Well some of the stories were great, but the last three were definitely not up to par to the other ones. The last story was downright bad.
Accidentally Yours by Christina Lauren (5 stars)-Very cute from beginning to end. We follow Veronica who is unemployed and feeling frustrated with her lack of job prospects. When she gets on a Zoom link to a job interview, she ends up telling everyone on the call what terrible PR they have for the marketing of their new app. The new CEO of the company, Jude, though is intrigued and wants to hire Veronica on a freelance basis to get him past this initial marketing push. Via emails, we get to see how the two are starting to crush on each other. But Veronica still finds herself thinking about the hottie that lives in her building. The story definitely takes you to where you know it’s going, but it’s a comfortable ride to get there. With everything going on, I thought some romance reads would be what my brain/heart needed.
Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young (5 stars)-I thought this entire story was lovely from end to end. We have a granddaughter, Georgia, a history teacher in Canada who is determined to follow her grandmother’s dying wish. Dig up a time capsule she buried with the love of her life, another woman named Martha. Though shocked, Georgia and her family do what she asked and she finds out who Martha’s family is and makes contact with her grandson, Callum in England. We follow the two of them through emails, phone calls, and newspaper articles as these two get a chance of love that their grandmothers did not.
Second Act Romance by Julie Soto (5 stars)-Honestly I was more intrigued about how plays, backups, primary performances, etc. works. This was a great romance, but getting to see behind the scenes of a stage play of Oklahoma (I love this musical by the way) was great. We follow Bex Hardgrave who is dealing with the fallout of her castmates going out for shrimp tacos the night before opening debut of Oklahoma. Realizing the show will go on, Bex realizes there’s no man that can step in to the lead role, but then fate intervenes and a famous TV actor that she had a moment with years ago, Colby J. Turner, steps into the wings. And Bex realizes that those flutters she felt years ago may still be there.
A Play for Love by Trilina Pucci (3 stars)-I don’t know if it was because I was reading about theater two stories in a row or what, but the whole story felt off to the very end to me. It just took a while to get going. Maybe it was because when it starts, we find the two leads younger (Rory and Olivier) and just bleh to me as characters. There’s no real reason why they are “pulled apart” and I just went, okay sure, we need this for the whole second chance theme we got going.
Death to Valentine’s Day by Catherine Cowles (2 stars)-I don’t even know what to do with this one. The next story was worst, but this was trying to do a thriller, romance, murder? I don’t know. It just didn’t work and I wish that the author had just stuck to romance. I also got zero chemistry between Decker and Maia. The love scene they do after the whole thing [murder] had me going if they both had screws loose. And then we get this random attempted murder by someone that just came out of nowhere. Did I mention that somehow Decker is a professional NFL player and that he has more money than anything? That this plot takes place in a castle with some creepy millionaire that is into Maia (I still don’t know why) and her ex (Decker’s brother is at this same exclusive party)? I felt like this was a mad-libs romance book.
Valentine’s Slay by Navessa Allen (1 star)- No. I don’t even know what to do with this one. Another one that focuses on murder, but begins with someone digging up another character’s grave. We follow a character named Noah who is a gravedigger (yeah) and he realizes that his high school crush Emma’s grave has her in it, screaming. And then it somehow gets even more dumb than I can explain. I don’t even know. The whole story read as very unfinished and we get some wild love scenes in here and I guess that’s what you do when a dude digs you out of a grave? I am so sorry. I am dealing with a lack of sleep and just general contrariness today.
