I had been flirting with reading a different Hannah Bonam-Young book and just couldn’t seem to commit to requesting it from my library. But then as I was scrolling Goodreads two weeks ago, I saw a review of Next of Kin and found myself immediately heading over to my library website and putting in a request which arrived within a couple days. Then I proceeded to read it in one long sitting on a Saturday. When I finished, I knew I was rating it 3.5 stars, but I couldn’t decide which way to round. Now quite a few days later I’m still not entirely sure but rounding down feels more incorrect than rounding up, so you’ll see it listed as 4. I’ll try to articulate why I feel so stuck between the star ratings.
In Next of Kin Bonam-Young gives us the story of two mid-20s people who are dealing with big life issues and forced proximity brings these strangers together. I find trope shorthand to be useful when reviewing, since usually it lets me get away without having to do full-on plot recaps for Romances, but forced proximity has always felt the least useful. Oh, two people need to spend time together for a romance to start? How novel! But in this case, the forced proximity is baked into the meet cute in a way that is actually helpful in breaking down the plot. Chloe and Warren are each older siblings who have been through the Foster Care System (she was adopted out, he was not) who have younger siblings they want to be primary caregivers for. Warren’s is a younger brother in his early teens who is deaf, and Chloe’s is a newborn whom her birth mother did not know she was pregnant with until the baby arrived. Chloe has a rent-controlled apartment but her work as a freelancer doesn’t provide the sort of financial security that CPS is looking for, and Warren has savings and a steady income from his work as a mechanic but is struggling to find an affordable apartment for he and his brother near to the school his brother attends.
A new program however provides the opportunity for them to team up, Warren’s financial security meets Chloe’s available two bedrooms since her roommates moved out near the school, and ideally, they’d be able to offer support to each other as they transition to being primary caregivers. It’s that last bit that provides the initial tension of the story – Chloe is interested in having a friendly cohabitation where they help share the load a bit as makes sense and Warren is not. He intends for himself and Luke to exist in the apartment with as few ties as possible to Chloe and Willow until the reassessment in a few months or whenever he can find their own apartment.
That of course doesn’t work, as the practicalities of life with a newborn in the apartment and what sharing a space entail starts to encroach on his plans. It doesn’t hurt either that Warren and Chloe have the hots for each other and a poorly timed kiss on his birthday leads to them contemplating the what-if of it all. And that’s the part where the story won me over and I felt comfortable in Bonam-Young’s hands (and is probably why I’m not comfortable rounding down). Chloe and Warren talk about what is on the line for them if they cross this boundary and decide together not to cross it. At least not yet. Now, Warren responds poorly when a previously scheduled date of Chloe’s visits the apartment and for a short period the plan to wait and see is shelved, but it is also rather quickly resolved, and they are back together with a plan for how to balance the difficulties of their arrangement. While 25-year-olds feel so young to me now, I appreciate any author who has her characters talk to each other about what they are afraid of and acknowledge the very real hurdles on the way to their version of a happily ever after.
From that point the plot moves quickly – this book is less than 300 pages long and I was caught off guard because the back of the re-issue copy had about 50 pages of the next book in the series included. There’s the slightest touch of insta-love that wasn’t my favorite, but the book did resolve without a third act break up which is! Bonam-Young doesn’t shy away from the realities of what Warren and Chloe’s lived experiences are, and the baggage they bring with them and still need to work on. Her list of sensitivity readers speaks to it, and her commitment to writing these things in an honest way. Until the second epilogue we are exclusively in Chloe’s POV and I thought it worked well, but when I got to that second epilogue from Warren’s POV I was instantly sad to not have had more along the way, although Bonam-Young wrote him in such a way that it was easy to track his emotions and motivations through what Chloe saw, even if she wasn’t piecing it together. I haven’t requested another Bonam-Young book from the library yet, but I have a feeling I will soon.
