I read my first Charish Reid novel back in 2020 right before COVID shut everything down for a while. Hearts on Hold has been a book I think of often. In 2021 I read (Trust) Falling for You, but somehow managed to skip Reid in my 2022 reading excursions. Since the books I brought with me for holiday travel were a bit hit and miss (Make You Mine This Christmas and The Holiday Trap were good, the other two books I had with me probably won’t be read any time soon) I went to my trusty Nook app on my phone to find something else to read on my flights home and was delighted to find The Write Escape waiting there for me.
This book is Reid’s debut, and while it can certainly show the places she would grow as a writer, this is still a very enjoyable romance. The Write Escape tells the story of literary editor Antonia Harper and literature professor Aiden Byrnes. Antonia’s life seemed like it was all coming together until you started pulling at the threads. She had the job, but she was being forced to make decisions she knew were wrong. She had the guy, but it wasn’t a healthy relationship. In the course of 24 hours Antonia finds herself jobless, alone and at a crossroads.
What better time to travel the world than when you’re at a crossroads? Antonia decides to take what would have been her honeymoon to Ireland solo with the plan to take a breather and focus on herself and her writing. Which is of course when she crosses paths with Aiden. For his part, words fail him when he meets the woman staying in the cottage next door. This is meant to be a working holiday while he gets his path to tenure secured—not a vacation, and certainly not a whirlwind romance. Reid does the work building character interactions so that the feelings that are developing ring true and never ignores that she is writing an interracial story. The pacing is a twinge off, and there’s perhaps a smidge too much drama, but Reid nails the secondary characters, and brings the book to a satisfying end.