family curse or the logistics behind breaking it?

On top of ALL of that, the book was pretty lengthy and there wasn’t much of a plot moving it forward. There were these strings of subplots that never really came together in a way that I felt was significant.

So, I think, maybe the issue wasn’t necessarily that the book was trying to do too many things because it still does some good stuff but, I think it needed to combine these issues in a more meaningful way and actually develop them more so that they could come together better. I’d still recommend this book to anyone looking for a cute summer contemporary read because there is a lot of fun to be had here! I just wish a couple things were done differently. Also everyone should read it and support it so we get even more Haitian #ownvoices down the road!

3 Hot Espressos

The romance itself was adorable but I also felt that it was also... ]]> I received this book for free from Berkley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

All's faire in love and war for two sworn enemies who indulge in a harmless flirtation in a laugh-out-loud rom-com from debut author, Jen DeLuca.

Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him?

The faire is Simon's family legacy and from the start he makes clear he doesn't have time for Emily's lighthearted approach to life, her oddball Shakespeare conspiracy theories, or her endless suggestions for new acts to shake things up. Yet on the faire grounds he becomes a different person, flirting freely with Emily when she's in her revealing wench's costume. But is this attraction real, or just part of the characters they're portraying?

This summer was only ever supposed to be a pit stop on the way to somewhere else for Emily, but soon she can't seem to shake the fantasy of establishing something more with Simon, or a permanent home of her own in Willow Creek.

All I heard was enemies to lovers and Well Met immediately had my attention. I dove in expecting some good banter and cuteness and I definitely got a LOT of cuteness. So, Well Met is truly a bundle of softness and cuteness but I also felt like the plot itself wasn’t always gripping?? No I wasn’t expecting an adventure or murder mystery amidst its pages but I felt like even with the plot revolving around the Renaissance Faire, there wasn’t any amount of urgency or tension in that regard. It sort of just felt like we were gently floating through the happenings of the Faire and everything that came with setting it up and running it through.

The romance itself was adorable but I also felt that it was also missing something?? Well Met is pitched to us as an enemies to lovers so I really really wanted banter but there wasn’t really that much of that? Their dislike of each other doesn’t even seem that well founded and I barely read it as a dislike because it was clear they were lusting after each other. Also, Simon was just mean sometimes and that threw me off a little.

As I got to know the characters better, I warmed up to them and once the Faire was under way and the romance in full swing, I couldn’t help but ship them. Emily stressed me out sometimes with how much she’d take on just to feel wanted/needed but I am glad she got a good character arc that ended with her acknowledging those issues and finding a way to value herself and her time. Once Simon’s backstory was revealed (a sob story), I couldn’t help but like him because that’s WHO I AM. He also had a good character arc that unpacked his issues and let him deal with them in a healthy manner.

Here is the thing about Well Met, I think due to just a general lack of plot tension, it is slow going and I sometimes drifted in and out of the Faire semantics stuff, but once you hit that 50% mark, the slow going doesn’t seem as bad because the romance is a bundle of softness and adorableness. You sort of just end up becoming lost in it and want to absorb the rays of sunshine jumping out of this book. Well Met is the PERFECT summer time read (even if it isn’t technically summer anymore…) The characters, primary and secondary, truly do make this book worth reading and I do hope we get to come back to this world and see a couple more peeps get their happy endings.

3.5 Hot Espressos