ARC Review: In the Event of Love

In the Event of Love is only one of my favourite reads of the year, so I’m incredibly excited that finally everyone else can get to read it (that’s a hint. Don’t wait around). If, however, for some inexplicable and foolish reason, you’re on the fence about it, let this review serve to convince you otherwise.

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Morgan Ross can plan world-class events, but she didn’t plan on returning to the hometown that broke her heart seven years ago—and re-discovering the girl of her dreams . . .

With her career as a Los Angeles event planner imploding after a tabloid blowup, Morgan Ross isn’t headed home for the holidays so much as in strategic retreat. Breathtaking mountain vistas, quirky townsfolk, and charming small businesses aside, her hometown of Fern Falls is built of one heartbreak on top of another . . .

Take her one-time best friend turned crush, Rachel Reed. The memory of their perfect, doomed first kiss is still fresh as new-fallen snow. Way fresher than the freezing mud Morgan ends up sprawled in on her very first day back, only to be hauled out via Rachel’s sexy new lumberjane muscles acquired from running her family tree farm.

When Morgan discovers that the Reeds’ struggling tree farm is the only thing standing between Fern Falls and corporate greed destroying the whole town’s livelihood, she decides she can put heartbreak aside to save the farm by planning her best fundraiser yet. She has all the inspiration for a spectacular event: delicious vanilla lattes, acoustic guitars under majestic pines, a cozy barn surrounded by brilliant stars. But she and Rachel will ABSOLUTELY NOT have a heartwarming holiday happy ending. That would be as unprofessional as it is unlikely. Right?

In the Event of Love

Courtney Kae

Goodreads

Rep: bi mc, bi li, f/f, gay side character, bi side character, East Asian trans side character
Release: 30th August 2022

Five Reasons to Read This Book

One. This is one of the best f/f romances I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books that is just so hard to review because how on earth do you go about explaining what was so good about it, beyond saying everything? The characters, the plot, the writing, the emotions: all of it tied together so well that, as soon as I’d finished the book, I wanted to pick it right back up.

Two. Rachel has to be my second point. Who doesn’t love a sexy lumberjane love interest? Not to mention, if you want the romance to be believable, and it’s a single POV romance, you need to have the reader love the love interest just as much as the protagonist does. And that’s the case with Rachel.

Three. I don’t usually have “the angst” as one of my reasons to read but, hear me out: this is a book and an author who understands her characters. By which I mean, the conflict in the final act made complete sense given how the characters had been established throughout the book. Often, I feel like angst is added there just because people feel it should be, but not here. Here, it’s all so carefully put together that you just go “oh yeah, of course this makes sense”. Which makes the resolution all the sweeter.

Four. The romance itself. It’s not a good romance book if you don’t love the romance, and I very much did here. From the first time Morgan and Rachel meet again, with all that baggage between them, you can feel the potential. The tension off the page is visceral and, even once they get together, you can still feel it. That, to me, is the sign of a great romance.

Five. It’s a book that gets you excited about the potential for future books. Perhaps this is a cheat, but let’s rephrase: it introduces you to a community that you will want to keep coming back to. You care as much about the side characters as you do the main characters, so you want to see their stories just as much as you do the protagonists’. And, lucky for us, it looks like we’ll get to!

So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?