A review by lezreadalot
No Rings Attached by Rachel Lacey

3.0

“You could be dangerous,” Grace murmured, so quietly Lia almost wasn’t sure she’d heard her speak the words. “If I let you.”

Definitely a more successful romance than the first book in the series, better in a lot of key ways, but sadly my enjoyment still wasn't quite on par with what I expected? There were parts of the book that I really liked, where I saw definite improvement on some things that caught my notice in book one, but all the same, I came out of it not really having enjoyed it as much as I could have. Grace and Lia have a mutual best friend, but they're never actually met each other. They meet for the first time when Grace agrees to pose as Lia's fake girlfriend at a wedding, and then end up going on a road trip for personal reasons of their own. The first part of the book was really cute, really sweet. I liked the tropes at play, and Lia has a refreshing straightforwardness that made me really like her. We don't spend that much time at the wedding, but the meeting and the build-up and the growing attraction was well-written. I do have to say, any time characters in a book actually speak out loud about how great their chemistry is, the less inclined I am to actually believe that. Not that they didn't have good chemistry, but they said it more than I felt it. 

And I'm in a weird position where I completely and totally sympathise with the internal conflict that dominates the latter half of the story, Grace's backstory and her reasons for always running, her reasons for not wanting a relationship. I sympathise with it, but it became really frustrating to read. I'm a super conflict averse person, and I honestly get the impulse to simply run away when presented with things that are too difficult or emotionally taxing, but the act of reading another person doing that? In this instance? Just wasn't enjoyable. I don't know, it's weird, because I can pinpoint a lot of isolated moments between the couple that I really really liked, where I thought they were really great together, where I was swept away. The ending was maybe a little too melodramatic, but it did tug at my heartstrings a lot. Grace and Lia are soooooo cute together. But when I think of the book as a whole, I don't think I can rate it any higher than this.

Listened to the audiobook as read by Zara Hampton-Brown, and it was really good. I think this was my first experience with this narrator, and she was wonderful at juggling all the different accents and conveying the emotions of the characters. Really good book overall; maybe it's just down to my mood, more than anything else, that I didn't enjoy it more.