Rating: ★★★★☆
I should preface this by saying I love HGTV shows, and I know that a new trend in home improvement entertainment is the designer wife-builder husband dynamic duo. This book specifically refers to Chip and Joanna Gaines (from Fixer Upper), but my personal favorite is Hometown. We can’t forget about Tarek and Christina from Flip or Flop, whose drama scandal a few years ago is not far from the press that Melissa and Rusty were getting in this story. So yes, I love home improvement shows, and I live for drama, so this book had me engaged just based on the premise.
I don’t have a lot of specific notes on why I liked this; I just really enjoyed it. It is not quite as explicit as some of Christina Lauren’s other novels which I appreciated, and I think the characters are so interesting because of their moral greyness. This isn’t to say the plot wasn’t a bit cliche, but since the premise was unlike any other that I’ve read and was something I’m genuinely interested in, this did not bother me.
While Carey and James were pretty basic, the real stars of the novel are Melissa and Rusty. They are so toxic, so melodramatic, so insane, so morally grey... I was enraptured. I spent most of the book wanting both of them to get hit by the big tour bus, but I lived for their horrible moments like I was watching a car crash in slow motion. Obviously it’s problematic that they don’t completely address the toxic parts of their relationship like infidelity, violence, and manipulation, but I don’t find this unrealistic. I think many real-life marriages are just as enigmatic and terrible, yet they stay together.
The reason this isn’t five stars is because there are just two things that bothered me that I can’t stop thinking about. First of all, it includes possibly my least favorite toxic trope in romance novels. Basically, the woman gets upset over something that’s a really big deal, it’s basically her cathartic moment of clarity and fury. Then, in her passions, she impulsively decides to have sex with the male love interest, even though they really aren’t at that point in their relationship yet. Then the man goes “whoa, we shouldn’t do this when you’re upset” and the woman convinced him that either she doesn’t care or that that’s not the reason they’re doing it (even though it totally is), and they end up doing it anyway. It ends with the characters waking up in the morning either in love or super awkward, in this case it’s a bit of both. I know that is a super specific thing, but it happens in so many romance novels and it’s gross and I wish authors would stop doing it.
The other thing that I just really didn’t like is this one line James says (in his internal monologue) that was like “I want to make her life better by being the best thing in it.” I don’t think we need an explanation of why this is a terrible line that totally taints my entire view of James’s character.
So other than these two specific complaints, I thought the book was good. It was funny, touching, diverse, and as an HGTV super fan I just really liked it.
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