Review by Kayleigh
Book Club Boyfriend is grumpy/sunshine intense slow burn that is Jenny’s best work yet.
Favourite Quote:
It probably figured that someone so unfairly good-looking and preternaturally talented would be a bit of an egomaniac. Fine. She knew how to deal with self-impressed men. She did it all day long.
Book Synopsis:
Their messiest chapter might actually be their best one yet.
Blair Kellermoon—blond, bubbly, former rom-com star—has always worried no one would take her seriously as a producer. And with her latest film project stalled indefinitely, she’s starting to think desperate times call for desperate measures. Enter bestselling author Jack Branksome: beautiful writer, awful person. Yet somehow he and Blair have become unlikely text-friends, despite his very public refusal to participate in her celebrity book club. And he’s confessed he’s dealing with his own nightmare: the hotly anticipated novel he can’t seem to write.
So Blair does something unthinkable: she invites him to stay at her pool house. Now they’ve become two misfits bonding over movie nights, cheesy pasta, befriending wild crows, and solving the mystery of the weirdly green pool. Blair was sure she knew exactly how her story would end. But Jack might be proof that it’s only just beginning …
Review:
Book Club Boyfriend is now my favourite Jenny Holiday book: it’s smart, funny and features mature characters who’ve gone through life and still fight for their happy endings. Blair Kellermoon is America’s sweetheart. She’s also 38, going through a public divorce, and has grown children leaving the nest for college. Jack Branksome is a wonderkin of the publishing world who has crippling writer’s block and deep-seated daddy issues.
After Jack rejects Blair’s book club program (like Oprah or Reese’s book club) he can’t stop thinking about her. They begin a texting relationship, and the two become vulnerable over their messages, an unlikely friendship opening up between two flawed people who have trouble developing IRL friendships but find an acceptance in their texting.
Blair, lonely and living alone for the first time in her life, invites Jack to come to LA and live in her pool house for a few months to work on his book. Surprising them both, Jack agrees. It slowly becomes clear to them both that they will have to do something about this attraction, but first, they become friends. And discover the hidden sides of each other, including OCD, anxiety, and some long-buried trauma. When they do finally cross the line between friends and more, it’s explosive, fulfilling and not an immediate happy ending. They have to work through themselves before they can be in a healthy and functioning relationship. Love doesn’t solve it all.
There’s a cast of delightful secondary characters including a murder of crows who become Jack’s crow army in LA, and Blair’s delightful kids who are surprisingly normal despite their privileged upbringing. There is fun and humour and lightness in the narrative, but it also does what I think contemporary romance can do so well, which is tackle real-world difficult life issues and let readers empathize with the characters and reflect on our own lives and challenges.
Thank you, Forever Grand Publishing, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
