Author: Jae
Genre: Contemporary Romance 🌶️
Tropes: Musician, Return to Hometown, Slow Burn
Series: Fair Oaks #1
Pages: 322
Published: September 20th, 2017
Format: ebook (kindle), audiobook (audible)
Started: 10-20-2024
Finished: 10-21-2024
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character
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readability
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writing style
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plot
synopsis
Pop star Leontyne Blake might sing about love, but she stopped believing in it a long time ago. What women want is her image, not the real her. When her father has a stroke, she flees the spotlight and returns to her tiny Missouri hometown.
In her childhood home, she meets small-town nurse Holly Drummond, who isn’t impressed by Leo’s fame at all. That isn’t the only thing that makes Holly different from other women. She’s also asexual. For her, dating is a minefield of expectations that she has decided to avoid.
Can the tentative friendship between a burned-out pop star and a woman not interested in sex develop into something more despite their diverse expectations?
rant
- this was just ok ‐ Jae’s books are so hit or miss to me and this was lowkey a miss
- Her writing style is great but w/o the audiobook there’s no way I would’ve ever finished this
- I honestly found both characters to be so boring once the initial tension between them was over
- There would be some really great nice scenes and then a bunch of boring stuff in between where nothing really happened
- I liked all of the deeper conversations they had about family and their sexualities I found them really interesting and some great messages were made but the overall plot of this was just meh and very predictable
- I honestly wish Leo would’ve talked more to her parents / there were more scenes of her with them, especially her mom, versus spending all her time thinking and worrying about Holly ‐ like it makes sense for this book (especially it being a romance) that she does think about holly a lot but it made her seem superficial and like not that deep of a character
- Holly was really sweet and caring but also boring because we didn’t really get to explore any of her interest really like we did with Leo ‐ I liked that we got to explore her sexuality a lot but that was like the only thing she got to talk about really besides her job some and a little bit about video games
- Any book dealing w/ parental grief is always going to get me emotional tho ‐ I feel like it has to be one of the worst things someone goes through unless they’re not super tight w/ their parents
- Also I’m sorry but the song lyrics though . . . in the nicest way possible they were awful
- Wouldn’t read again
noted & quoted
- rooftop scene
