Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Spice: 🌶️🌶️

by Tarah Dewitt

After reading and loving both Funny Feelings and Savor It, I was not shocked to also absolutely adore The Co-Op! It is official, @authortarahdewitt now resides in my auto-buy list. Although initially published with this cover, it is getting a new cover and bonus content for a re-release in November 2024, but I wanted to read the original first.

As a teenager, LaRynn had a summer fling with Deacon during her last summer at her grandma’s place in Santa Cruz. Ten years later, LaRynn and Deacon find themselves co-owners of the crumbling multi-family home that belonged to their grandmothers. Between his construction talent and her trust fund, they can scrape together the means to get the building in a condition where they could sell it; the only problem is that LaRynn can’t access her trust fund until she’s married. So they strike a deal – get married, access the money, fix and sell the house, dissolve the marriage, and go their separate ways. As they embark on reparing the home in which their grandmothers fell in love, they slowly begin to repair the pain they caused each other as teenagers and stumble into building something that feels like home.

There is so much to love about this book. Both LaRynn and Deacon have a lot to unpack about their families and the hurt they caused each other, and what starts as roommates as enemies is filled with lots of witty & sarcastic banter softens throughout the renovation into something deeply meaningful to them both. It was great to see an enemies-to-lovers, marriage of convince, forced proximity story that didn’t force a 3rd act breakup but still managed a 3rd act storyline that made the story engaging. ALSO…for fans of Funny Feelings, there is a brief “cameo” where Meyer and Deacon cross paths.

The audiobook is lovely and comes in at under 8 hours at 1.0x speed.