While romantic comedy movies are on the short list of My Jams, I am pretty new to romantic books. I’ve read four in my life, counting this one. So, please go into this review knowing that I am out of my element.
Lucy Hutton is a solid protagonist. She’s a successful important person at a publisher, hard-working, into retro fashion, kind of goofy, and her parents run a strawberry farm. I liked Lucy. I had a Fiction Crush on Lucy.
Lucy is fun, and it’s fun to hear how much she hates her co-worker, Joshua Templeman. He seems like a real piece of work. Smug (I hate smug), condescending (hate it), super fit, etc. I wouldn’t be friends with this guy. I hate this guy. They’re stuck sharing an office, sitting across from one another, telepathically passing hatred back and forth. Man, how in the world are these two going to continue working together without farting in each other’s lunchbox? Who knows?!? If you’ve ever heard of romance you know where the story is going, but the ride there is a fun one.
Without spoiling anything, here is a list of what I liked and didn’t like in this book. Maybe this list is more for me than you, so that you can help me find other romantic comedy-type books.
PROS: Lucy is a cool bookish type. Lucy and Joshua’s hatred is entertaining because of their wittiness. The fights made sense, and for the most part people behaved like real people. Love and hate are described a little magically, just how they feel to us normal people in real life. Supporting characters are interesting, actual people.
CONS: It’s possible, possibly, that some people have sexual intercourse in this book. I don’t really prefer a play-by-play of sex. There aren’t enough supporting characters. Don’t these people have friends? Don’t they talk about other stuff?
If you can recommend a witty, fun romcom-type book with people behaving like 90% normally, I’m there!
3.5/5
ETA: I enjoyed debcapsfan’s review of this book which is here. Scanning through comments for recs.