Review: Jenny Holiday's PARADISE COVE.

4.25⭐️.

Tropes: friends to lovers

There are some writers who really get the emotional stuff—who open up their characters & reveal the intricacies of what makes them human: fallible & lovable—and Jenny Holiday is one of them.

Like @b.andherbooks noted, Paradise Cove is a pretty emotionally devastating romance. It’s also touching, sexy as hell, & hopeful.

Physician Nora just temporarily re-located to Moonflower Bay. Almost immediately she meets the handsome, dependable Jake Ramsey, who’s still reeling from his infant son’s death & his subsequent divorce years earlier—& who doesn’t want to get past the former event at all.

Eventually & beautifully Nora & Jake become friends & then BFFs...even if the whole town is shocked by that development. And somewhere along the way they start sleeping together, both of them asserting that it’s sex & friendship only.

Jake & Nora are truly admirable characters who give so much of themselves to others. If Fixer men is your kink then you’ll love Jake and if competence porn is your thing you’ll love both leads. The chemistry between them is hot & take no prisoners, & their friendship gives me all the warm fuzzies.

Holiday’s taken on a huge project with this book, incorporating grief on and off the page, & it feels nuanced & sincere. But I did feel like some of the big moments in Nora and Jake’s relationship—how they come together, how they break part, & reconnect—kinda feel like whimpers in some ways instead of having the full emotional effect I would like. That’s maybe because the grief they’re dealing with, that Jake in particular is so ravaged by, is so tremendous & understandably has a huge effect on any entanglements he has with others.

Paradise Cove is a stunning entry to Jenny Holiday’s Matchmaker Bay series. Maybe most of all, I’m just glad to see this couple get their HEA.



CW:
death of child (off page); death of grandparent (on page); heroine cheated on by former partner (off page)

Paradise Cove is out on 07/28. Thanks to Netgalley & Forever Publishing & Grand Central Publishing for my complimentary e-ARC & the latter two for my finished print copy; all opinions provided are my own.