One-Star Romance

May 1, 2024
An aspiring writer butts heads with a stuffy academic as they're routinely thrown together to celebrate their best friends' milestones. Natalie Shapiro is surprised when her longtime best friend, Gabby, says yes to a proposal from her boyfriend, Angus; they haven't been dating for long and don't even live together. Natalie meets Rob Kapinsky, Angus' best friend, at the couple's surprise engagement party. Sparks fly immediately when the two strike up a conversation: Rob is pursuing a Ph.D. in linguistics on the West Coast, and Natalie is a writer who's decided not to get an MFA since she's already working several jobs to pay off her student debt; although they both obviously love language and reading, they don't see eye to eye when it comes to writing and academia. They reunite for Gabby and Angus' wedding, where it's revealed that Rob had panned Natalie's debut novel on Goodreads, leading to a string of further bad reviews and jeopardizing a future book deal. This begins a pattern of Rob and Natalie turning up in each other's lives at the behest of their friends and, despite sniping at one another, finding an attraction between them. The banter is fantastic, but Rob and Natalie are less than compelling leads. They're rude, judgmental, and classist. For example, Natalie makes snide remarks about Angus' looks in her internal monologue, which she uses to create a thinly veiled character in her first book. Rob is an academic from an academic family and clearly has some misconceptions about the "uneducated." It will take a lot of work to get past these initial impressions; while the characters do inevitably grow and change to achieve their happily-ever-after, the experience isn't entirely pleasant for the reader. The immaturity of the main characters sours some sizzling banter.

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May 1, 2024

Natalie and Rob are complete opposites united by their friends' impending wedding. Natalie, the maid of honor, is a struggling writer and an emotional mess. Rob, the best man, has his life's path planned in academia. From the moment they meet, there's undeniable chemistry. Their timing, however, is never right. They're on their way to being friends, until Natalie publishes her first book, and Rob gives it a one-star review, causing a huge argument and ending their connection. But their best friends are now married, so over the course of a decade, they meet at parties and events, each time leaving with mixed feelings about the other. As time passes, anger fades and other feelings rise to the surface, but they'll have to let go of their contentious past for any hope of a future together. This opposites-attract, slow-burn romance relays Rob's and Natalie's stories over more than a decade, while secondary plot lines show Natalie's emotional and professional growth over the course of the years and explore her evolving relationships with family and friends. VERDICT Fans of not only romance but women's fiction as well will enjoy this multilayered, realistic novel from Hankin (The Daydreams).--Heather Miller Cover

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