Daphne Vincent is a children's librarian whose life has turned to shit. She met her fiancé, Peter, in Richmond, VA. They fell in love and he convinced her (it didn't take much) to move to his hometown of Waning Bay, Michigan (fictional, but set around the real-life Traverse City area). She finds a rewarding, albeit underpaid, because of course, job at the local library, settles into the house Peter buys in his name, and they're on the cusp of the wedding when on the night of his bachelor party Peter returns home to tell Daphne he's leaving her for his "platonic" best friend, Petra. Oh, and she needs to move out but he doesn't want to make this hard for her, so he and Petra will be taking a fabulous week-long vacation to the Amalfi Coast.
She could run home to her supportive single mother - but Daphne is loathe to pull up roots immediately because she's planning this amazing All-Night Readathon library fundraiser, which is still several months out. Nope, she needs to stick around, at least for a little while, and decides to move in with Petra's ex-boyfriend, Miles Nowak. Miles comes off as a no-direction, pot-smoking slacker but in truth he's much like Daphne, a broken-hearted mess. Then they both get wedding invitations to their exes' wedding and they hit the town to drown their sorrows. In their drunken haze they both decide to RSVP to the wedding, as you do. Naturally Peter calls all tutting-tutting and "I didn't want to hurt you" and generally being the absolute worst and Daphne, in her epic hungover state blurts out that she didn't RVSP with a plus-one because her plus-one ALSO got an invitation. Yep, she's seeing Miles.
The set-up is pure Tropey Goodness but what I really loved about the book is that the trope isn't doing any heavy-lifting for the conflict or developing romance. Miles finds Daphne's lie hilarious and is quickly game for it, mostly because they both want to get back at their exes. Everybody else in their life is in on the gag, including Miles' sister and Daphne's new BFF at work. What happens because of this lie is that these two hurt people start spending time together and Miles is determined to show Daphne how great Waning Bay is, that she shouldn't let her feelings about the area be colored by Peter.
Daphne is a heroine wound fairly tight, the kind of person who keeps a white-board calendar for their schedules in the kitchen. She's also buried a fair amount of pain regarding her emotionally absent father and Peter's abandonment adds to that angst. Dad had a way of not showing up when something better came along and Peter dumps her for another woman, ergo Daphne is, once again, "second best." Miles has his own childhood baggage that has resulted in him locking away messy emotions (his sister calls him "Chronically Fine"). Daphne is perfect for him because she shows him it's OK to not be OK.
My biggest gripe with a lot of current romance is that it's All Trope With No Heart, and while this one certainly is tropey, it's a story not hinging on that flimsy a house of cards. Also, while it straddles the These People Need Therapy Not A Romance line for me, it never crosses that line, probably because for all their baggage these are two characters with at least a modicum of self-awareness about their baggage. It's just hard for them to put said baggage down once in a while.
Daphne's emotional journey is in larger focus than Miles', but it's a big-hearted read featuring two characters who grow over the course of the story and find a happy ending with each other. It also has a legit, frothy romantic comedy feel to it while not being pure fluff. Seriously, I really loved it.
Final Grade = A
2 comments:
As someone who also shies away, with prejudice, from the hype-du-jour, this review is the second (after willa) to make me question myself.
(I mean, the book was already, on the list--the long, long list--but it's now moved upward considerably)
AL: I was surprised how much I loved it. Started it, inhaled it, all in one long night. If I had a quibble I'd say it could have been tightened up in some spots, maybe 50 pages trimmed - but that's a common complaint I have with a lot of single title romances. Too much category romance on my brain.
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