This was the preorder that arrived last week and is the follow up to When Grumpy Met Sunshine which was a BotW this time last year. And given the Elly Griffiths binge and my rules about repeating authors and later books in series, it was the obvious choice for today’s post.
Connie’s experience of men and relationships is… not good. They always turn out to have some horrible secret or nasty personality flaw. So she’s pretty sure her new neighbour must be hiding something really terrible behind his cheery façade and bow tie. Beck is an editor at a publishing company – and is just as sunny as he seems, except that he’s been single his whole life but told his co-workers he’s married and maintaining the lie is ruining his life. Before she knows what she’s doing, Connie’s stood up for him in front of a co-worker, and now she’s his wife. And they’ve got to keep the pretence going at a two week writers retreat…
Grumpy-Sunshine romances and cinnamon roll heroes have been a massive trend over the last few years, and I think Beck in this is possibly the biggest sweetest least unproblematic hero I have read in a long time. In fact he’s so nice and sweet that it was a bit much for me at times, especially when paired with Connie’s total cynicism about relationships and men, which is never properly explained in any detail. That said, I did really enjoy lots of this, although I wanted more comeuppance for Beck’s terrible coworker, and the fact that I read this in less than 24 hours (and on the first weekend of the new F1 season) says a lot about how readable this is, even if I didn’t like it as much as I liked When Grumpy Met Sunshine.
This came out last week – I had the paperback pre-ordered but it’s also in Kindle and Kobo.
Happy Reading
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 