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Community Reviews
2.5 stars for me. This one was nice, but definitely my least favorite of the Brown sisters books and I found it to be the least believable.
The autism representation in this book was great and I love to see it. This is a great opposites attract, slow-burn romance that is STEAMY once it gets going. I loved seeing Eve go from expecting to always fail to enjoying her job and succeeding!
So I began reading The Brown Sisters series backwards as I started with Eve's book and now that I have finished the whole series I can indeed confirm that I liked this book the least.
Don't get me wrong, the story overall is a super cute premise. The setting of a bed and breakfast in a quiet town was cozy along with the parts of Eve's baking and cooking and it made me feel like I was playing a cozy simulator game. Eve had her funny quips every now and then that would make me smile and it was refreshing to read from a light-hearted and energetic perspective. Jacob was a typical grumpy guy. But, I loved how Jacob's way of navigating interactions with people and emotions while having autism was shown to readers through reading his thought process behind every action/word. Watching Eve and Jacob figure out that they actually liked each other rather than hated each other, first as friends then as something more, was sweet (even though they went from hating each other to being close very fast). And if you are into sex scenes then this story has some good ones that in my opinion show the two main leads have good chemistry, though their dialogue can make it extremely corny at times.
However, a lot of the dialogue and character actions in this book were so cringy and awkward at times it was almost unenjoyable to get through. Eve had so many horrible lines that I felt ridiculous reading them - I couldn't even imagine saying them aloud like she did. I don't remember the exact wording but there is a scene where she refers to Jacob's dick as a pepper or some other food and her own vagina being full of wet glitter or something along those lines. Besides this being cringe inducing, I don't even know what it means. There are many other awkward scenes like all the times Jacob would unknowingly be staring at Eve's boobs and Eve literally hitting Jacob with her car (which is the main event that sets the plot in motion). Not to mention that the third-act breakup was so... mean? I did not enjoy reading it. Eve's dad is rude and assuming to Jacob, Jacob says incredibly mean things to Eve, and the reader has even less fun during their breakup than the typical romance breakup.
Additionally, I do think some topics in the book deserved more nuance. Eve comes from a wealthy background which is a privilege to her and is what allows her to bounce from career to career, and she barely acknowledges it throughout the book. As readers we are not told what Eve's motivations are for not keeping a job until almost the end of the book. I know the whole point of Eve's character arc is that she has to mature out of this mindset but it made parts of the book, like some of her actions/reactions and all her interactions with her family, seem out of touch. Also, while I previously said I appreciated Jacob's autism representation, it was a little weird to me that he diagnosed Eve as being autistic after knowing her for like, a week. And she just takes his word and the internet's word for it without any kind of outside or professional input. I cannot speak for the autistic community as whole but in my eyes autism is not a label that you can just slap on to someone.
Despite these moments that were sometimes hard to read, this novel was cute. The characters were cute together, the setting was cute, it was all cute and cozy. I just wish there weren't these constant sprinkles of eye-roll inducing moments put in.
Don't get me wrong, the story overall is a super cute premise. The setting of a bed and breakfast in a quiet town was cozy along with the parts of Eve's baking and cooking and it made me feel like I was playing a cozy simulator game. Eve had her funny quips every now and then that would make me smile and it was refreshing to read from a light-hearted and energetic perspective. Jacob was a typical grumpy guy. But, I loved how Jacob's way of navigating interactions with people and emotions while having autism was shown to readers through reading his thought process behind every action/word. Watching Eve and Jacob figure out that they actually liked each other rather than hated each other, first as friends then as something more, was sweet (even though they went from hating each other to being close very fast). And if you are into sex scenes then this story has some good ones that in my opinion show the two main leads have good chemistry, though their dialogue can make it extremely corny at times.
However, a lot of the dialogue and character actions in this book were so cringy and awkward at times it was almost unenjoyable to get through. Eve had so many horrible lines that I felt ridiculous reading them - I couldn't even imagine saying them aloud like she did. I don't remember the exact wording but there is a scene where she refers to Jacob's dick as a pepper or some other food and her own vagina being full of wet glitter or something along those lines. Besides this being cringe inducing, I don't even know what it means. There are many other awkward scenes like all the times Jacob would unknowingly be staring at Eve's boobs and Eve literally hitting Jacob with her car (which is the main event that sets the plot in motion). Not to mention that the third-act breakup was so... mean? I did not enjoy reading it. Eve's dad is rude and assuming to Jacob, Jacob says incredibly mean things to Eve, and the reader has even less fun during their breakup than the typical romance breakup.
Additionally, I do think some topics in the book deserved more nuance. Eve comes from a wealthy background which is a privilege to her and is what allows her to bounce from career to career, and she barely acknowledges it throughout the book. As readers we are not told what Eve's motivations are for not keeping a job until almost the end of the book. I know the whole point of Eve's character arc is that she has to mature out of this mindset but it made parts of the book, like some of her actions/reactions and all her interactions with her family, seem out of touch. Also, while I previously said I appreciated Jacob's autism representation, it was a little weird to me that he diagnosed Eve as being autistic after knowing her for like, a week. And she just takes his word and the internet's word for it without any kind of outside or professional input. I cannot speak for the autistic community as whole but in my eyes autism is not a label that you can just slap on to someone.
Despite these moments that were sometimes hard to read, this novel was cute. The characters were cute together, the setting was cute, it was all cute and cozy. I just wish there weren't these constant sprinkles of eye-roll inducing moments put in.
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