I love myself a good horror book but every now and then, there’s this fatigue – too much blood and gore and Twisted psychological conundrums, that I really, really crave a good romance. Something light. Something not so cheesy as I would abandon a writer forever.

And when I ran across Book Lovers, I’ve hit gold. Amazon link (non-afiliated): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Lovers-Emily-Henry/dp/0593440870

No one will ever convince me that time moves at a steady pace. Sure, your clock follows some invisible command, but it feels like it’s randomly spouting off minutes at whatever intervals suit it, because this week is a blip, and then Friday night arrives.

You have a woman who is plagued by the Hallmark© movie curse when their SO (special other) falls in love with a small-town girl and decides to leave his strong female partner and move to a small town and raise cattle. Or run a farm. Or both.

She’s a strong woman even by South Park standards.

I’ve worked hard to build a life that’s my own, that no one else could pull a plug on to send me swirling down a cosmic drain.

So when her sister, Libby, calls her on an adventure, she replies in hopes of reducing the growing distance between them and finding out what had been worrying her sister so much. But her sister is a romantic, a hopeless one at that and what she wants, is a Hallmark© small town romance adventure.

But I guess it’s more like a small-town romance novel experience list than a bucket list. It’s how we’re both going to be transformed via small-town magic into more relaxed versions of ourselves

Unfortunately our heroine meets her arch-nemesis, an always pouting, dark haired Adonis, another literary person just like herself and they end up texting. And from texting come some fiery dates and some kisses. And so, just like the main character, I started loving the Hallmark© small town romance.

What page are you on?
Three, he says. And I already need an exorcism.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with the book. Again, as soon as I’ve sent it, I have to marvel-slash-panic at my own unprofessionalism. Over the years, I’ve developed a finely tuned filter—with pretty much everyone except Libby—but Charlie always manages to disarm it, to press the exact right button to open the gate and let my thoughts charge out like velociraptors.

I loved how they interacted with each other, how they did the courtship dance and how they each had some introspection to go through. And the book was funny! I mean she was referring to her previous relationship as “the smoking crater that changed my life forever” 😀

“Tropes and clichés have to come from somewhere, right?” I say. “Women like me have clearly always existed. So it’s either a very specific kind of self-sabotage or an ancient curse. Come to think of it, maybe it started with Lilith. Too weird to be coincidence”

And then they kissed!

“You of all people should know,” he says, gaze dropping to my mouth, “we ‘surly, monochromatic literary types’ don’t have those.”In my head, Nadine Winters’s voice is screaming, Abort, abort! This fits into no plan! But there’s a lot of rushing blood and tingling skin for the words to compete with.I don’t remember doing it, but my fingers are pressed against his stomach, his muscles tightening under them.Bad idea, I think in the split second before Charlie tugs my hips flush to his. The words break apart like alphabet soup, letters splintering off in every direction, utterly meaningless now. His mouth catches mine roughly as he eases me back into the cottage door, covering my body with his.I half moan at the pressure. His hands tighten on my waist. My lips part for his tongue, the tang of beer and the herbal edge of gin tangling pleasantly in my mouth

The funny comments continue as chaos ensues. She doesn’t want to date a colleague – even though they belong to different companies. He doesn’t want to complicate his home life too much. He’s single but has a big burden on his shoulder that will force him to relocate to his home town on a more permanent basis. She is New York through-and-through. I want to carve out a piece of the city and its magic, just for us. But carving turns you into a knife. Cold, hard, sharp, at least on the outside..

And her sister Libby is always planning something.

She’s looking at me now with that hopeful Libby look of hers. It’s halfway between the expression of a cat who’s dropped a mouse at a person’s feet and that of a kid handing over a Mother’s Day drawing, blissfully unaware that Mommy’s “snow hat” looks only and exactly like a giant penis.
Blake is the penis hat in this scenario.

We have some honourable mentions of nipples here too (just like in The Vegetarian * Han Kang) but less awkward,

My nipples pinch against his skin, and his arms tighten across my back.We’re both silent, like any word could break the spell of the silver moonlight.Our lips catch lightly once, then draw apart, slip together a little deeper. His hands follow the curve of my back lower, curling around me, squeezing me to him, rolling his hips into mine.

“Until you got here,” he rasps, “all this place had ever been was a reminder of the ways I was a disappointment, and now you’re here, and—I don’t know. I feel like I’m okay. So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”

I can see all of the shades of him at once. Quiet, unfocused boy. Precocious, resentful preteen. Broody high schooler desperate to get out. Sharp-edged man trying to fit himself back into a place he never belonged to begin with.That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.“You’re not a disappointment.” It comes out faint. “You’re not wrong.”

Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.

That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have