Thank you to NetGalley and Montlake for this ARC.

Amelia Taylor is a romance author and the owner of the Pink Flamingo Motel in California. She meets attractive but grumpy Nathan Hart, author of military thrillers, when he checks in for the whole scorching summer to write in the desert location near Palm Springs.

Every other chapter gives us a brief summary of things like meet-cutes and tropes, and it always corresponds with what's happening in the story right now. Enemies to lovers, grumpy/sunshine, save the cat, fake dating, slow burn, found family - it's all there and then some.

This would be impossibly cute but then the author suddenly decides to go literary and introduces terrible trauma for her and Nathan. The poor guy doesn't get a POV which is why I didn't warm to him initially - you can grieve and not be rude with it, but Nathan is a totally broken man, too broken to react normally or articulate feelings. 

If that wasn't enough, a terrible wildfire destroys the neighbourhood (content warning for everyone affected by the fires in LA) and they decide to hold A Very Desert Christmas Fundraiser, which brings Amelia face to face with an old boyfriend, repressed grief and more tropes.

This is a strange book. It is as if the author couldn't decide whether she wanted to write lighthearted romance with all the tropes or serious literary trauma fiction so she mixed it all together. There is too much repetitive inner monologue for my liking, that drags the story out and interrupts the flow of a conversation - when the answer to a question finally comes you can't remember the question from two pages before! The pace is all over the place and I felt bored halfway through and started skimming pages.

There is a huge cast of side characters, from staff to permanent guests, and while the setting is interesting and the elderly ladies who try to matchmake are cute, I think the author tries to fit too much into one story. The spicy scenes felt awkward, like the author felt she had to write them for a certain readership, and I just didn't believe in the sudden kitschy HEA, after all that trauma and angst. Read if you like a mixture of trauma and tropes.