A review by bjr2022
Ivy Feckett is Looking for Love: A Birmingham Romance by Jay Spencer Green

4.0

A fun and funny light Irish-nerd-love romp . . . and more. [A note for Americans: There were a lot of words and references I didn't understand, but I still laughed and enjoyed this.]

The title says the plot. Here's a description of the kiss Ivy, a researcher at a think tank where she researches euphemisms for vagina (the list is hysterical and goes on for pages), has with her boss:

It was an awkward kiss, not least because of the significant difference in their heights. Ned was bending from the waist as far as he could, while Ivy craned her neck up and back so that her open mouth was nearly horizontal, her tongue reaching for the stars. It might have been easier for Ned to bend his legs and crouch, but it would have looked even more comical, and no man stoops like that to kiss someone unless he's giving his little niece a peck on the cheek. Crouching and French kissing at the same time is just weird.

Clever and charming with some delicious storytelling surprises toward the end, this novel is called a "romance" (a joke lost on American me--see comments) but I think it is a genre-defying romantic fairy tale that also manages to be a philosophical treatise on cooperative ecology and religion. I read this delightful book in one day.