Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Veronica is a New York lawyer on the precipice of becoming partner at her firm. Her assistant, Bea, sneakily sets her up on a date each night until Veronica finds ‘the one.’ This is all the result of a drunken night where Veronica uncharacteristically spilled how she wanted to be married by the time she was 35. Well, 35 is just around the corner.
I’m an Elle Spencer fan. I want to say that this was surprisingly good, but I guess I shouldn’t really be that surprised. She generally delivers on everything I love about reading romance. Feelings, chemistry, conflict, angst, tears, and happiness. This one particularly had great dialogue.
I loved Veronica and her conflicting characterization. Master of litigation. Clumsy with women. She had a lot of drive to achieve her goals and despite her failures, kept pressing on. She has an idealistic look on love. So many times in this story, she could have let herself become jaded. Her perseverance was sweet. And she was snarky. I have to admit that I developed a nice sized crush on Veronica.
Rachel, a photographer slash assistant bartender, is the classic ‘burned by love and never going to give my heart to someone again’ character. So clearly, her outlook is challenged. The reason this story worked was because her plight felt genuine and it was not resolved superficially early on. This is a slow burn romance that takes it’s time delivering the ultimate payoff.
I think some readers may get annoyed by the hot/cold attitude and push/pull situations that Rachel creates. It was great for me because I love the drama. I like authors who play with my heart.
There were plenty of side characters that were used to further the plot. None of them were robustly developed. On the surface with a small bit of backstory where it made sense to relate to the main characters. That was perfectly fine for me.
There was some character crossover from Spencer’s last book, ‘Road to Madison.’ I thought the first introduction and reason for their inclusion in this book believable and cute. A nice nod to a couple that I enjoyed reading about. Unfortunately, they also make an appearance a couple of times late in the story that felt overdone, campy, and not plausible at all to me.
Overall, this book had a significant amount of personality. The characters were likable. Fun situations. Great chemistry. A slow burn romance that satisfies int he end.
I recommend this to people who love to read about romance, lawyers, bars, photography, foofy drinks, dating profiles, good dialogue, and push up bras.