Romance Book Reviews
Find below the books we've reviewed in this genre.
What do you do when your mother keeps nagging you about grandchildren, but your social skills are not the best and you struggle to get involved in a serious relationship? You hire a male escort, of course. At least, that’s how Stella Lang understands it in Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient. Living with ASD, Stella has trouble making intimate connections, often misunderstanding social cues and struggling to communicate her needs. In her adult life, Stella has never been able to find a man that woul...
Over and over, and in ways that she could never have anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone. — Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis In Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, all Olive is after, when she abruptly asks Dr. Adam Carlsen in the hallways of Stanford University if she can kiss him, is to give her friend Anh a chance at a happy ending. After going out on a lackluster date with Jeremy, the guy Anh likes, Anh is convinced that Olive must be in love with him and wishes to st...
The first time I heard about Jojo Moyes‘ Me Before You was when I saw the trailer for the movie online. It was no more than a thumbnail pic of Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin that called my attention, but all my fangirl alarms went off. I instantly knew that I was going to be deeply involved with whatever was beyond that thumbnail link. I would also be lying if I pretended like Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin weren’t the reason I eventually bought the book with the movie cover rather than the origin...
Right off the bat, I’m going to go ahead and say that Rebecca Serle’s In Five Years is written with a very particular type of reader in mind. That reader, unfortunately, is not me. Victim of my own circumstance for thinking any book with the New York skyline on its cover is bound to be interesting, I spent six hours of my life waiting for this story to end. Dannie WhateverHerLastNameIs TheyOnlyMentionedItLikeOnce, is a Type A, overachieving 28-year-old woman living in New York in the year 2020....
He hated himself for how she pulled his intention. For years, everything had been tugged in the direction of God and duty and church. Now, it was only Sasha. He worshipped at the altar of the dimple in her left cheek, prayed novenas to the curve of her mouth. Her angelic visage was his North Star, and frankly, it was fucked up.” — Andie J. Christopher, Hot Under His Collar Two things helped me decide I wanted to read Andie J. Christopher’s latest book when I saw it sitting there in all its bla...
Retellings of classic stories can sometimes go painfully wrong. Sometimes, the readers who hold some of these classic stories to heart would prefer writers to leave them intact, or in what we consider to be their already perfect form. Fortunately, once in a while, a writer like Brigid Kemmerer comes along with a story that restores our hope in classic retellings, which is the case for Kemmerer’s newest novel, A Curse So Dark and Lonely. In this particular retelling, Kemmerer introduces us to Pri...
In Michelle Major’s Wildflower Season, a spin-off of her Magnolia Sisters series, Emma Cantrell lands in Magnolia, North Carolina hoping for a fresh start after a nasty divorce and hoping to cut the strings attached to her overbearing mother. She buys an old mansion that’s seen better days, now dealing with damage from the storm that recently ravaged Magnolia. Her vision is to open an inn; however, financially cut off by her mother and having lost all her money in the divorce, Emma is hoping for...
If I had no idea who Sally Rooney was and you told me that she’s published two best-selling novels and can now add an adapted series to her resume, I’m not gonna lie, I’d be salty AF. If you added that she’s not even thirty yet, I might actually slap you and tell you to stop lying. Then I’d walk away crying. This isn’t an alternate universe, though. I know perfectly well who Rooney is, having devoured her two novels, Normal People and Conversations with Friends, within a week of each other, earl...
A Series of Unfortunate Meet Cutes is an anthology made up of nine steamy, novella-length, romance stories. As the title implies, the theme that ties these nine stories together is a meet-cute between a man and a woman laden with awkwardness and sometimes eliciting secondhand embarrassment. The stories are all, though rooted in the same theme and familiar tropes, distinctly different from each other, each one bringing a fresh new take on a different relationship. Though they all feature open-doo...
Alex Turner is single and happy...ish. She’s a bad-ass divorce attorney who doesn’t need a relationship to define her. She’s a self-made woman, with an awesome support group. She knows what she wants and when that doesn’t please her anymore, she has no qualms about walking away. And yet. All it takes is seeing her ex-boyfriend’s fiancée picking out her dress on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress to send her spiraling into a well of self-doubt. A quick Facebook stalking reveals that she was the last pers...
In The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim, we are introduced to Zahra Khan, a young Bangladeshi girl living in Paterson, New Jersey, where a community of other Bangladeshi immigrants resides. After her father’s death some time ago, her family has struggled financially in spite of being considered Bangladeshi royalty. In New Jersey, it doesn’t mean much or do much to help pay the bills. With two younger siblings, Zahra has to work full-time to help her mother keep bread on the table for their family....