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A review by readingwithkt
The Friendship Fling by Georgia Stone
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Note: this review is based on an ARC and it contains spoilers.
The Friendship Fling by Georgia Stone is a fairly slow burn (fake) friends to lovers story set in London, UK.
Ava and Finn happen to meet one day in the coffee shop where Ava works. Finn is bright and warm and optimistic, whereas Ava is closed off and rude for the most part. She happens to use his name one day when reassuring her concerned friend and flatmate that she is making friends at work, and he ends up being invited to a flat warming party they are hosting in six or so weeks time. Meanwhile, Finn discloses that he has a London bucket list that he would like to complete before his contract ends at the end of the summer (conveniently, at around a similar time to the party). He invites Ava to help him tick the items off his bucket list and she reluctantly agrees. So continues a sort of fake friendship between the two - he agrees to keep up the appearance that he is her friend to her flatmate, meanwhile they go on all these adventures together ticking off his bucket list. They end up forming a genuine friendship (and then romance).
The book flips between Ava and Finn as our two narrators, though Ava gets far more of a voice than Finn. Given how uneven this was, I'm not sure that I felt it was necessary. Or rather, perhaps I would have wanted it to be more evenly split and Finn's storyline with his parents/upbringing could have been fleshed out a little further.
I found the friendship side of their relationship very readable and while I felt the grumpy-sunshine dynamic was a bit overplayed (though this isn't a trope I'd usually reach for so maybe a lot of grumpy-sunshine romances are like this?), I enjoyed their adventures and was enjoying ticking items off Finn's bucket list.
I liked the message of encouragement within the book for figuring out what your dreams are, allowing yourself to pursue them, and also taking time with yourself to process trauma and be able to move forward in a healthy way.
I also thought that the introduction of Max, Ava's brother, was a clever one as it allowed us to get to see a softer side to Ava early on in the book and we started to see some of her personal values come through as we watched them interact and heard the way she felt about him.
As the friendship turns into romance, I found that I had to suspend disbelief a little to overcome the somewhat corny nature of some of the scenes and the way their feelings seemed to become extraordinarily intense very quickly. I felt like we skipped the parts where people naturally start to develop feelings for someone and went straight to "I would do anything for this person" type of declarations. It was a little intense and involved basically an entire personality transplant for our Ava, who had been dismissive, cold, sarcastic, and closed off for the other half of the book.
There are a couple of open door sex scenes in the book. Perhaps I was distracted by how strangely their relationship was shifting between these extremes, but I found it difficult to get lost in the sex scenes. I owed this, at least in part, to the way they were written. There's one point where she pulls a vibrator out of a bedside table but doesn't actually name the object, so I was very confused in thinking perhaps it was a condom she threw at Finn. Then the way the author describes orgasms as being a heaviness below the stomach was a little strange. And the general flow of the sex scenes were just a little stilted or clumsily written for me.
All-in-all, a light read which has the underlying message of figuring yourself out, and a fun friendship between two very different characters.
Tropes: grumpy=sunshine, (fake)-friends=to=lovers, only one bed.
The Friendship Fling by Georgia Stone is a fairly slow burn (fake) friends to lovers story set in London, UK.
Ava and Finn happen to meet one day in the coffee shop where Ava works. Finn is bright and warm and optimistic, whereas Ava is closed off and rude for the most part. She happens to use his name one day when reassuring her concerned friend and flatmate that she is making friends at work, and he ends up being invited to a flat warming party they are hosting in six or so weeks time. Meanwhile, Finn discloses that he has a London bucket list that he would like to complete before his contract ends at the end of the summer (conveniently, at around a similar time to the party). He invites Ava to help him tick the items off his bucket list and she reluctantly agrees. So continues a sort of fake friendship between the two - he agrees to keep up the appearance that he is her friend to her flatmate, meanwhile they go on all these adventures together ticking off his bucket list. They end up forming a genuine friendship (and then romance).
The book flips between Ava and Finn as our two narrators, though Ava gets far more of a voice than Finn. Given how uneven this was, I'm not sure that I felt it was necessary. Or rather, perhaps I would have wanted it to be more evenly split and Finn's storyline with his parents/upbringing could have been fleshed out a little further.
I found the friendship side of their relationship very readable and while I felt the grumpy-sunshine dynamic was a bit overplayed (though this isn't a trope I'd usually reach for so maybe a lot of grumpy-sunshine romances are like this?), I enjoyed their adventures and was enjoying ticking items off Finn's bucket list.
I liked the message of encouragement within the book for figuring out what your dreams are, allowing yourself to pursue them, and also taking time with yourself to process trauma and be able to move forward in a healthy way.
I also thought that the introduction of Max, Ava's brother, was a clever one as it allowed us to get to see a softer side to Ava early on in the book and we started to see some of her personal values come through as we watched them interact and heard the way she felt about him.
As the friendship turns into romance, I found that I had to suspend disbelief a little to overcome the somewhat corny nature of some of the scenes and the way their feelings seemed to become extraordinarily intense very quickly. I felt like we skipped the parts where people naturally start to develop feelings for someone and went straight to "I would do anything for this person" type of declarations. It was a little intense and involved basically an entire personality transplant for our Ava, who had been dismissive, cold, sarcastic, and closed off for the other half of the book.
There are a couple of open door sex scenes in the book. Perhaps I was distracted by how strangely their relationship was shifting between these extremes, but I found it difficult to get lost in the sex scenes. I owed this, at least in part, to the way they were written. There's one point where she pulls a vibrator out of a bedside table but doesn't actually name the object, so I was very confused in thinking perhaps it was a condom she threw at Finn. Then the way the author describes orgasms as being a heaviness below the stomach was a little strange. And the general flow of the sex scenes were just a little stilted or clumsily written for me.
All-in-all, a light read which has the underlying message of figuring yourself out, and a fun friendship between two very different characters.
Tropes: grumpy=sunshine, (fake)-friends=to=lovers, only one bed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Infidelity, Sexual content, Medical content, Medical trauma, Abandonment, and Alcohol
Moderate: Death