Sophie Sullivan is a Canadian author as well as a cooking-eating, Diet Pepsi-drinking, Disney enthusiast who loves reading and writing romance in almost equal measure. She writes around her day job as a teacher and spends her spare time with her sweet family watching reruns of Friends. Ten Rules for Faking It was her rom-com debut novel, but she's had plenty of practice writing happily ever afters as her alter ego, Jody Holford. You can find Sophie Sullivan at SophieSullivanAuthor.com.
Interior design school? Check. Cute house to fix up? Also check. Grumpy, sexy neighbor who is going to get in the way of all of your plans? Check. Unfortunately. Grace Travis definitely has it all figured out. Okay, not really. But in between finishing school and working nine million odd jobs, she'll get her degree and her dream job. Most important, she'll have a place to belong. When an opportunity arises to fix up—and live in—a little house on the beach as her final design project, Grace is all in. Until her biggest roadblock moves in next door. Noah Jansen knows how to make a deal. As a real estate developer, he knows he's found something special. Something he can even call home. Provided he can expand by taking over the house next door—the house with the combative and beautiful woman living in it. With the rules for being neighborly out the window, Grace and Noah are in an all-out feud. But, sometimes, your nemesis can show you that home is always where the heart is. A frothy, effervescent romantic comedy from the author of Ten Rules for Faking It, Sophie Sullivan's latest delivers a slow-burn romance that will have you delighted from start to finish.
One of my biggest draws to the book was its focus on house renovations, and the aspect of being next door neighbors. I thought it was fun to pull a sort of "high school" or young adult trope of "the boy/girl next door" and freshen it up for the adult genre of contemporary romance. The novel itself read like I watching a reality home renovation TV show, with challenges to get people involved in the fixing up and redesigning of the houses. This, for me, was the most entertaining aspect of the novel—the "who will get the house" coupled with the family drama was certainly what kept me intrigued all the way to the end.
Unfortunately, too many other aspects of the plot and story sprawled in spirals that I could not follow. The first was the large cast of characters. I found out after reading that some characters were actually making encores—Sophie Sullivan's first novel, Ten Rules for Faking It, featured Everly and Chris as main characters. I didn't know that, and wondered why there was a lot of outside characters influencing Grace's and Noah's decisions. For previous fans, these previous characters are sure to bring delight. For new readers like myself, it might just get too confusing. There are a lot of characters, many anxieties, none of which get the full attention they need. While I suppose you could argue that this better reflects real life (the countless anxieties, the interruptions), it doesn't make for the strongest storytelling. I felt that if only the story and plot were tighter, this novel would have reached its fullest potential. As it stands, there is way too much content, and not enough deep diving into some of the deepest parts to make it as fulfilling as it could have been.
All of that being said, there are a lot of positives to this kind of storytelling. The novel itself was fast-paced, which made for a quick read, which can be a positive for a lot of readers who really want to dive in. The romance is also clean, which was refreshing. There were some instances of repetition, but I really felt like Sullivan was leaning into beloved romance tropes and making contemporary romance accessible to all types of readers—new and old fans of the genre. We get invested in the characters and their drama early—since the first few pages we can't wait to see Grace succeed, and we hope that Noah will develop into the kind of man that deserves someone like her. Both of those hopes come to fruition, making for a very satisfying read. And, of course, we get our happily ever after: Noah has finally really heard Grace and makes the commitment to keep doing so, and Grace dedicates herself to a new way of thinking that eases her anxieties, which puts them in a great place to make the full commitment of an engagement. There really isn't a happier ending than that.
For more Sophie Sullivan, visit SophieSullivanAuthor.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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