Emily Henry’s books basically live in a spectrum of all of her books, in that they are! on the whole! very good! but also she’s set herself up against not only her oeuvre but also the best of the rest, and there’s just some very good slow burn soft smut out there, okay?
The plot set up, of course, is peak Romancelandia–my (30sF) partner (30sM) dumped me to get back together with his ex (30sF) who he insisted was “just a friend” and now I’m fake dating his ex’s ex (30sM) so that my former partner doesn’t realize I’m single–but if you can go with it, it all works. The biggest issue I had with all the set up is that it’s so OBVIOUS that Daphne doesn’t have the wealth of support required to both be with someone like Peter (sort of an airhead) not MOVE TO A RANDOM LAKESIDE TOWN. EVEN IF YOUR JOB IS A LIBRARIAN, which is the sort of Romance Novel job.
So in general I found the set up irritating, and so the rest of the story made me tilt my head to the side and go hmmm. Because if Daphne is really that helpless in her town, it’s not much better than Miles comes along and saves the day for her in another way, you know, by finally showing her what’s to like about the small town they now both live in. Which is not to say that a partner can’t be the way you get to know a town! Heavens knows I’ve been there. But it just reinforces the dynamic that Daphne perpetuated when she followed her perfect-on-paper-Peter to this tiny town (whose name, of course, I cannot place) (nor state).
