Book No. 55 of 2020
If you’ve been following along for a while, you may have noticed that I go for light romantic contemporary fiction when I need a pick-me-up. A lot of the books I’ve read lately have been serious/deep/dark (I may still be messed up from some of the stories in Hidden Girl, thanks Ken Liu), I was already in a funk, and I wasn’t ready to start any of the equally serious/dark-looking books I had checked out.
This book…kind of fit the bill. It’s classic Sophie Kinsella, the bad people get their comeuppance in the end, and there’s a satisfying happy ending, but it was also actually kind of stressful. So many characters in the story are useless, selfish assholes to the protagonist, constantly demeaning and taking advantage of her, that it was not quite the frothy escape I was looking for.
That being said, the love interest is an awesome dude and there is adorable banter and sexual chemistry, so to be fair the book does deliver on that front.
Similar Reads
The useless yoga sister reminds me of Kinsella’s (imho much sharper) critique of Goop-y empowerment in My Not So Perfect Life. The manipulative and even more useless hot ex reminds me of all the mistakes my friends and I ever made in our romantic choices.
The eccentric shop employees remind me of Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller.