A review by illstoptheworldandreadwithyou
Business Casual by B.K. Borison

5.0

Oh my heart, I sure do love heading back to Inglewild. This time around Charlie and Nova have been left off the phone tree. I wonder why that could be. 🤔 

 

Nova Porter is focused on opening her new tattoo studio in her hometown. She needs it to be perfect, but with all that pressure she’s putting on herself, she needs some type of release. 

 

Charlie Milford lives in New York, but he always seems to be in Inglewild. At this point, he’s basically a member of the town; he always seems to be around, helping or flirting or eating Caleb’s abuela’s food. 

 

And Nova feels a spark with him. Maybe he can provide the release she’s looking for. 

 

Charlie and Nova are just going to get it out of their systems. Really. One time. 

 

Okay, maybe more than one time. 

 

Maybe their arrangement should be something casual—something “business casual”. 

 

You know what, friends? I adore them. Plain and simple. I adore Charlie. And I adore Nova. And I adore them together. 

 

She sees “the person he is beneath everything else” and realizes she can be with him without giving up parts of herself. 

 

And Charlie? Well, I just wanted to wrap him in a gigantic hug and tell him that “happiness [doesn’t have to be] distributed in increments”. 

 

Add in some well-depicted, and well-integrated, ADHD rep—I see you hyperfocus, rejection sensitive dysphoria, lists of tasks, necessary organization, etc.—and migraine rep—bonus points for including ocular migraine symptoms and a believable portrayal of what that looks like from the outside—and I was an even happier camper. I think portrayals like that are important for developing empathy and human connection in readers as a takeaway after the end of a story. 

 

(And, frankly, it’s also nice to feel seen.) 

 

Anyway, I love this book; and I love these characters; and I love this series.  This is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me. 

 

I listened to an advance copy of the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed Pippa Jayne and Benjamin D. Walker’s dual narration. They capture Nova’s and Charlie’s personalities well. One of my favorite parts—performance-wise—is the text messages later in the book. Since this is dual, not duet, narration, I thought one of the narrators may read all of them. I was pleasantly surprised when each narrator voiced their own character in those text messages. 

 

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Dreamscape Media. All review opinions are my own.