Funny and heartfelt. This takes a sarcastic heroine and gets to her core without being cheesy and still adding a fair amount of personal depth to a fairly short read. Great for the summer.
Summary:
Feeling disconnected from her sister, Nora takes time off her busy life as a literary agent in New York to set out to the small town of Sunshine Falls. If it sounds like the start to a Hallmark movie, it's because her pregnant sister Libby has designed it up that way. She's modeled the whole vacation off of Nora's most successful novel, which is based in that town, and has a long checklist of romantic items so that she can live vicariously through her. But who should Nora run into but the uppity editor who turned down that novel in the very same town!
Verdict: 9.5/10
I want to say ‘I’m not usually a romance person’. While it’s partially true in regards to Bridgerton, Nicholas Sparks and other teeny-bopper, over-the-top swoon-fests… I’m a sucker for a clever romance. And this was such a smart combination of giving into tropes and breaking them.
The main character is an agent so she knows (and despises) all the cliches of those Hallmark movies, making it funnier that she questions how typical her adventure is. She deliberately questions how this hot guy is in such a backwater town or why he must build his own house and work with horses. She, like the reader, can’t believe some of the ridiculous coincidences to the point it borders on a fourth wall break. And the witty banter may be my favorite part as it felt sarcastic without being melodramatic. There were running jokes in the dialogue throughout the whole thing and inside jokes between characters that you got to be a part of.
But it wasn’t just the lighthearted humor. Some romances are just rose-colored glasses where you know everything will turn out alright. But Nora is a pessimist and self-proclaimed villainess – she’s ready for it to fail, she’s looking for the plot holes herself. Emily Henry has enough familiarity with the trends of the genre to know when to circumvent expectations or introduce new levels of depth. There was a lot more self-discovery and reflection on how the characters’ life situations affect their actions and current relationships. Not just with the main character but the side characters as well.
And it wasn't erotica. In romance, there's a huge scale between fairytale and literary porn, both of which have their obvious cons. While this book had some steamier scenes, I think it stay came off as tasteful romance. I may not give it to a teenager but it knew when to dial it back.
This book was far too close to my life. Less in the small-town romance way, and more in the literary career aspirations (a blast to my past) and the sister relationships (the current state of things). It just hit home so accurately and was so relatable. I had to put down the book at times and (like Nora) just marvel at the startling ways that my life is reflecting fiction.
This book made me fall in love with the publishing world again and with romances again. I loved everything about this book except that it had to end. And while the ending was what I fully expected, it left me happy and wanting to revisit this book on a rainy day. The next time I need a pick-me-up with a little more mature themes and content than Anne of Green Gables, this will be it.
Comments