Oh, I had a lot of fun with this. I’ve been so jaded where modern, post-2010 contemporary romances are concerned so I picked this up, wanting to research how the authors of the past got down to business and I’m not at all disappointed. This novel had a touch of magical realism that I wasn’t expecting but I found delightful; Daisy reads like a Disney princess but not in a way that I found annoying at all. The premise is absurd but the author commits to the bit so much that I found myself wilfully believing it, charmed by it from page 1 right until the end. 

The author doesn’t shy away from the genuine difficulty humans have with communicating with each other and instead of it just being sprinkled in as a trope at the 70% mark, it’s genuinely explored as an overarching theme throughout the whole book. Miscommunication between workers and bosses. Miscommunication between parents and children. Miscommunication between lovers—past tense and present. Hell, there was even miscommunication between animals and humans. No one in this book is a perfect communicator and, as result, that leads to harm and setbacks and large mistakes that gave the book tension. I enjoyed the sheer humanity of that messiness. This book isn’t a how-to on having a perfect relationship, instead it’s a book about a relationship burdened by messy human nature. A lot of people wouldn’t like that; according to some reviews, a lot of people don’t. I loved it because it made the story feel so real and not like the cookie cutter shit we see so often in romance novels nowadays. The author has messy ass characters and spends the time sorting through this mess ON THE PAGE (rather than through lazy time-skips or scene jumps or one line apologies that are meant to mend all). 

I can’t give this a five because

that whole pregnancy moment left a genuinely bad taste in my mouth. I felt that Alex was pretty fucking clear as to why he didn’t want children and not only did Daisy bulldoze over that, but it felt like the author did the same thing. Saying you don’t want children with someone isn’t a consequence of not loving them. Alex not wanting children had absolutely nothing to do with Daisy, and I wasn’t too big of a fan how that was flattened into him just “not accepting that he loved her at the moment.” I’m guessing that that might just be a product of the time this was written but, still, it knocked off a pretty big star for me.