Heather Blackmore

Military brat Cazz was the new girl in her senior year. She's befriended by the popular Sarah and discovers she wants to be more than Sarah's friend. It's an adorable story of young lesbians just discovering who they are. But then her father gets another assignment and she has to move again, leaving behind Sarah and all their unspoken feelings.

Years later adult Cazz is assigned to work undercover at a non-profit charitable organization to find out who might be embezzling. On her first day show more she finds out that the company owner is Sarah, who took over her father's company after his death. Now they're faced with a mystery, some danger, and all those unspoken feelings that they're now willing to speak.

I adored this book. In the small high school flashback there's all the discovery and longing I could want, and in the adult portion there's honesty, trust, and sex.

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this was a solidly fun romance. i think i'm rounding up just a bit, this is like a 3.8ish or thereabouts. ie: really good, but maybe not one that will pop into my re-read/listen comfort reads.

the beginning of this book, and the end of it were really good, some of the finance/economic/office/sillicon valley talk reaaaaaally lost me, bc i absolutely do not give a shit abt that (though the companies they were trying to start/talk about are great ideas!) so a little bit of that dragged for me in show more the middle where that was more plot relevant. however, this is very much a romance and not a book abt tech companies lol, so it wasn't a huge thing. i absolutley fell in love with jen from the get go. she is so warm and likeable and sure of herself (while still being vulnerable and admitting her faults in a great way) and GOSH that scene in the mirror where she made kade look at herself i just!!!! it was the sweetest most intimate romantic thing and everyone deserves a partner that would think to do that. i liked kade too, i understood her, but she occasionally frusturated me. watching her growth throughout the novel was lovely and her friendship/basically sister relationship with holly was perfection. lori prince was (as i basically always say) amazing, and i loved her voice for jen. def rec! i liked this one a little bit better than the other i've listened to by this author, but i rec them both! show less

Heather Blackmore is one of the finest writers when it comes to character description and development. Her characters are well etched out, their trajectory and growth brilliantly detailed and they are completely understandable. Even when she writes seemingly fantastical people and pairings, the way she writes them makes it all plausible. The relationships and interactions between the leads of her books are just so sensitive and beautiful that they set really high relationship-goals and show more expectations in readers. With her finance background, her settings are also extremely detailed and real. Don’t miss any of her books, for sure – even though they are not sex heavy. The emotional quotient and the couple of sex scenes she throws in are highly, highly satisfying for any romance reader/seeker.

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Read on my blog.

LGBTQAI : Lesbian main character and love interest
Sex on page: Yes

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I picked up this book because I needed a f/f workplace romance for a bingo. While the blurb (and sometimes the book) describes Kade as Jen’s boss, in the book they seemed to me more or less as equals, since they are both board members in Jen’s company.

I found most of the romantic scenes okay, but nothing too engaging. Strangely, I show more preferred the side plots (though these were still often connected to the two main characters and their relationship). Kade and Jen both have family members who are either sick or elderly, and there is a huge focus on how these people can be cared for and kept engaged instead of ignored. There is also discussion of the unfair expectations placed on women enterpreneurs in business, especially relating to their work/family balance.

I also loved Kade’s character development – throughout the book, she learns how to deal with her own guilt over losing her best friend, as well as her complicated relationship with her father. Partly due to Jen, she learns how to love herself and accept herself as somebody who deserves to be loved. This was one of my favourite themes in the book.

That being said, I often found the professional/work side… strange and. Obviously, some level of unprofessionalism in any workplace romance novel, but in this book the lack of professionalism went beyond Kade and Jen’s relationship. In this book, each main character conveniently works with her own best friend, and Jen talks casually to Kade’s assistant even at the beginning, and this assistant plays matchmaker for them by rearranging Kade’s schedule and cancelling/moving events constantly. While I understand how this was necessary and I enjoyed some of the banter between Kade-Holly and Jen-Jeremy, I still found it jarring.

Overall I’d give this book 3.5 stars, which is rounded up to 4. show less