Book Smart Kate

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

by Katelyn Doyle (June 4, 2024) – Many thanks to @flatironbooks and @macmillianaudio for the gifted print and audiobook copies of this book that I hope everyone loves as much as I did!

Molly Marks is a grumpy rom-com screenwriter who can point to her parents’ marriage and horrific divorce as the reason she doesn’t believe in love. When her best friends drag her to their 15-year high school reunion, her worst nightmare occurs. She’s seated with Seth Rubinstein; they dated all of high school until she ripped his heart out when they were eighteen. They haven’t spoken since. Seth has always been the joy-filled life of the party with an infectious sense of humor and a love of life – he is now also one of the top divorce attorneys in Chicago. The reunion results in two things – an epic one-night stand and a bet about five couples at the reunion with a commitment that the winner has to agree to the other’s belief about true love. But Seth ups the stakes because he makes the fifth couple the two of them. Over the next five years, we follow Molly and Seth as they enter and exit each other’s lives while the clock to the reunion inches closer and closer. 

This book is so much more than its tropes, but the tropes are some of the best – second chance, grumpy/sunshine, opposites attract. Here’s what makes it a stand-out – in addition to what you’d expect from a romance, it is messy, raw, and complicated. Full of real-life complications, fears, and insecurities, you are constantly rooting for Seth and Molly, individually and together. They both evolve over the five years and realize things about themselves and each other. They both employ epic grand gestures that both succeed and fail epicly, and each revise their expectations of love. 

The audiobook, narrated by Christine Lakin (Just for the Summer) and Tim Paige (Icebreaker), is outstanding. You’ll FEEL them both and become so invested in their journey.