It’s Tuesday and it’s time for another Book of the Week – and this week it’s a romance pick after a few weeks of mystery ones. And actually it could have been one of a couple of romances this week – so tomorrow’s Recommendsday has got some more of them for you. But in the meantime, my favourite book that I read last week was the new Charlotte Stein – which also came out last week. So as I said yesterday – I’m even fairly timely!
Daisy and Caleb were at college together and they’ve been enemies ever since. These days Daisy is a crisis PR specialist and her latest assignment is to try and dig Caleb out of a public relations disaster: he’s a romance author who has just told the world he doesn’t believe in romance or happy endings. She knows it’s not going to be easy to persuade him to do the book tour they’ve got planned, but she hadn’t quite realised how hard it would be. Soon Daisy’s on a road trip with him to each stop of the tour which is hard enough, but more than that people at the events are starting to think that Daisy is the mysterious woman that he dedicates all his books too – the love of his life. Soon they’re going along with the idea and now they’re also trapped in a fake relationship. Except the chemistry is starting to feel much more real than it ought to considering how much they hate each other. Because they do hate each other, don’t they?
This is the third fake relationship romance in an interconnected series from Charlotte Stein which started with When Grumpy Met Sunshine. Now my main issue (if it can be considered an issue) with that book was that it was pretty clear to you as a reader that the hero was into the heroine and it was hard to see how she didn’t see it. Now in this one it is much easier to understand why Daisy doesn’t think that Caleb is into her – she’s so beaten down by always been seen as too much that you can see how she would misinterpret or not see the signs. And as a reader it’s really quite delicious as they get stuck in these increasingly ridiculous situations being forced into ever closer proximity. And it’s so much fun – I read it in less than 24 hours and actively resented having to go to work and not carry on reading it!
In the afterward Stein says that this is the last of her rom coms – and I really hope that’s not as final as it sounds because I have really, really enjoyed reading them and I hope that she writes something similar soon. She has a small town paranormal romance series that I have my eye on for if/when prices drop because at the moment the kindle prices are too rich for my blood considering how big the to-read pile is!
My copy of While You Were Seething came via NetGalley, but as I have the other two in paperback I’m not ruling out buying myself a copy as well to give me a matching set for the bookshelves! I’ve seen the others in bookshops so I’m hoping this will be too but it’s only showing as in stock in one of the central London Waterstones at the moment so we will have to see. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too,
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 