I loved this book! Just a shame that I found the kind-of-unlikeable, stuck-in-childhood protagonist so relatable!

I loved this book so much!

A second chance, fake dating a guy and falling for his best friend romance.

I absolutely loved the autism representation in this one. So relatable!

I loved this! Cozy tea shop vibes, fascinating sci-fi concepts, well-rounded characters, a tender sapphic romance, and wonderful asexual representation.

Bennet is an American tourist who loves all things Jane Austen. Alice is an aspiring writer who hates tourists and all things Jane Austen. Somehow, they become the best of friends. But is there something between them that is more than friendship?

Wow, what an amazing and uplifting book. One of the most beautiful romances I’ve ever read. I cried!

In particular, I loved that this felt really personal to the authors. It gives the book a real feeling of heart.

A triumphant finale to the Sapphire Springs trilogy! This was absolutely one of my favourite fake-dating romances I’ve read. I can’t wait to see what Elizabeth Luly does next.

First off, I loved all the details about Appalachian Trail through-hiking. My wife got a bit obsessed with following AT through-hikers on TikTok for a while, so I was reasonably familiar, and this made the book feel very real. I also loved the characters, and they are what drew me through the book.

Unfortunately, I had heard so many great things about the book that my expectations were maybe raised a bit high. It was a really great book, but the emotional journey was a bit more simplistic than I had expected, and I felt some of the dialogue could have been zhuzhed to be a bit more realistic.

I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I expected, but it’s still a brilliant book, especially if you care about hiking.

So to start with, I really loved this book. Meryl Wilsner is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sapphic romance author in tens of writing style and characterisation. This book is no different. I loved the conceit of the book, with the non-refundable honeymoon and the challenge to get anything you ask for, as long as you ask for it. This is also one of the greatest beach holiday romances (some of my other favourites being Just Kiss Her by Clare Lydon and Until Next Tine by Jamey Moodey). I also loved the Jewish, fat and non-binary representation.

Unfortunately, this is not my favourite book by Wilsner, mainly because the book suffered from two contradictions, which I’m not sure how they could have solved. 

First, lots of lesser romances just focus on the romance plot line at the expense of all else. We see nothing of the characters’ lives outside of the evolving central relationship. This has never been a problem with Wilsner’s books. Characters always have friends and family either whom they have significant interactions, and jobs and interests other than being in a relationship. But the whole point of this book is the codependency between the MCs who have nothing going on outside of each other. It’s the point of the book, but it still leaves it feeling small and constrained. During the third act breakup,

the two MCs do start to build lives for themselves. One kind of fixes their relationship with their family, and maybe gets a bigger and more fulfilling role in the family business. The other also gets a fulfilling job and a small grief group, although it’s not promising that the friend group are all twice their age, and treat them like a baby for not having a full working knowledge of BDSM practices and terminology

.

Second,

whoever ended the breakup, it was always going to be disappointing. Throughout the story, it was made clear both characters had equal issue asking for what they wanted. This was really important for the story that they both had this issue. I think the relationship would have felt unequal otherwise, and both characters needed to work through their codependency. But it meant that, whoever ended the breakup, it would have felt empty that the other didn’t. I’m not sure how this could have been fixed

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But as I said, I still loved this, and will definitely listen to it again!

Roslyn Sinclair is truly one of the greatest sapphic romance writers. I loved the romance in this story, and loved the world Sinclair has created. I would love to read more set in it!

This was a very good book, although it somehow felt like it was missing a special something to elevate it to the ranks of the best Clare Lydon romances. The narration was excellent, which largely made up for that.

Clare Lydon really loves characters moving to Edinburgh, and also one MC giving the other an Irn-Bru at a pivotal moment in the story.