It occurs to me that I have a metric butt-load of romances on my Kindle, and eventually I’m going to need to get around to reading them all. I know I haven’t exactly marketed myself as a romance blogger, so I may be starting a side blog to cover all of them. No worries, I do still intend to review and post over here, just not flood you all with romances.
But for the time being, you’re the only audience I have, so you get to hear about this book. Luckily, I’m a big fan.
My family has adopted the Icelandic Christmas tradition of getting a book on Christmas Eve to take with you to bed. (The tradition also includes some chocolates, but I haven’t convinced my parents of that yet.) So this year, my mother was drawn to find a book for me, and this was the one she found, saying it “jumped out to her.” I’d never heard of it before, but it sounded interesting enough. It’s the type of description that if I saw it as a cheap book on Bookbub, I’d consider buying it, but would have to think twice if I was buying it straight off the shelf.
Word to the wise: do not hesitate. This is a glorious little book.
We follow a close-knit friend group of hyper-focused professorial types–four guys and one gal–as they realize that an upcoming event at the school is going to be an all stops out, black tie plus one type of affair. And none of them have dates. Being fairly secluded in their work environment, they decide to turn to online dating websites–and this goes about as well as one might imagine.
Millie and Reid, our female and male protagonists respectively, alternate view points. From the very start, it’s clear that these two should have hooked up ages ago, and haven’t. But Reid is a sucker for emotional connections and Millie is more bottled up than the next five people combined. So when Millie decides to use her middle name on the dating site and gets matched with Reid… She assumes he’ll figure it out instantly.
And yet.
As with most romances, we all know where it’s headed in the end, but this one was just nerve-racking enough that I peeked at the last few pages just to make sure. (I’m so bad with surprises.) Reid is dedicated to his work, Millie is trying to hide from her past and ends up hiding from her present and future at the same time… All of the group are people I’ve known, I swear–and I could see myself in both Millie and Reid’s shoes easily.
It’s a fascinating look at the current online generation, and how we struggle both to open up to one another honestly, and how difficult it can be for those of us already in professions to meet people. And as Millie shows so well, for the ladies of the group, it’s all too easy to be buried in a pile of unsolicited pictures of male genitalia and blatant attempts at sex.
It’s been a very long time since I stayed up and read a full book in one sitting, but this one demanded that I get to the end before I fell asleep. And given that I went and lied down with the intention of “I’ll read for a little before falling dead asleep because I’m exhausted,” color me impressed for staying away.
Definitely a recommended book. It’s properly a 4.5 star rating, but you’ll see it rounded up on places like Amazon and Goodreads, because it deserves to be rounded up more than it does rounded down.
Rating: **** 1/2 – Definitely Recommended
I am not lost... 