“Liz Buxbaum has always known that Wes Bennett was not boyfriend material. You would think that her next-door neighbor would be a prince candidate for her romantic comedy fantasies, but Wes has only proven himself to be a pain in the butt, ever since they were little. Wes was the kid who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse, the monster who hid a lawn gnome’s severed head in her little homemade neighborhood book exchange. Flash forward ten years from the Great Gnome Decapitation. It’s Liz’s senior year, a time meant to be rife with milestones perfect for any big screen, and she needs Wes’s help. See, Liz’s forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and—horribly, annoyingly—he’s hitting it off with Wes. Meaning that if Liz wants Michael to finally notice her, and hopefully be her prom date, she needs Wes. He’s her in. But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love—and rethink her own perception of what Happily Ever After should really look like.”
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Content Warning: Graphic death of parent, grief, vomit. Moderate car accident
I was in a bit of a reading slump so I thought what better than to take a step away from what I usually read and read something cute and light. Liz Buxbaum is a girl infatuated with rom coms, and believes in true love. She wants a meet cute and all that jazz, but she has had a huge crush on Michael Young since they were both little, only he moved away when he was young. He’s back now, though, and she has her sights set on him. With the help of her infuriating neighbour, Wes Bennett, they plan on getting her her much awaited happy ending.
I’m not usually a fan of romances, but I can do the occassional one here and there, and I’m surprised with how much I actually enjoy them when I do. This one includes both the enemies to lover and fake dating trope, and I do seem to be a fan of the latter. I rather enjoyed the TATBILB series when I read them a few years ago, I might have to give more of them a go.
Of course Liz and Wes ended up together in the end, which was the entire thing moving the plot forward. I love it when you know who to root for from the get go so that you know that you have to pick up on certain things from them as you’re reading.
This was such a fun read, and the only thing I seemed to have a problem with was the length of the chapters. We all know by now that I love nothing more than a short and speey chapter, and I’m sure there was a one in this book that was like 50 pages or something! Excuse me! I have a terrible attention span and couldn’t remember what happened at the beginning of said chapter by the time I’d finished it. It’s still a good book, though.
Lynn Painter (she/her) has done such a good job with this book, and I actually look forward to reading the sequel, and possibly more from her in the future.
All the love,
Jade x
Tea Stains and Book Spines 