SLOW DANCE
Rainbow Rowell
What I wanted was romance. I wanted true love and happily ever after, what it ended up being was a slow burn that went out before it even got started.
SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell (secretly one of my favorite authors) stars Shiloh and Cary. It feels like they’ve known each other forever. They were friends in school and grew up to live separate lives. Now adults, Shiloh wonders if there might be something more to their connection, Cary has always known there is.
We follow as the years go by and their relationship morphs and changes over time. Will they put their feelings first and permanently change their status? Or will they stay friends forever?
Will they-won’t they can take you a long way but without a little bit of sizzle every once in a while the fire will go out. This romance pairing didn’t work for me, unfortunately. I did not connect with either of the main characters. Even though I didn’t connect with the characters I enjoyed the writing and carriage of the story.
As the book went on, I grew frustrated with how slowly everything moved, and I wished the characters were more in the driver’s seat of their lives, rather than observing from the passenger seat. My biggest problem with SLOW DANCE was the pace of the relationship between Shiloh and Cary.
I love Rainbow Rowell and will probably check out everything she publishes. Oddly, it seems although I don’t often read young adult literature, I prefer Rainbow’s novels for young adults.
Thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for the advanced copy!
SLOW DANCE…⭐⭐⭐
PICTURES OF YOU
Emma Grey
“Whenever I’m alone with you, you make me feel like I am whole again.”
The Cure
A life forsaken you have no memory of living. A husband dead you don’t remember loving. Your future, is suddenly at the mercy of a person you don’t remember being.
Should you make yourself smaller to fit in the spaces that never allowed you to be the breadth of who you were meant to be?
Evie wakes up in the hospital after a devastating accident that took the life of her husband. She wakes up with no memory of the last decade. She thinks she is 16, in high school, determined to not marry, to be on her own, to live a life her parents would be proud of, that she would be proud of.
In reality, Evie’s life is very different than what her sixteen-year-old self wanted. She started out with dreams of independence, in reality, she is bound lock and key to a man she doesn’t remember marrying. Her easiest hello and hardest goodbye, but it’s not him she grieves. It is the dream of her life she has trouble letting go of.
Enter Drew…
How do you write the ending to a story that someone else has written? All at once every dream you gave up on over the course of your lifetime seems attainable and worth fighting for.
If you were given the chance to rewrite your life, would you? If you were given the chance to repaint the masterpiece that is your life, would you use the same colors?
I didn’t need this to be a love story. I didn’t want it to have a happily ever after ending. I wanted Evie’s start to be her own. I wanted her to claim what she lost. I wanted a recovery story. But this is Emma Grey, and her strong suit is romance.
Happily ever after is what I got.
Maybe I feel it is romantic enough for Evie to rediscover herself. To fall in love with her life all over again. Maybe I’m tired of the love interest coming in and being the savior. Maybe I wanted her to save herself.
This is fiction after all.
PICTURES OF YOU might be just what you need from your reading right now. It’s well-written, there is strong character development and an unforgettable sequence of events. An unraveling you find yourself as the reader twisted in.
Perhaps I’ll revisit this book when it is not the same week as a presidential election. When my spirits are high, the sun is shining, and when I can look at the bright side of being loved and swallowed whole, tip to tip.
Thanks to Librofm for the advanced listening copy!
PICTURES OF YOU…⭐️⭐️⭐️
THE ROM-COMMERS
Katherine Center
Emma and Charlie set out to write a great romantic comedy and end up writing their own love story.
Emma dreams of being a Hollywood screenwriter. It would be her one wish come true. Logan, her manager, knows this and has the most exciting opportunity for her. She would co-write a rom-com with the famous screenwriter, Charlie Yates. She says yes to the offer before knowing all the details. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
There’s just one problem…
Emma is coming in a little late. Charlie has already written a manuscript and Logan says it’s not his best work, it’s terrible, he says. Although he is a famous screenwriter, he has never written a rom-com. Emma takes it upon herself to teach him all about the rules of writing an exceptional romantic comedy and ends up teaching him all about the rules of love.
I never let a year go by without spending time with one of my favorite authors. Katherine Center is known more for her sweet emotional connections and less for her sizzling love-making scenes. When I read her books my sarcasm and pessimism take a back seat to lightheartedness and optimism. We all deserve to have a little pocket of joy and Katherine Center is that for me.
She takes me back to a more innocent time of my life when love was all there was and the only thing you lose in a relationship is time. She reminds me that sometimes it is that simple; all there is is LOVE!
Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copies! It was my pleasure to read.
THE ROM-COMMERS…⭐⭐⭐⭐
