There’s been a real trend in my reading lately of emotional contemporary romances that deal with grief & general life uncertainty & it makes me happy & sad.

Happy for all of us that we’re living in a time when these topics can be discussed with gravity & often humor & always understanding & that there can be so much joy interwoven in those stories too—the joy of falling in love. 

Sad because books about grief & loss are that too, of course, & Ashley Poston’s The Dead Romantics & Sarah Adler’s Mrs. Nash’s Ashes & now Jessica Joyce’s YOU, WITH A VIEW really make their departed characters come across the page—their hopes & dreams & most importantly, their love—even as those characters are no longer physically present within the book itself. 

YOU, WITH A VIEW is just a stellar book in general, merging a rivals to lovers story with an emotional epistolary-laden road trip with splashes of humor so well. 

Not only is the book about an ending—the loss of Noelle’s grandmother & best friend—it’s also about beginnings: giving life to professional hopes & dreams, making new friends, seeing more to a high school rival than you thought was there, seeing everything. 

What else can I say about this book except that I loved it, it’s beautiful & sad & hopeful & romantic, I loved the steam, I want to go on an adventure with someone who will kiss me in a hotel room (ie my husband), & you should read this book?

​With Ashley Herring Blake’s Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail we’re back with the same magnetic, loving, boisterous & balanced friend group, this time watching Astrid—who feels an imperative to always seem calm, cool, & collected—take on the renovation of a beloved inn before the eyes of the inn’s family members, a tv crew…& as always, her overbearing mother.

Also before the eyes of carpenter Jordan Everwood, the same woman who Astrid had a nasty moment with at the end of Delilah’s book & the beginning of her own, about some spilled coffee & her power dress.

Astrid isn’t someone who is open easily—we see that even with her close circle—& it’s lovely watching her find that safe place to land with the person who she started off so antagonistically with.

Jordan, too, needs that safe place.

As always, my heart cheered for two people finding a home & a refuge with each other, especially when I can relate to one of them in some way (hello self-consciousnesses & fear of failure etc. it’s nice to see you again ). 

This book has an interesting tension that strikes at the heart of what both women desire for themselves, heart-grabbing backstories about growing up & in the present, trying to wrestle back an identity & purpose for themselves, & that aforementioned wonderful group of friends.

The “villain” in this story feels a bit obvious & I would have liked a bigger conclusion to that whole storyline, but on the whole, this is another emotional, powerful, sensual read with a great group of characters. Can’t wait for Iris’s book!