If you’re new here, I run a romance bookclub at my local independent bookstore, The Briar Patch in Bangor, Maine. Hoppily Ever After meets monthly at BookSpace, and our new spinoff romantasy book club, A Burrow of Rabbits and Readers, meets quarterly!

The great thing about running a book club is that I get to choose the book every month! The not so great thing about running a book club is that I have to choose the book every month. Let me tell you, this is sometimes a very hard decision! I poll the group occasionally to get a feel for their favorite authors, favorite and least favorite tropes, and spice preferences. I try to make it a recent release so that it’s new for everyone, and not something that they’ve already read. Sometimes I get a chance to pre-read the books, if I’ve gotten access to a galley and used that to help me make my decision. Other times I go in based on plot summary and early reviews. Occasionally I’ll get input from a friend or the whole group – once I had them vote based on plot summary, without knowing the author or title first! We’ve had some hits and misses over the years, and some that we laugh about still. But this one might’ve been the most disappointing.

I’m going to try to keep this spoiler-free, in case even after my review you still want to go check it out.

Katie is a ghostwriter for the romance master, Meredith Bradford. She often has a writing partner to work through the material with, but her new writing partner didn’t work out at the last minute, so her editor hired Tyler. But Katie and Tyler have a messy and complicated history. He was the boy next door, her brother’s best friend, and they hadn’t spoken to each other since her brother’s death eight years ago. Despite not wanting to work with him, Katie eventually agrees that they can be civil just to write this book together. And when Meredith invites the two of them to write from her Hamptons estate, their forced proximity leads to even more complications.

My initial expectations were that this would be a lighthearted romance, making a parody of itself with the tropes. Despite knowing about Katie’s brother from the plot summary, I didn’t think the book would be as heavy as it was. About 2/3 through the book, I thought this one was going to break me. I even texted my best friend to say I was preparing for the upcoming emotional break. Having already finished the book, she knew what I was in for…and it was definitely an emotion, just not the teary one I expected. The plot twist that came left me yelling “what the fuck?!!” at my book. I was frustrated, annoyed, and disappointed. Without spoiling it, you should know that there’s a magical realism element to this book. Nothing in the plot summary or earlier in the story had led me to imagine that happening, and it just felt like a lazy way to end what had started out as a beautiful book. And the general consensus at book club was the same – with the exception of one person who’d seen online that there was a magical realism element!

I had even taken the time to highlight a number of passages in the book. There were some really funny and heartbreaking moments. I was enjoying the voices of the characters, and even loved Pinot the cat and the part he played in helping write the story. One quote in particular stood out: “That is the beauty of romance. We don’t let the fact that things are a little implausible get in the way of a good time.” That’s the type of play on the genre that I expected from the book. Those of us who read a lot of romance know how ridiculous and predictable it can seem sometimes. But that doesn’t take away from the pure enjoyment we get from the genre. There’s comfort in that predictability, especially when a lot of other things in life are so hard.

Maybe that’s why this one ultimately didn’t do it for me. The unpredictable nature was just not what I expected, and didn’t satisfy my typical comfortable feelings of the genre. Overall, I gave it a 2.5 star rating. The spice was good when it was there, but there was very little of it, getting a 1 pepper rating.

Next month’s book I’ve already read, so at least we know October won’t be a disappointment too! October 7 we’ll be discussing In Stormy Weather by Chelsea Curto. I just got the Probably Smut version, and it is beautiful. Hope to see you then, or check back here for a recap next month!