I’ve watched all of Gilmore Girls and loved it! But I didn’t want to read a knock-off version of that show let alone 733 pages of it. Final Score: 1.8

What Worked

Score’s Humor and Readability I think Score’s natural sense of humor is the biggest strength in this book, even though I didn’t enjoy their humor personally. For readers who enjoy Score’s style of humor, I think you are going to have a good time with this one! Their exposition is also clear and very readable. Once you add in Score’s humor woven throughout the entire book, this will be a winning combo for many readers!

Hazel’s Character Arc and Calling Out the Hate Romance Can Get Similarly to Score’s clear exposition, Hazel’s character arc is very easy to follow and I think a lot of readers are going to enjoy seeing how she changes over the course of the book. Since Hazel is a romance author, she uses a lot of references that romance readers are very familiar with, but there was one section in particular that called out the hypocrisy some bookish people can have when it comes to romance as a genre. This is something that bothers me personally in the literary world, so it felt like a nice nod for me.

Small Town Dynamics As someone from a small town myself, I know alllll about the nosy neighbors and the gossip filled texts flying as soon as something happens. Score also tunes into the sense of solidarity and community that I often see in small towns both in small town romances and the real world.

The Plot - Kinda I am willing to go along with just about any plot in a book, particularly to set up the story. I’m a character driven reader, so the plot is very secondary to me - so even though the plot is consistently ridiculous in this book, I think it’s part of its charm/humor. Fans of the humor might really love the plot, since I’m not plot driven I’m fine with waving it away.

Cam’s Parents I won’t go into details here since it’s later in the book, but they deserve a special shout out!

Where It Fell Short For Me

It’s 733 Pages This is going to flavor a lot of my critique because this book is closing in on double the length it should have been, so once I hit the 50% mark and I still had a “full” novel to go, my patience faded quickly. At the time of publishing, I don’t know if the sequel was already set, but it was clear to me that this was setting up for a series. Since it would be the first book in that series, there are a LOT of characters you are introduced to and while I’ll give a little grace because it’s a series starter, I cannot give it 733 pages of grace.

I Think I’ve Seen This Show Before: Gilmore Girls Knock-Off and Sitcom Style Writing In compiling my notes to write this review, I found out that there are different blurbs for this book. The blurb I read initially did not have the comp to Gilmore Girls and Schitt's Creek, but the Gilmore Girls of it all was immediately apparent to me. I really enjoyed watching Gilmore Girls (particularly when Amy Sherman-Palladino was involved) and enjoyed Luke and Lorelai’s relationship throughout the show - Cam is going to get his own section, but in so many ways he felt like a direct rip off of Luke. (To be clear, not in a plagiarism way, just the same characterization) He’s grumpy but with a good heart, he is a handyman (literally), he lives in a bachelor pad apartment above the shop his father used to run - we are just missing the ever present baseball cap! Hazel differs more, but I think it’s because her characterization leans heavily into her being a romance author, but she has the quirky humor style of Lorelai (plus a very strained relationship with her mother), banters at the same speed, but instead of Lorelai’s dependence on coffee, just swap the coffee for specifically Wild Cherry Pepsi. Yes, for breakfast.

This extends beyond the main cast - as we met different towns folk, if I couldn’t immediately find their Gilmore Girls equivalent, the characters felt like another sitcom character I have seen before. I didn’t count all of the characters we are introduced to in this book, but this was a very large cast - like you would see in a sitcom. There were a lot of scenes that had 5+ characters all rapid fire bantering at once and I could almost play the different camera angles in my head. You have the two main characters in the scene talking on one camera, then it cuts to another camera to capture the commentary the other characters are saying about the scene we are all watching. Multiple times throughout the book, I could tell where the “episode” ended. There were a lot of scenes throughout the book that I could either remember direct episodes of Gilmore Girls pulling a similar gag/scene or various other sitcoms. This made it so nothing in this book felt fresh or original to me - even the bird dropping a fish on someone’s head while driving (special shout out to @OhMyDio for pointing this out)!!

Dialogue Issues and Shallow Characters I have watched a lot of behind the scenes footage of Gilmore Girls over the years and learned how thick their scripts were because there was so much rapid fire banter each episode packed in. We see a similar format here (which added to the length), but the dialogue did not work for me in the book. I love banter in general and the Gilmore Girls style of banter, so I took some time to really dig into why this wasn’t working. I think the core issue is that the dialogue across characters all sounds about the same. In these large 5+ character scenes, I kept running into issues where it was important for me to know who said what and without dialogue tags, I couldn’t actually track it down.

The clearest example should be Hazel vs Cam. Hazel is the sunshine character, successful author, and has always lived in New York City. Cam is the grumpy character, he spent the majority of his life in this small town, working with his family on the farm or as a contractor. Native New Yorkers already have a pretty distinct speech style, but even if we don’t get that specific - I should be able to tell from dialogue alone which one of them is speaking and it wasn't very distinct. This issue gets even muddier when you add in such a large cast as I mentioned above and relatively few dialogue tags.

