Author of debut phenomenon Dear You and other bestsellers, Emily Blaine has become, with over 600,000 copies sold to date, the queen of contemporary French romance. A Breton by birth and a Parisian by adoption, her greatest pleasure is writing, and hearing from her readers.
Sarah and Max should never have met. She's a shy bookworm who's barely ever left her little village; he's a bad boy actor with the world at his feet. But when Max crosses one line too many, he's faced with community service in Sarah's bookshop. With an unruly theatre group to run and a gorgeous, tattooed stranger under her roof, Sarah's about to discover that real life is more complicated than anything she's ever read in her beloved books.
I, like many others it seemed, was excited to fall in love with this book. It seemed like it was going to be very trope-y (grumpyxsunshine, force proximity, roommates, opposites attract, just to name a few) with a meta element to boot. Unfortunately, all of these tropes come falling down when it's just not enjoyable to read. The translation makes for a very stilted reading experience, and there were some instances where I felt like the text wasn't even copy edited (incorrect pronouns, persistent textual inconsistencies, etc.). I also felt like the translation was too literal, and didn't do a good job of trying to adjust the language to appeal to an American audience—awkward phrasing took me out of the story one too many times.
Looking past the story from a sentence level, I found that neither of the characters were very likable. Maxime is a jerk at the beginning, and I didn't believe in his ability to change in two months based on his initial interactions with Sarah. As a bookworm who also loves to hide behind the pages of a book, I found Sarah's innocence frustrating and unrealistic. Neither character was relatable, which did not make me invested in their stories. The fact that Sarah and Maxime weren't fully fleshed out, either—does anyone truly understand their history/trauma and how that makes them who they are today?—didn't help matters.
The pacing was also incredibly off. There was a lot of build up at the beginning, and by the end everything is happening too quickly to feel believable. Add in a storyline that's traumatic and then not explored deeply enough to do it justice, it makes for a book that's incredibly difficult to digest. I would have liked to be invested in the characters' journeys, but the myriad of issues with this book stops that from happening. Which is so unfortunate, because I was so excited to fall in love with it!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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