A tale full of romance and violence demanding readers not judge a book by its cover.
A jaded bibliophile comes to terms with her dark past and learns to live in the present.
Set in a used bookshop, Butland’s (The Other Half of My Heart, 2015, etc.) latest novel tackles love, grief, violence, and friendship. Loveday Cardew—an anti-social, tattooed 25-year-old—works at Lost for Words, a secondhand bookstore in York. Despite her name, Loveday doesn’t much care for anyone or anything except for books. She’s reserved and painfully sarcastic, and the surrounding characters either exacerbate or quell this: Archie, the caring, larger-than-life bookstore owner; Nathan, the handsome, cravat-wearing poet; and Rob, the sullen, dangerous ex. Switching between the past and present, the chapters are organized by genre—Poetry, History, Crime, Travel, and Memoir—and correspond to the plot (i.e., Poetry chapters center around Nathan). Told from Loveday’s perspective, the casual first-person narration provides an entry point into an otherwise closed-off character, which works well save for a few startling fourth-wall breaks. Loveday’s descriptions of her childhood are among the strongest in the book: “His boots, which smelled of salt and oil, rubber and leather, lived outside,” and “the sea was part of their story.” As her charmed life descends into darkness, one life-altering moment shatters her world—and sense of self—forever. The buildup to and aftermath of this moment feel earned and purposeful. However, other things do not. Unfortunately, the book sometimes veers into unnecessary stereotypes about mental illness by equating (perhaps unintentionally) being mentally ill with violent behavior. If the novel feels particularly harrowing at times, the well-drawn romance helps temper and elevate the story. The hopeful ending is unexpected but not unwelcome—it’s exactly what Loveday deserves because she’s been through far too much.
A tale full of romance and violence demanding readers not judge a book by its cover.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-12453-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Don’t let the cover fool you: This romance is as steamy as it is self-empowering.
A young woman fakes a romantic relationship with her brother’s best friend in order to show her family she’s worthy of respect.
At 23, Georgie Castle is a proud business owner, but she hates that her family refuses to treat her like a responsible adult. When an injury tanks his baseball career, Travis Ford returns to their Long Island hometown. He mopes, drinks, and licks his wounds, but Georgie is determined to keep him from hiding. She has been in love with Travis for years but assumed she’d be forever stuck in the friend zone. Both of them are shocked at the now undeniable chemistry between them, and for Travis those feelings are accompanied by confusing and overpowering possessiveness. When Travis realizes his womanizing reputation (his nickname, "Two Bats," hints at his prowess both on the field and in the bedroom) might prevent him from landing a coveted job as a broadcast announcer, Georgie suggests a mutually beneficial fake relationship. Georgie will make him look like a responsible boyfriend, and Travis will prove to her family that she’s all grown up. Bailey (Runaway Girl, 2018, etc.) populates the novel with a lovable cast of meddling secondary characters who help and hinder Georgie and Travis. A charming subplot describes how Georgie and her friends create the Just Us League, which is dedicated to helping women reach their goals. The club having captured something in the zeitgeist, soon every woman in town clambers to be a member, and Georgie wryly tells Travis, “You should all be seriously alarmed how many women showed up.” The sexual relationship between Travis and Georgie is sizzling, but the emotional journey from fake relationship to true love is just as compelling.
Don’t let the cover fool you: This romance is as steamy as it is self-empowering.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-287283-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Starts out promising but never quite gets out of first gear.
A laconic auto-body shop owner hopes to woo a longtime crush, but he has to overcome his past trauma to convince her they belong together.
Rena Jackson has started her own hair salon in Seattle and wants her personal life to rev up, too, but she has almost given up on Axel Heller’s making a move. Though she finds the German transplant attractive, she worries that he is commitment-phobic and not ready for true intimacy. With both their upbringings shadowing them (his involves domestic violence and hers a single mother who has looked for love too often), can two strong, wary people become vulnerable to love? Harte (Delivered With a Kiss, 2019, etc.) provides readers with passages about Axel’s painful memories and his fear of being a physical threat to a woman. This is a useful counter to some novels’ tendency to romanticize the threat of male power. But the limited, alternating perspective leaves Rena in the dark for much longer than the reader, with the result that her complaints about Axel’s attachment style edge her into unlikable territory. The novel is threaded together by Axel's awkward (albeit funny) attempts to court Rena with gifts and other gestures but doesn't allow her similar space to show her personality and get us to root for the couple. The quick references to, and scenes with, numerous peripheral characters bog down the romance arc further. The handling of the white supremacists who have been threatening Rena, who's African American, is a broad-stroke attempt to acknowledge racism but lacks nuance, as does a scene involving homophobia. While the novel’s title and cover allude to recent successes like The Kiss Quotient and The Hating Game, it lacks the former’s thematic firm-footedness and the latter’s tonal mastery of comedy and emotion.
Starts out promising but never quite gets out of first gear.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4926-9698-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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