I promise I didn’t plan to Double Cannonball with this excellent book, which just so happens to be about books and writing books, and publishing books. It’s just serendipity.
I was so happy when I realized about fifty pages into this book that it was going to be another situation like with her first adult romance, Beach Read, where I’m just immediately in love with everything about it. I liked People We Meet on Vacation a lot, but it didn’t hit me in that place all my favorite books do. This one totally did. And what a clever concept for a romance book! My mom and sister make me watch endless Hallmark movies over the holidays every year, and also I grew up in the nineties with a television, so I am very very familiar with the trope of the city working woman who is cold-hearted and who the hero can do so much better than. That’s our heroine, Nora, a book editor who loves living in the city, doesn’t want kids, and will never stop wearing high heels.
I personally am very, very different from Nora, but I loved seeing this character archetype blasted apart. I also loved her relationships with both Charlie, her love interest (who also works in publishing) and her sister, who is the reason she is spending a month of her life in a small town away from everything she loves, trying to “relax.” I got so much enjoyment out of the tongue in cheek way the sisters constructed a list of things romance heroines would do in this cliched little town and then tried to check those things off. I loved the banter between Nora and Charlie. The kissing was A+.
I just loved everything about it. The End.
