Title: The No-Show

Author: Beth O'Leary 

Date of publication: 12 April 2022

Genre: Women's Fiction, UK setting 

Author's links:

My rating: 3 stars

Prefacing this review to say that I read an eARC of the UK edition, so I went in expecting women's fiction and this is pretty much what I got. I will into more details about this towards the end of my review.

I will keep my review vague to avoid spoilers because this story relies on the unexpected and the reader needs to figure things for themselves as the story develops,.

This was a first for me by this author and I found it very readable with strong mystery/suspense element. It is masterfully written with an interesting choice of story-telling, keeping the reader questioning, guessing, trying to figure out what is happening. I liked the disjointed timeline, the unreliability of all the narrators kept me guessing and I was completely engrossed in the story.

I found all the characters to be very well drawn, with strong, distinctive voice, each of them on its own unique journey. Joseph, on the other hand, remained elusive till the final section of the book. It was done on purpose to keep the mystery but it also made it harder for me to relate to him.

I really, really liked the women's stories, different but also similar in their focus on love/family/professional success. They were touching stories about wanting, and loving, the curveballs life throws at us and the way we dodge or take them head on.

At the center of it all were the lies we tell - to others and to ourselves, the time we stay silent for our own sake or for others and ultimately gaining the strength to speak up.

After this praise, I have come to the point near the end that completely threw me off and I couldn't quite accept it. Spoilers ahead:

A main characters dies tragically and then the timelines come together to focus on the hero. I didn't see it coming and I wish the author made a different choice regarding this character. It was framed as necessary for the overall story to happen but deep down it felt wrong to me to kill a main character struggling with mental illness just when they were on the mend and seeing a path forward towards the future they wanted. I felt cheated, this death tainted the HEA for the other characters.

I still want to read more from this author, it is just that I had different expectations of this book based on the blurb.

Now, I want to discuss the marketing of this book. The US blurb describes it as "cute romcom" and I feel this disingenuous and misleading, even harmful to the romance readers. I didn't find the story funny beside a couple of jokes here and there but humour is subjective and I don't want to debate the comedy aspect. My issue is that this story despite being very emotional and moving, exploring different romantic relationships, is not a romance because there is no HEA for all MCs.

CW: mental breakdown, sexual predator, manipulation, side character with dementia, death of an MC

Add to Goodreads / Buy on Amazon

A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in a fun and flirty debut novel.

Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.

On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend...

After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other... 

They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want...


This is a debut romance by an AOC with a Black heroine and while I found it mostly nice and sweet, I aslo had some issues with it.

It started really strong for me, the meet cute in the elevator and the fake date to a wedding both made me laugh and get invested in the characters. I liked the heroine from the start - she is smart, professionally successful, funny, a bit shy and she struggles with some insecurities re her weight and attractiveness, all of which made her feel real to me.

I quite liked the hero too, at least initially. He is nice, smart and equally successful professionally but terrible at personal relationships.

Things between them start as a joke but both develop feelings for each other pretty quickly. This is where the story and romance lost some of it strength for me. They start a long-distance relationship but both avoid talking about what was happening between them and where they wanted this thing between them to go. I found their interactions to be repetitive and the whole conflict was based on a couple of misunderstandings and hasty decisions  which I was not all too happy about. They both  acted like kids and made assumptions which were all wrong.

While I overall enjoyed the story, I had some issues with it. I can enjoy a fade-to-black sex scenes in my romances but here they came after rather explicit descriptions of foreplay and at least to me, they didn't really fit the story. Add to that the fact that the sex scenes were quite a few, all fade-to-black and over time they felt repetitive and at odds the tone of the story.

On the plus side, I liked the glimpses we got into the professional lives of Alexa and Drew, their circle of friends and colleagues, which gave fullness and further sense of realism to the romance.

In short, this is a nice romance, not too bad for a debut book. It has some really strong points -  positive fat representation, POC heroine who is smart and successful, a hero who respects her and is not intimidated by her success but quite the opposite, he values her work and is proud of her success.

Title: Courtship of the Cake (Much "I Do" About Nothing #2)
Author: Jessica Topper
Date of publication: 2 June 2015
Genre/themes: Contemporary Romance

Author's links:
Website / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads

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My rating: 3.5 stars

Synopsis

“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride” has suited Danica James just fine…until the mysterious man who crashed her sister’s wedding steals her heart, leaves a slice of groom’s cake under her pillow, and then disappears.

Hoping to forget her unforgettable fling, Dani takes a job as a backstage masseuse for a rock music festival, not expecting the tour’s headlining bad boy to make an offer she can’t refuse. Nash Drama needs a fiancée—and fast…

Mick Spencer is the best wedding cake designer in New Hope and the town’s most eligible bachelor. But despite the bevy of bridesmaids he’s sampled, Mick can’t get the evening he spent with Dani out of his mind.

So when she shows up for a cake tasting at the Night Kitchen—with his former best friend’s ring on her finger—Mick vows to charm the woman of his dreams into choosing a sweet and sinful ever after, with him.

Review

This is the second book in the I DO series and I can say these stories shape out more like women's fiction, family sagas, than romance.

It's Danny's story whom we met briefly in the previous book. We see that she is not the confident, clear-headed Dany from What Would Dany Do that Laney thought of her. She is a normal person with strengths and weaknesses, she is a little lost and confused, a lot of caring and full of love.

This is a compelx story, overwhelming at times with its diversity of characters and intricate relationships between them. Yet, it was engaging. I cared about Dany, and Mick, and Nash, and everybody in New Hope. I felt the complexity of the story reflected real life, it's messy, people make mistackes and hurt each other, but there is also forgiveness, acceptance, love, hope. 

Despite having two guys as lead characters in teh story, it's not a love triangle, there is no real competition, they are both involved in Dany's life in an important ways. I wanted more of the romance, wanted Mick and Dany to spend more time together. It seemed the author tried to cover too many issues in the story and the love/romance got lost inbetween them. I feel some of the events/characters could have been skipped, there was some jumping from character to character which was rather distracting.

All characters, Dany, Mick and Nash had one too many issues stemming from their past. They all needed to deal with them in order to move on with their lives but I felt some of the problems were superficially treated and far too easily and conveniently resolved. The whole subplot with Dany and Jax didn't fit the story and the dramatic twist towards the end was uncalled for. 

Overall it is a well wrtitten romantic story of one woman's journey to herself and to love, it's smart and full of tender emotion. Fans of the author will enjoy this installment in the series and I'd recommend it while keeping in mind that the romance is not the main focus of the story, it's rather women's fiction with romantic elements.

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