A review by alexfromistemor
Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Thanks to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Netgalley for the eARC of this title!
So, I confess, for some reason I stalled on this title in the first few pages. I do not have a proper reason why, something about the first chapter gave me pause, and I sat on it almost until my time was up with ARC, but then I randomly opened it back up the other day and could barely put it down, I just devoured it! So, we'll just not consider that stall as a comment on the book, maybe I just needed to get some spec-fics into me before I read a romance again.
This was such a sweet and wonderful story! Dahlia and London were wonderful, multilayered characters, and their chemistry together was incredible! I could happily plenty of stories of their HEA. I liked how they were flawed, at times very damaged characters. I also like that they weren't stereotypical love story tropes...they both had their sweet sides and their dark sides, and they challenged one another. It was a fantastic dynamic!
They supporting cast, when we got to know them, was often wonderful, with the obvious exception to Lizzie, the closest we come to an external antagonist (but she's mostly background noise, really the main antagonist was principal characters own internal anxieties). The supporting characters we get to know the best were Barbara, the wonderful grandmother-like contestant, and Julie, London's twin sister. Many of the others were a little more vague...a name and an attribute...Cath, the cool lesbian; Jeffrey, the Gordon Ramsay wannabe, the judges...and then there were the contestants that were literally just a name. This is not a book that focuses much on other characters, it's very much about London and Dahlia only.
Anything else I would talk about would very much be a spoiler, I think, so I'm going to cut this off here by just saying it's a wonderful little romance about food, identity, and being true to yourself. 4.5 stars rounded up.
So, I confess, for some reason I stalled on this title in the first few pages. I do not have a proper reason why, something about the first chapter gave me pause, and I sat on it almost until my time was up with ARC, but then I randomly opened it back up the other day and could barely put it down, I just devoured it! So, we'll just not consider that stall as a comment on the book, maybe I just needed to get some spec-fics into me before I read a romance again.
This was such a sweet and wonderful story! Dahlia and London were wonderful, multilayered characters, and their chemistry together was incredible! I could happily plenty of stories of their HEA. I liked how they were flawed, at times very damaged characters. I also like that they weren't stereotypical love story tropes...they both had their sweet sides and their dark sides, and they challenged one another. It was a fantastic dynamic!
They supporting cast, when we got to know them, was often wonderful, with the obvious exception to Lizzie, the closest we come to an external antagonist (but she's mostly background noise, really the main antagonist was principal characters own internal anxieties). The supporting characters we get to know the best were Barbara, the wonderful grandmother-like contestant, and Julie, London's twin sister. Many of the others were a little more vague...a name and an attribute...Cath, the cool lesbian; Jeffrey, the Gordon Ramsay wannabe, the judges...and then there were the contestants that were literally just a name. This is not a book that focuses much on other characters, it's very much about London and Dahlia only.
Anything else I would talk about would very much be a spoiler, I think, so I'm going to cut this off here by just saying it's a wonderful little romance about food, identity, and being true to yourself. 4.5 stars rounded up.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia
Minor: Homophobia and Mental illness