This is extra damaging because there are so many characters in this book, it’s incredibly difficult to give them real depth even in 733 pages! Ironically, if most of the characters did have distinct voices, it would have given them a little more depth or at least characterization. In a sitcom, you don’t necessarily need in depth characterization to be written out because the actors help differentiate the characters clearly in their own voices, mannerism, bits, etc. Because I can only work with the words on the page, the shallow characterization slipped into caricatures for me and as a character driven reader - this is one of the most frustrating things to read particularly for 733 pages.

Continuity Errors The length also really didn’t help with the continuity errors I kept catching. Some are small, like in chapter 16 when Cam notes that Hazel “put on some kind of makeup that made those watchful brown eyes look bigger, more dangerous.” But in Chapter 22 Cam asks Hazel “Poke yourself with mascara wand?” “How’d you know?” “The three of us shared a bathroom with Laura growing up. I’m aware of the dangers of cosmetics.” Others are much larger or at least should have been caught. I have a whole post in the forum about curtains and the layout of the house - as someone who cannot mentally visualize anything it is not a good sign when I am catching continuity errors with the layout of the main characters house considering the house is pretty much another character in this book.

The Ages I was so excited in chapter one when I found these characters are in their mid-thirties. No shade to the younger protagonists, but as someone in their 30’s I enjoy reading about people my own age sometimes! However, these characters do not act like they are in their 30’s, they don’t even seem like adults. They often came across as teenagers or maaaaaybe early 20’s. You cannot just say that characters are in their 30’s and call it a day - yes, each character may have varying degrees of maturity, but the entire cast felt immature to me - so either they were not written to be 30 year olds and/or pretty much the entire cast is underdeveloped. Some of this might be chalked up to the humor style that I didn’t vibe with, particularly with Hazel using phrases like “my lady cave”, “naked rodeo”, etc to describe her sexual encounters.

Cam I always give grumpy/unlikeable characters grace in the beginning of a book because they need room to grow and that’s fine. I can see what Cam’s character arc was supposed to be, but once again the execution did not land for me. I went from “okay, he is a knock-off grumpy Luke, this is fine, he’ll get better” to actively loathing this man by the end of the book. If Hazel was my friend in real life I would be having an intervention with her! For how long this book is, it’s crazy to me that a big part of my issues with Cam is that we actually don’t dive into what is actually driving him. It’s mentioned, but it’s not actually dug into, so he can’t grow through it.

Final Thoughts, Opinions & Recommendations

I know I critiqued the hell out of the book, but I do genuinely see why Score is a popular romance author! I think if I had latched on to her humor style or got to dig in deep with the main characters, I don’t think I would have been so focused on the craft issues because I would have been enjoying at least part of the ride. Instead, for 733 pages I was just getting more and more frustrated because I can tell that Score is a competent, capable writer but they consistently missed the mark for me. They somehow managed to drag this book out almost double the length it needed to be without giving me any depth in the characters or even a well-developed plot. Instead, they took the more is more route including being heavy-handed throughout the entire book as if they didn’t trust their reader which is very disappointing.

My thanks to my local public library for having this book available on Libby! GO SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY!! We are so lucky to have them!

TL;DR

Would I Recommend it? Nah, but I think already established fans of Score will find a lot more to love than I did. If you are considering reading it maybe see if you can read a "sneak peek" through your reading app first to see if you vibe with the humor style Would I Reread it? NO Would I Continue the Series/Read More From This Author? Incredibly unlikely. If there was a blurb that really stood out to me, I would check the page length first. Anything over 450 pages is an instant no for me.
Spice Level: 4 The actual acts feel more like a 3.5 to me, however, due to the plot/nature of their relationship (aka them both being horny 24/7) I think I would feel more comfortable erring on the side of caution with a 4. I’m going to leave both levels' definitions since it’s kinda inbetween imo. 3 Open Door/Spicy - The chemistry is explicit and characters have intimate encounters on the page. It uses detailed romantic language to describe the physical connection diving including graphic anatomy or highly adventurous acts. 4 Hot & Heavy - Highly explicit, vivid, and detailed descriptions of multiple intimate scenes. The encounters feature explicit language and map out multiple acts, serving as a core driver of the plot and relationship development Series Information: 1/2 published, but I suspect the series is ongoing.

Star Score Breakdown

Personal Enjoyment: 1 Overall Execution: 1.5 Craft & Writing Quality: 2.5 Characters: 2 Plot: 2 Final Score: 1.8

I would’ve liked more mystery than romance but I knew what I was getting into. The magic system was very cool and I’m genuinely curious where the overarching plot is going.