Alicia Thompson is a writer, reader, and Paramore superfan. As a teen, she appeared in an episode of 48 Hours in the audience of a local murder trial, where she broke the fourth wall by looking directly into the camera. She currently lives in Florida with her husband and two children. You can find her online on Twitter and Instagram @AliciaBooks.
PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She's even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It's hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn't had a relationship with for years. It doesn't help that she's low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer. (He may dress business casual by day, but at night he's clearly up to something.) It's not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.
I adore books that champion books themselves, whether through writing about librarians, bookstores, or graduate students writing their dissertation about a genre usually looked down upon. The latter is exactly what Phoebe is in the middle of doing when she's called back to her dead father's home to pack up the house. Phoebe loves true crime, and has for ages. Her dissertation is all about how authors in the genre form connections with their subject matter. Through Phoebe's area of study, readers learn all about true crime, sometimes through real references to real cases (such as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood), all the way to parodies of real novels and crimes. It is a lofty move to write a contemporary romance book that focuses so heavily on this genre's "complete opposite" but it's like what Conner says—the opposite of love is fear. Thompson is able to pull off this combination of romance subject matter and true crime subject matter, creating a story that is, in fact, about true love.
Phoebe is probably one of the most relatable protagonists I've read in a while. Having come from a broken home, she is wary of love and of family, outside of the relationship she is forming with her younger brother over the course of the novel. She is very all-or-nothing concerning relationships, as we learn when she rekindles her friendship with an old friend from middle school. So of course, things with Sam weren't going to go smoothly, even once she neutralized the threat of his possibly being a serial killer. I absolutely love how Thompson handled Phoebe's wariness, never making her character a villain despite all the shitty moves Phoebe makes in her attempt to protect herself. What I always loved, too, is how even though Phoebe made those bad moves, she recognized her mistake and always tried to make up for it. This made Phoebe relatable, as well as a character you wanted to cheer for. I also just have to shout out how Phoebe is fat, and how the author never made it a big deal—I am a huge fan of having fat protagonists where that is never focused on for more than a few words. It is always much appreciated.
Of course I can't talk about a contemporary romance without talking about the romance! Phoebe and Sam are the definition of a cute, feel good romance. Like I've mentioned above, I love that this contemporary romance definitely has focuses on other things—such as the development of siblinghood and friendship, a graduate dissertation, and recovering from the grief that comes with having a recently dead parent. But the central focus of a contemporary romance has to be a romance, and Phoebe and Sam's starts off strong. Phoebe moves in next to Sam, they have a few awkward encounters, and one thing starts to lead to another. I love how their relationship is used to explore a relationship that faces one partner working on a dissertation, and the other wanting something the other is unsure they want. I really enjoyed that: how Sam and Phoebe have their differences over the future and not the present. While because of that the romance felt a little underdeveloped, it overall was such an honest, heartfelt depiction of love in the contemporary era that I felt myself completely cheering for their happy ending.
Alicia Thompson is going to continue writing contemporary romance (thank goodness!) and her next book is out in August, titled From Cold World, With Love—I can't wait to get my hands on it. Until then, you can find Alicia online on Twitter and Instagram @AliciaBooks.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
Comments
Post a Comment