wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

Wren is left devastated when the man she is planning to marry tells her he’s fallen in love with someone else. After months trying to avoid her ex and his new girlfriend, Wren eventually takes a summer trip to Indiana to spend a few weeks with her dad and stepmother on their farm, and reconnect with her half-sister. While there, Wren befriends locals Jonas and Anders and can’t help but start to fall for Anders despite the distance he is sure to set between them. Because Anders holds onto a tragic secret, and is still grieving the loss of his wife 4 years previously, that would make a relationship with Wren impossible even as they start to fall in love. 

 

I absolutely loved this one. I was totally hooked and I am remembering why I used to love Paige Toon so much and now I need to catch up on her back list that I’ve been missing out on. I found so many parts of Wren’s story so emotional and as a character, I really feel that I got to know her - her strengths and her vulnerabilities as well as some of her flaws - at the same time that she also takes time for some self reflection and sees the ways she acted in her past relationship that weren’t quite right. 

 

I really enjoyed the farm setting and I loved that the main places the characters hung out tended to be on one of the farms. The friendship group that forms with Jonas, Bailey, Wren and Anders was also a really lovely one and I genuinely think that some of the enthusiasm and joy fell off the page and made me happier in turn just imagining the summer days in Indiana, the lake and movie night and all the excitement of plans still to come. It all felt every atmospheric and I really felt like we as readers were transported to the farms. 

 

I also felt so emotional about so many aspects of Wren’s story especially her connection and reconnection with her Dad and sister. Wren’s feeling of ‘other’ in her family in America is so obvious and it’s easy to see the ways in which her past has affected her and the way she interacts with her dad and Sheryl, and I loved the small ways they all got closer and the steps that were taken by Sheryl to apologize. It was also lovely to watch Wren and Bailey form a really solid friendship and sisterhood, and be there for each other. 

 

I also just loved the connection between Wren and Anders. It’s very slow burn, and a real friends to lovers story though it’s obvious from the start that Wren is falling much quicker, even when she doesn’t want to. I didn’t really expect Anders’ ‘secret’ and I do think it’s a very complex one that really delves deep into what love and commitment means to different people, guilt, moving on or ‘giving up’ and to the core, I think it comes down to the right to life or the right to release. I think it’s a topic that may affect some people very strongly and could be a controversial one depending on how you feel about the topic at the core of the secret. But it’s certainly incredibly emotional and torturous for Anders and I really felt for him and Wren s everything came to light and how impossible a future looked for them. 

 

I know some people aren’t a big fan of rambling epilogues where you get the lowdown on everyone’s story but I do enjoy them as a guilty pleasure and this one was one of those for me. Sometimes the neat bow and happy endings is exactly what I need. 

Queen B is a really fun side story related to Juno Dawson's HMRC trilogy and in this we go all the way back to the 1500s and the time of Anne Boleyn who we know from the main trilogy was a witch. We follow Grace Fairfax, a young woman in court and part of Anne Boleyn'c coven reeling from the devastating execution of Anne and the growing threat of witch hunters.

This was fun as a fan of both HMRC trilogy and also a big fan of Tudor history. I do think a prior knowledge of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII and his wives etc would be best going into this book and really understanding some of the tensions and the threats and also as a way of appreciating how Juno Dawson fine tuned history to fit in with her witchy story.

I would have liked this to be a longer, full-scale novel as I don't really feel; I truly got to know who the characters were. I feel like we didn't have enough to really understand Grace's affection for Anne, and in turn Cecelia's affection for Grace. I feel like the relationships were suppose to be integral to the story but we barely got to skim the surface of them, and because it was novella we missed out on some of the slower paced building up of these relationships.

I'm all here for more HMRC novellas though and would love more in Queen Elizabeth's time as well - and even more interesting would be some set in the time of King James and the English Witch Trials of the time.

When Camile Thompson gets a new job as an event planner at a luxury beach club, she's determined to make the most of this opportunity to build up a wealthy clientele for her business, and she also promises her best friends to not stay too closed off to new relationships, friendships and romantic, and give more people a chance. This becomes easy when Cami hits it off with the owner of the local bar but things take a tumble again when she is the victim of the resident mean girls of the Beach Club. But one thing Cami does best is revenge..

This was very fun and a steamy summer romance. I love me a seasonal series and I'm really glad I picked this up to continue reading the series in the appropriate seasons. Cami is a girl's girl while also being quite closed off and afraid to let people in because of bad experiences. But she's strong and confident while also suffering from anxiety which we see in lovely moments of vulnerability. I really liked her relationship with Zach and was obsessed with how much he liked her - I feel like we don't see it enough - it's okay for a guy to be obsessed with his gal (in a healthy way). I was literally texting my friends how this fictional man went out to buy a hair bonnet for his girl for his place because that is just too cute.

There is a Mean Girls-inspired element to this book that was fun, similar to the first book which was Legally Blonde inspired. I do think Staceigh and Laceigh were very over the top and the fact they were 22/23 and acting like that was a little hard to believe - the same with Cami being 28 and even thinking about hanging out and being friends with them in the first place.

The sex scenes are very steamy and hot though personally for me the images/video kink they both enjoyed didn't do it for me and honestly I spent some of the novel scared that somehow the twins would find those videos and use them against Cami. Thankfully this doesn't happen and I did also appreciate the conversation between Cami and Zach about these explicit images in the first place and the boundaries and consent put in place.

Really looking forward to the next book in this series. I'm ready for a Fall vibes romance so let's go Olivia Anderson. 

 Juliet and Liam aren't sure they will ever fit in when they move into her late mother's home with their young son Charlie. Magnolia Road is the picture perfect image of domesticity with big houses, and large cars and neighbors full of parenting and relationship advice. As Juliet begins to resent her own role in the house as breadwinner while her husband Liam hangs out with the other primary caregivers for content for his new novel, an accident puts everything into perspective.

I really enjoyed this - I thought it was a very good story that managed to capture that time in your 30s and 40s that is a bit manic, full of exhausting 9-5s, housework and parenting while also trying to upkeep a successful relationship and somehow not mess everything up. There is a slight element of Keeping Up The Joneses in it too as we see others covet what their neighbour has, or listen to everything the Queen Bee has to say.

I did keep expecting something really dark or twisty to happen and was surprised when it didn't and I realised this book wasn't a suspense or a thriller - it was just a slice of life, fiction book that still had me very much hooked on everyone's lives even though they were so normal. The characters surprised me as they all ended up being pretty decent people - again, just your average normal neighbours as you realise that while some people look like they have it altogether, they might be struggling themselves with other things and nothing is 100% happy for everyone all the time and everyone has their ups and downs be it with marriages, kids or work.

I listened to this on audiobook and found it really enjoyable.