One of my favorite romance novel tropes is friends to lovers. Best friends to lovers? Even better. But one of the things I hate about that trope is when a book starts off with all that “We’re proof that men and women can just be friends, contrary to what everyone in our lives keeps saying” nonsense. If there are still people in the world who don’t believe that men and women can be in platonic relationships, I do not want to spend time with them – in real life, or in my chosen fiction. It annoys me no end, to have to slog through all of that ridiculousness to get to the good stuff: people are friends with other people! Gender aside. Nobody assumes you are sleeping with your friends, just because you’re close. This is not shocking – and when people in books – set in contemporary settings, of course – act like it is, I feel that it’s an unnecessary part of the trope the author is playing into: You’re not required to argue that hard, anymore. It makes that part of the book feel out of touch with the rest of the contemporary tone, in my opinion.
Setting that aside, Blurred Lines by Lauren Layne is a pretty decent example of how friends to lovers can play out. Parker and Ben have been best friends and roommates for years. Ben’s pretty much the king of one-night-stands; Parker is happily settled into a relationship with her fiance. Until she suddenly isn’t. After the shock of him leaving wears off, Parker decides that what she needs is some fun – of the physical sort. Only, after a few failed attempts, she realizes she’s not the kind of woman who can just sleep with strangers, so she comes up with a Friends-With-Benefits plan for her and Ben, gets him on board, and all sorts of fun is had by both of them. Of course, their no-strings, no-changes in our relationship arrangement becomes more complicated as time goes on, and things fall apart. Then they have to figure out whether or not they can put it back together – and how.
There’s a lot of honesty – brutal stuff – in Layne’s writing: How much the characters hide from themselves, others and each other, is startling, and – as the reader – you can clearly see how it’s all going to blow up in their faces, while, at the same time, understand why their doing it. That’s a hard line to walk, as an author – to make the mistakes of your characters seem reasonable. Aside from wanting to shake both of the characters once they start bringing other people into their mess, Layne managed it quite well.
I do think she could have done a little bit better job of showing stuff, instead of just telling us, but that’s just a personal preference as to writing styles. Mostly, this was a pretty good read.
My copy was provided by NetGalley, this book is available for preorder on Kindle on Amazon, link above.
