3.75⭐️

I really enjoyed this, I think it was really refreshing to see someone wanting to get out of peerage rather than be accepted in.

This really reminded me of a mix of Forever Your Rogue and Some Winters Evening by Erin Langston and that is a high compliment as those are two of my all time favourites.

We meet Theo, widowed, mother of two boys and reluctant to live under her mother in laws roof. Circumstances have brought her to reluctantly live with her family in law. She feels trapped, suffocated and a little lost at the beginning of the book.

Jeremy a tutor hired to teach the two boys is on close terms with failure. His life hasn’t quite turned out to be the way he thought it would be. Nevertheless he comes to enjoy teaching her kids and of course there’s sparks between himself and Theo 😏

The romance. There was so beautiful yearning and longing going on here, you really did feel it on the page. The only thing I wish we had have gotten was more time with them one on one because the sizzle and crack of those scenes were amazing. A few more scenes of them confiding in one another before the physical scenes would have been perfection for me!

I wanted to see more connection with Jeremy and the boys we get a few scenes with them but I wanted to see more of a “breakthrough” moment with the boys because it was obvious that Jeremy came to care for them.

All in all this was entertaining and I can’t wait to continue with the series. I’m v v intrigued with Amelia

2.75 ⭐️

I really liked this authors debut so I assumed this would be right up my street too but unfortunately it didn’t hit it for me.

I’ll start with things I liked. I liked that it was a slowburn romance we were able to really connect with them and see both perspectives together and apart and I think that really worked here.

I am a sucker for rivals to lovers so the dynamic of the relationship was something I really enjoyed too.

Unfortunately not much else worked for me. This started out promising but the overload of pop culture references felt like a slap in the face and something the author hoped the reader could relate to? I really don’t know. I thought we were (hopefully) moving on from pop culture references in contemporary because it can really age a book.

The over detailed, inner monologue-y writing. It went on and on and it could go pages upon pages before we got any dialogue and there wasn’t a reason for it. Im not sure if it was the word count needing to be hit but the book could have been a novella and packed a bigger punch that way.

The sex. I feel like authors these days are just putting in the most explicit sex in their books that actually adds nothing? The sex here was sooo out of place and if you’re immature enough to write “button” instead of “clit” then maybe a more emotionally driven sex scene that’s not so explicit could work? Just completely out of character and it felt like these two were wearing masks in the bedroom.

There was sooo many side characters too it was hard to keep count and I didn’t really care for most of them as they took up a lot of page time that could have been devoted to the couple

Also wuthering heights is not a romance. As a book seller Ella should know that. It’s a love story but it doesn’t have a HEA so it’s not a romance.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for sending me the arc!