Beach Read by Emily Henry

I did what any reasonable adult woman would do when confronted with her college rival turned next-door neighbor. I dove behind the nearest bookshelf.

Beach Read is told from the perspective of January Andrews, a bestselling romance author who is in the midst of a personal crisis that has impacted her desire to write another happy romance, but with a deadline looming she has very little choice in the matter. When she decides to spend the summer at a beach house left to her by her late father, she hopes that she can use this time to write while tying up some personal matters. Surprisingly, her next door neighbour is none other than Augustus Everett, an author of literary fiction and her former college classmate who was heavily critical of her writing. With both parties in the midst of writer’s block, they agree to a friendly competition that has them attempting to write in each other’s genre; January will write a story that is on the broody side, and Augustus will write a happy romance. As they spend time learning from one another the words begin to flow, and bonds slowly begin to form.

The premise of Beach Read appealed to me on so many levels. For one, I love a good contemporary romance novel, and when a story focuses on a pair of writers in a small town on the beach… well, that becomes a must-read book for the summer. As excited as I was to read this story, it ultimately left me underwhelmed and slightly disappointed.

Continue reading “Beach Read by Emily Henry”

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

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Nemesis (n.)
1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome;
2) A person’s undoing;
3) Joshua Templeman.

Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company, and they hate each other. Lucy’s quirky nature contrasts with Joshua’s uptight manner, and their strong dislike of each other has manifested into daily passive aggressive maneuvers in their shared office. When an opportunity for a promotion arises and puts the two in direct competition with each other, tensions reach an all-time high. But slowly they start to discover that they may not hate each other, after all. Continue reading “The Hating Game by Sally Thorne”

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

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“This crusade to fix herself was ending right now. She wasn’t broken. She saw and interacted with the world in a different way, but that was her. She could change her actions, change her words, change her appearance, but she couldn’t change the root of herself.”

Wow. This book. I ended up picking up The Kiss Quotient over the weekend on a whim, and ended up with a book that I absolutely loved. We are introduced to Stella, a thirty-year-old econometrician, who works with data all day, and usually everyday because it’s something she loves and finds a great amount of comfort in. She is incredibly successful in her career but not so much in the dating department. A big factor in her struggle with intimacy and relationships is that she has autism, which impacts those interactions. Convinced that she needs lessons on how to be good at sex and relationships, she hires Michael, a male escort. The interesting proposal is something Michael can’t afford to turn down, and the two find themselves in a practice relationship. But something that starts out as a fantasy starts to feel all too real. Continue reading “The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang”