Book Smart Kate

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

by Paige Toon (May 21, 2024) Thanks to @prhaudio for the free audiobook and to @across.the.pond.book.club for selecting this book as our May romance read. It was my first by @paigetoonauthor but won’t be my last!

Liv returns home from university to her small coastal Cornish town only to run into Finn, a former classmate who moved to America after a tragic loss. Now, back visiting his grandparents, Finn and Liv find an instant connection and heartbreak when Finn returns to America. The story repeats itself every summer for six years, with the emotions running deeper and the goodbyes getting harder as their lives outside each other become more complex and consuming. Throughout those years, they love each other through some of their most challenging moments, but the seventh year changes everything, and Liv and Finn may be out of second-chance years.

This is not a traditionally plotted romance novel, and I enjoyed the unusual way Toon played with time in this story. The story bounces between the present (year seven) and the linear telling of each previous year as they catch up to the present and includes a DEEPLY SATISFYING epilogue. I liked a story that worked with the concept that falling in love and being in a place to embrace that love isn’t always aligned. I also really enjoyed that this book had so much more – parents, grandparents, siblings, the town, the pub, music, community. 

I found the story and the audiobook highly bingable. Natalie Simpson did a fantastic job as the story’s solo narrator- navigating many characters and emotions.

Do you like books with multiple timelines? What is one you really enjoyed?