Scan barcode
A review by bookish_kristina
The Best Laid Plans by Karla Sorensen
4.0
I love a good grumpy, taciturn hero and an upbeat but determined heroine, but these two need therapy
This book was a good depiction of both along side a good dose of renovation porn and a tiny dose of football. A well written story that had a great deal of feels in it, but be warned there is a lot of grief in this and both characters are laden down with a significant amount of childhood trauma. This isn’t a light sports romance, it’s a heavy story of a man overcoming a lifetime of emotional abuse and the recent tragic death of his best friend and a woman struggling with attachment issues and grief of her own.
Overall I liked the relationship between the two mains here and it felt very realistic. But often I felt like the hero was too broken and the heroine was often required to deal with his lack of emotional intelligence. This is a little too much reality for my romance I think. I don’t love the idea of a woman having to do all the heavy emotional lifting in a relationship. She had issues too but he rarely helped her with them and even in the narrative her trauma was not often addressed.
This might be a personal preference thing, 2023 seems to be the year of the actualized man for me: the male character who can process his emotions, get therapy and not burden his woman with them and hurt her constantly because of them.
So this was quite good and well written overall but in terms of personal preference, it was a little too sad and the hero a little too broken for me to love love it.
I would have loved if these two had gotten therapy though, they totally needed it.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy, my opinions are my own.
This book was a good depiction of both along side a good dose of renovation porn and a tiny dose of football. A well written story that had a great deal of feels in it, but be warned there is a lot of grief in this and both characters are laden down with a significant amount of childhood trauma. This isn’t a light sports romance, it’s a heavy story of a man overcoming a lifetime of emotional abuse and the recent tragic death of his best friend and a woman struggling with attachment issues and grief of her own.
Overall I liked the relationship between the two mains here and it felt very realistic. But often I felt like the hero was too broken and the heroine was often required to deal with his lack of emotional intelligence. This is a little too much reality for my romance I think. I don’t love the idea of a woman having to do all the heavy emotional lifting in a relationship. She had issues too but he rarely helped her with them and even in the narrative her trauma was not often addressed.
This might be a personal preference thing, 2023 seems to be the year of the actualized man for me: the male character who can process his emotions, get therapy and not burden his woman with them and hurt her constantly because of them.
So this was quite good and well written overall but in terms of personal preference, it was a little too sad and the hero a little too broken for me to love love it.
I would have loved if these two had gotten therapy though, they totally needed it.
Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy, my opinions are my own.