She’s found the one. He’s just not the one for her.
I’m not usually a reader of romances, but I liked the strapline for this one and was intrigued by where this meet-cute might go.
What’s it about?
Jessie meets Cal and they spend an amazing day together, so when the night ends without them swapping numbers, Jessie is invested enough to try to hunt him down. When that fails, she’s getting ready to move on with her life until she opens a door to see Cal holding two dozen red roses. Surely, this is fate? But the roses aren’t for her…
What’s it like?
Very contemporary in style, this is a nonetheless a classic romcom that vacillates between will-they, won’t-they before settling for a happy ending, though possibly not the one readers might expect.
Williams is intent on emphasising the goodness of her heroine; she loves her dad and is raising Harry, the child she is a Nanny for, as best as she can despite his mother and father’s difficult relationship. Unfortunately, Jessie is also very much a dishcloth, allowing her employer and the potential love of her life to dictate terms to her. Cal says he will do a thing, then doesn’t do the thing, but Jessie just…allows this. Happily, by the end of the story she’s developed a bit of a backbone, but she’s quite a frustrating heroine for much of the book.
As befits a romcom, there’s another love interest and multiple complications, although as also befits a romcom, most of these complications could have been ironed out with a straightforward conversation or two. There’s also a subplot in the form of Jessie’s father’s relationship with a younger woman, which, like much of the material, had a storyline that escalated abruptly and then resolved very swiftly.
Final thoughts
If you’re generally a fan of romcoms, then this will likely tick the desired boxes. I enjoyed reading something a bit different, though I couldn’t fathom Jessie’s thinking at times and am also puzzled by how everyone thought that ‘Stray Kids’ was a good name for a childcare business. A modern romance with classic tropes.