⭐️.5 rounded up to two
ARC REVIEW
I was sent an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review.
The idea for the book is good but the novella fell very flat for me.
One of my favorite tropes is forced proximity. So I was excited to see how this went.
I do feel like the book had a lot of filler words. Everything was in too much detail but none of it concentrated on the actual plot.
A huge problem I have with this book was the FMC believed the MMC was in a relationship and still decided to peruse him. There could have been a conversation before hand to atleast ask him if she was correct in assuming that he was in a relationship. Instead, she still made the first move. He may have kissed her first but he knew he wasn’t in a relationship. She first walked up to him, putting her hand on his jaw, touching him because she couldn’t stop herself even believing him to be in a relationship.
I don’t know if it was intentional or not but there’s a comparable part to how the FMC feels about how her relationships end and the movie “Good luck chuck” where she feels like every person that she’s with immediately finds their happy ever after with the next person they date after her.
At this point, there was no chemistry, no dialogue really in where they got to know each other at all. Their relationship felt forced.
I understand this is a novella, but there were too many words that didn’t really say anything, when we could have used that space for more banter, conversation and really getting to know the characters but we didn’t.
They were talking about falling for each other but what we saw in the book was really them having maybe a handful of awkward conversations and nothing else. To me that is more instalust to instalove versus a slow burn even though it took them a minute to actually decide to do something.
The one thing I liked about the book was that she didn’t instantly quit her job and move to New York to live HEA. She continued her job, continued traveling and they did the long distance thing.
What could have improved this book for me was having more conversations, more banter, especially if this is supposed to be more towards a slow burn novella.
Less details for everything else. I get setting the tone or “world building” by describing everything and describing your every thought but maybe a little less of that and a little more of the mentioned above.
A great story can still fit into 130 pages. It doesn’t have to be 300+ to have great, relevant dialogue and plot. I would love to see this author fix a few things from this novella and rework the story.