Hoohoo, friends of the blade!
Today I come to you with mini reviews of three romances by I recently read: A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston, The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren, and Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood. All of these are contemporary romances written by some of my favourite authors. Especially Ashley Poston and her stories have my whole heart. So let’s see how I liked each of them…
A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston
contemporary romance with a magical twist
Berkley, 384 pages, published 25.07.2024
Rating: ⚔️⚔️⚔️⚔️
Synopsis:
Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.
But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…
Because it is.
This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.
Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.
Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.
Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.
It’s impossible for me not to fall in love with Ashley Poston’s stories again and again. Even though this might be my least favourite of her novels, I still enjoyed it immensely. It has that Ashley-Poston-romance-feeling, where you might expect something lighthearted and fun and you get that while also delving down into other emotions, too. This is a story of loss and grief and the want for more but it is also filled with hope and love of very different kinds. There are the wonderful friendships the characters have, the romances surmounting obstacles, the feeling of belonging and finally finding your path. I really enjoyed all the different kinds of love, not only between people but also of the people to what they do and enjoy, like literature or food, but also to places like Eloraton. Ashley Poston somehow manages to write a story full of grief that doesn’t feel heavy because there is just so much light in there. Yes, I cried. Of course I cried. But I also laughed and felt my heart swell with love.
Also by Ashley Poston: Geekerella | The Princess and the Fangirl | Bookish and the Beast | Among the Beasts & Briars | The Seven Year Slip
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
contemporary romance
Piatkus, 352 pages, published 14.05.2024
Rating: ⚔️⚔️⚔️⚔️
Synopsis:
Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam ‘West’ Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.
Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.
Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents – his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.
But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.
I always love a good fake daating or fake marriage. In this, I really liked the chemistry Anna and Liam had and how they grew close. And while I loathed most of Liam’s family and all that rich people drama, I absolutely loved how both Liam and Anna became hard and stayed true to themselves. They both had to take a lot of shit but they decided when their limit is reached and spoke their minds while still supporting each other. I also enjoyed that they simply accepted that there was something romantic between them and acted on it instead of dancing around it. This was a fun, lighthearted romance with just the right amount of drama.
Also by Christina Lauren: The Unhoneymooners
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood
contemporary romance
Berkley, 384 pages, published 11.05.2024
Rating: ⚔️⚔️⚔️
Synopsis:
Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.
Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through—and he’s a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can’t stop thinking about. The woman who’s off-limits to him.
Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business—one that plays for keeps.
I already knew that this wasn’t one of Ali Hazelwood’s usual funny, lighthearted romances but was supposed to be more serious and more physical when it comes to the romance. And while I did like it, I wasn’t enjoying the story as much as I thought I would. I wasn’t a fan of Rue and Eli’s romance. I mean, I’m out here enjoying my sex scenes but only if there’s more than just the physical aspect. And I feel like there wasn’t much there for Eli and Rue. They both didn’t want a relationship and went into this thing knowing it was just physical but still they kept orbiting around each other, always searching the other one out and somehow developing feelings but I simply didn’t see why. What did they see in each other? There just wasn’t enough there for me to love this.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think? What was the last contemporary romance you read and what did you think about it? Who are your favourite romance authors?
Until next time,
