I actually read Friends Don’t Fall in Love by Erin Hahn all the way back in January, but am just now writing this review for y’all. I wish I could say I had a good reason. I mean, I was sort of hoping that St. Martin’s would acquiesce to the demands of the organizers of the boycott situation, which I’m clearly doing a terrible job of following myself. But the thing is, I’m just not convinced St. Martin’s is going to do that and I don’t like feeling as though I’m punishing authors? Idk. Y’all do what you think is best. I’ll be over here conflicted and having no idea what I’m actually doing.
Anyways, the point of this post is that I have three ARCs I received from Netgalley to review for you. I read Friends Don’t Fall in Love via audio from Hoopla, I think. Maybe Everand. Either way, loved it, loved the audio. I read Marry Me by Midnight via audio from Spotify, even though I own the ebook (and yes, that’s also the format I received the ARC in that I still didn’t read). And then I mostly read Love in the Red Zone by Love Belvin via the audio ARC I was provided, but I also followed along via my KU checkout ebook copy. So now, let’s talk about them!
Friends Don’t Fall in Love
by Erin Hahn
Friends Don’t Fall in Love is, not surprisingly, a friends to lovers romance and it’s one that I absolutely adored. Things this book has going for it: 1. The music. (I absolutely adore books centering around music. If there’s talk about how to write a song or writing a song in general, I’m seated. And this book has a lot of that.) 2. The friendship. (I believed that these two are REALLY actually friends. And so I understood the hesitancy to mess it up.) 3. The FEELINGS. (They’re big and expressed in the funnest of ways… An anonymous erotic poetry account is just maybe one example.) 4. The world. (Erin Hahn has created a whole universe for her characters to live in and I just really love the way she’s done it. In a contemporary romance, world building is usually less of a focus, but I really appreciate how grounded her books are because there’s a full cast of characters that are consistent across books.) 5. The romance. (I just really loved the turn from friends to more that happens here. Loved it a whole, whole bunch.) 6. Craig’s nephew. 7. Lorelai’s Celiac representation. (It makes me so grateful that I’m just gluten intolerant and I used to think that was the worst thing in the history of ever.) 8. So much more honestly?
If you’re wondering what this book is actually about, essentially Lorelai pulls a The Chicks and gets kicked out of country music, which also results in her “losing” her fiancé (the jerk) and moving back to Michigan. Except now it’s been a few years and Lorelai is ready to make her way back to music so she moves back to Nashville and into the other side of a duplex that Craig (her ex’s former bandmate) owns. She and Craig have always been such good friends, but they also had a pretty steamy moment right after the breakup and right before Lorelai moved away. The tension is tensioning and the romance is definitely romancing. If you haven’t read this one, I would definitely recommend.
Marry Me by Midnight
by Felicia Grossman
Marry Me by Midnight is about Isabelle, a very wealthy Jewish heiress who needs a husband and Aaron, a very poor Jewish orphan who is really just trying to survive. The two of them interact pretty early in the book and ultimately Isabelle determines Aaron is perfect to help her get some intel on her potential suitors. I do want to mention that Isabelle’s search of a husband is coming in hot because her father died and she needs to secure her place at the company that he co-founded. So there’s a lot of conflict with her father’s business partner as well.
I really loved the way Isabelle was a take charge of her life type of woman in England Times and how unapologetic she was about her pursuit of her goals and ambitions. Isabelle knew she needed to marry and so she went about it in such a shrewd and strategic manner and I really appreciated that about her. Similarly, I liked how that aspect of her personality and of her drivenness to achieve her goals led to her interactions with Aaron. The only piece I really felt like was missing was a sense of exactly what Aaron’s place in her life would be long-term or even what Aaron’s long-term goals are. Because ultimately, Aaron is a very well-drawn character except for that. I understood his history and his worries, but I just couldn’t quite figure out how we got from the end of this book to an actual HEA.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed this one and I’m excited to continue into book two, Wake Me Most Wickedly.
Love in the Red Zone
by Love Belvin
Love in the Red Zone was originally published in 2013, so I’m not going to say that my experience reading this book is going to keep me from reading more from Love Belvin, but I am going to say that this book was not written for me. That is both literally true as Love in the Red Zone is a Black Romance that is definitely not written to the white gaze. But the way I actually mean it is that this book is not written for me because it’s got an interesting flavor of Christianity in the book that is so far from my experience with Christianity that I couldn’t get out of my head enough to set this aside. If you’ve seen my thoughts on Late Bloomer, this book felt something like that, where this piece of the puzzle was ringing such a discordant note that I could not get into it. Unfortunately, in addition to that piece, I didn’t get the romance. Now, I love a single parent romance. Like, so much. And generally, I love a sports romance. But the plotting and pacing of this one just didn’t quite jive for me because I feel like I never actually understood when or why Trent started to trust Jade. More specifically, I guess, I feel like I never saw him start to trust her. Their entire relationship felt more like a deck of cards that could fall at the stiffest wind than one that could go the distance.
But I was lucky enough to receive the audio ARC, so let’s focus on the narration for a minute. I really liked the male narrator’s narration style, but I could have done without the way “Trenton” was moaned out in both of their narrations. It’s such a weird thing to stick in my mind, but stick it did.
Anyway, I want to continue this series because it’s a back and forth with CCJ and I love CCJ’s writing, but I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous now.
Closing Thoughts
How do you decide when to DNF a book you have for review, if you review books? Because realistically, I probably should have DNF’d Love in the Red Zone. Have you read any of these books? Will you? Let me know!
xx
firewhiskeyreader 