Blythe Rippon

(I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)

This is a sweet, warmhearted and thoroughly satisfying story about love, friendship, family, the way life gets in the way of your plans, and losing the things you dreamed of only to get what you didn't know you needed. It shows that things don't have to turn out just the way you wanted them to to turn out really well, and that you can find people you love and things you're passionate about just about anywhere if you're show more prepared to look.

I loved Sam's character. She's kind, funny, brilliant, oblivious and utterly adorkable. Her strengths and weaknesses were two sides of the same coin (she's very smart, a talented medical researcher, a high achiever and proud of it, and willing to sacrifice for those she loves, and at the same time a bit of an intellectual snob, prone to overanalysing everything and she tends to make herself miserable over those she cares for). I related to her a lot, and her complicated feelings for Natalie, Maria, and her mother really resonated. Towards the start of the book, there was a moment where I went "Seriously? Who actually talks like this?", before realising "... I do. I talk like this, with the odd formality and advanced vocabulary that comes out when I'm feeling awkward or especially uninhibited".

If I had one complaint, it's that this book has the very common problem where nobody says the 'b' word. Natalie has always known she likes boys, then discovers she likes girls too, but the word bisexual is never even mentioned (while the words 'lesbian' and 'gay' appear many times throughout the book). And I think it's a bit unfortunate that Natalie - change-her-major-a-million-times, ever-shifting-fashion-sense, probably-never-going-to-settle-down Natalie - was the only character to demonstrate attraction to more than one gender, considering the stereotype of bisexuals as indecisive and unsuited for commitment. I don't want to sound more negative than I really feel, though. I truly appreciated the lack of biphobia, in that Sam was never confused about how Natalie could be genuinely attracted to people of more than one gender or upset with Natalie for dating boys, she was only ever upset that Natalie wasn't dating her.

Overall, I loved it. show less

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review)
This book is about two very smart, mature women navigating their relationship with each other while also working for LGBT rights in court. I liked the cases they were working on, which go to show that despite equal marriage being legalised in America recently, there's still a lot left for our community to accomplish. I was really interested in the conflict of interest that came up with a lawyer dating a judge, and all the show more debates they had with each other and their friends about it. And I appreciated the fact that both protagonists were successful adults with a comfortably domestic relationship, instead of a scandalous whirlwind romance.

However, I did have some trouble really connecting with the story. I think a big part of that is that I didn't realise until midway through the book that it was the second in a series, and so I missed out on a lot of backstory. Geneveive and Victoria had a rich and complex history together that I only became aware of in snatches, and not being familiar with this left me without a solid sense of why their relationship was worth fighting for. The scene where Geneveive gets a migraine and wakes up to find Victoria taking care of her was the biggest 'aww, what a good couple' moment for me, but then the focus was on little conflicts and misaligned expectations between them, and I sometimes found myself thinking that maybe they should just break up since they didn't seem to be making each other all that happy.

But there's no doubt that Geneveive and Victoria considered what they have to be worth the trouble, even though I struggled to see it at times, and in the end they resolved things to everyone's satisfaction. show less

I was given this ARC by the publisher in exchange for an Honest Review.

What is it with me and stumbling into 2nd books in a series? For the most part, though, I think that once I got into the story this book stood alone very well.

As I said, it's the second book in the series, and it's sort of a, 'what happens after the 'happily ever after'.

It's about Victoria and Genevieve. Victoria is the newest Supreme Court Justice and Genevieve is the head of HER, an organization that takes on LGBT+ show more cases and argues them, sometimes all the way to the Supreme Court. Couple that with the fact that Genevieve and Victoria are in a relationship, and there are lots of hurdles for the couple in this novel (oh, and another woman in charge of a different LGBT+ group, Penelope, throws a ton more hurdles into the book too).

At first I thought that this romance would be another one where one person is just so horrible, but, that's okay because the other person loves person number 1. Oh, and person number 2 is perfect and that's the only reason the relationship works.

But, thankfully as I got farther into the book I realized that it was a much, much more nuanced plot than that. Phew.

Overall I liked the book and I think when I read the first book in the series that it'll give me an even deeper sense of the backgrounds stuff going on in this book. show less

I had a different set of expectations going into this story. Given the authors background the nature of the story, I knew for sure I would need to use my dictionary skills to get through the legal jargon. I also expected Tori to be this uptight stick-in-the-mud justice; however, I was pleasantly surprised. Tori and Genevieve make a great couple. Tori seems a bit bland compared to Genevieve, but they balance each other nicely. The beginning was a little slow, which could be because I don't show more like flashbacks. Nonetheless, I like second chance romances and this story aimed to please. show less