Review: Love Story

Author: Lindsey Kelk

Genre: Romance

Rating: 4 / 5

Features:

• Enemies-to-lovers and forced proximity romance with a little bit of insta-love thrown in

• Book about book and writing

• Examines different attitudes towards the romance genre and its role in the literary world

• Pop culture references both new and old

Summary

When the book Butterflies takes the world by storm, everyone is dying to discover who author Este Cox really is. However, Sophie Taylor knows that revealing herself would not only end her teaching career, but it might also put her at odds with her parents who are opinionated and powerful within the literary world. Sophie knows she can handle the pressure of keeping her identity a secret, but when the manuscript of her next book along with her laptop go missing, it threatens the delicate balance Sophie has worked so hard to maintain. While her brother William tries to help track down the missing items, Sophie has to put on a smile and pretend everything is normal during her dad’s big birthday celebration. Unfortunately, everything about this ‘celebration’ seems to be a plan to make Sophie as miserable as possible. The worst part will be having to share a cottage with the handsome but aggravating Joe Walsh; the last person she was with before everything went wrong. 

Thoughts

This book has a lot of charm and manages to be both a solid romance and an interesting story examining the various attitudes towards romance books and their authors. Kelk cleverly incorporates characters from different areas of the publishing/literary world and creates a discourse between them that allows Kelk’s message to develop without feeling like you’re being hit over the head with it. Though the characters felt a little like caricatures, they worked for this story and I could appreciate even the ones I didn’t necessarily ‘like’ as people. The drama and quirkiness of the characters gives this book a great sense of humor that helps the pages fly by. Though I am not sure how I feel about the chemistry between Sophie and Joe, there are plenty of lust-filled moments between them that will satisfy most readers who are in it for the romance. However, I would say that this is predominantly ‘closed door’ with maybe a few peeks through the keyhole, so it doesn’t rank high on the ‘spicy’ scale. 

Though I loved this book as a whole, the opening scenes with Joe threw me for a bit of a loop. Not only does it not really make sense, it also feels awkwardly stilted and unnatural. I think enemies-to-lovers is a hard trope to pull off without making one person seem irredeemably unlikeable and the other extremely petty or over reactive. Though things improve as the story progresses, this book is no exception in the earlier parts. Because the story itself takes place over only 3 days, there is little opportunity to see this relationship develop to something deeper than lust or grow to redeem some of their earlier behavior. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I think the ending feels almost rushed because we never get to see that development.

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Special thanks to NetGalley and Harper 360 for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!