A review by gwendolyn_kensinger
You, with a View by Jessica Joyce

3.0

I enjoyed this one. It has a road trip, which I always enjoy, especially in romance books, and it deals with grief in such a heartfelt and tender way. Noelle is unemployed and living with her parents when she finds a few photos of her Gram with someone other than her grandpa. She ends up making a TikTok to search for the mystery man in the photo and she’s shocked when his grandson responds. She’s even more shocked when she finds out that it’s Theo Spencer’s grandfather in the photos. Theo was Noelle’s high school nemesis and now it seems if she wants to meet her Gram’s mystery man she’s going to have to deal with Theo too. When she learns that her Gram’s plans to elope were thwarted she decides to take the honeymoon road trip that her Gram would have gone on, had she married Paul. Along the way she reads letters between her Gram Kat and Paul. We also learn why things never worked out between them. However, that’s not really the focus of the story. The majority of the story focuses on the fact that Paul accompanies Noelle on this road trip and he insists that Theo come along as well. So you get where I’m going with this right? That’s right. It’s the former high school nemesis to lust to love story you’re imagining.

Don’t get me wrong I did enjoy this one but it did have some parts that didn’t totally work for me because while some portions felt super realistic, others didn’t at all. The pacing was all over the place, the believability to go from not liking one another to falling in love in two weeks was a bit of a stretch and even so I don’t see how it happened other than they thought each other were hot. There was definitely some lying and omitting of information and while it seemed ok for one character it wasn’t for the other, things like that just didn’t add up. Plus the little outburst Theo had at one point crossed a line and there wasn’t enough resolution there in my opinion. It felt like Noelle just really liked him and forgave him too easily. I know it might seem like I am crapping on this book and I’m definitely not trying to, but it has such a high average star rating I want to make sure you know what you’re in for if and when you decide to give this one a go. That being said I’ll definitely keep Jessica Joyce on my radar.