“A sapphic opposites-attract romance with Mazey Edding’s signature sparkling voice!
Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin’s’s life. After quitting her dead-end job where she’d earned minimum wage and even less respect, she’s bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can’t seem to stop saying yes.
With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business.
But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Smith is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states she’s the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and isn’t moving out. The unlikely pair strike up an agreement of co-habitation, and butt-heads at every turn. Can these opposites both live out their dreams and plant roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?”
I got an ARC of this book.
This isn’t a bad book, but it was slower than felt right. I ended up getting the audiobook and listening to it at 1.5-2x the speed to make it feel the right speed. I think this is a me problem and not the book this time though. Everything is dragging, even when I enjoy it. I did enjoy this for the most part.
The characters were almost three dimensional. There was an attempt, but it didn’t really feel complete. Pepper’s main trait is being autistic. Opal’s main trait is being a bit flighty. The conflict was createad by someone who was barely in the book, so some of the choices to deal with it just felt weird. A lot of the book didn’t quite make sense, but it kept going and it was mostly cute so I kept going.
The romance didn’t make sense, but I liked it. I liked how Pepper and Opal showed their affection for each other, even when it didn’t make sense that they were together. I liked the big sweeping gestures and the small little details. The big gestures were needed for Pepper, but the small gestures were needed for Opal. So the way that the relationship worked out was pretty amazing. I really enjoyed that even if the start didn’t work for me.
I did appreciate that everything wasn’t magically fixed by one long shot in the end. That is a bit spoiler, but there is a lot more to it. There was a fix, it is a romance after all. It just wasn’t the plan I didn’t expect to work anyway. That was a long shot and felt too Disney.
Overall, it was an ok book. It was cute, even if it didn’t land all the time.
3.5 out of 5 stars. I would recommend this book.
You can buy the book here.
~Isaiah
MI Book Reviews 