People Watching

🎨For Fans of:
- Alzheimer representation
- bisexual representation
- Russian-Canadians
- sexual innuendos
- annoying to lovers
- she finds him annoying
- playboy MMC x innocent FMC
- small town romance
- opposites attract
- sex lessons
- spicy romance
- third act breakup that actually makes sense

⭐️ 3.5 True Rating
✏️ Spoiler-Free Review
He’s a playboy who instantly falls for her but she’s determined not to fall for him, telling herself that he’s an annoying bad boy.

While I first thought this book was a run-of-the-mill “teach me” romance, it actually had a lot of emotional depth to it. She is the main caretaker of her mother with Alzheimer’s while her father runs his store and he is the brother who has always run away from show more his traumatic and abusive childhood, even if that meant leaving others behind.

It was rewarding to see growth from both of them, and not just for the benefit of their budding relationship. She has to come to an understanding with her father who is keeping his own secrets. He has to deal with his demons so he can be a better brother to his two siblings. Lots of healing and I kinda loved it. I only wish the end had been a little slower with her relationship with her dad. It wrapped up too quickly and was a bit too spicy for me to personally give this a 5-star.

I also just want to say that since she’s a virgin and he’s teaching her, there is definitely a fair amount of spice! Imagine “Practice Makes Perfect” by Sarah Adams but with way more spice and different family dynamics.

If you’re looking for a spicy romance with some sassy enemies to friends to lovers tropes, this one has some fun banter and heartwarming family elements. show less

This was slow to get going. I was quite bored at the beginning. It went somewhere sweet and pretty sexy, eventually. But I never fully got my groove.

Pru our FMC, has never left home. She adores her parents (in a healthy way), but also is clearly too anxious to try on experiences where she is not surrounded by the familiar. This is never really called out, but that was only a minor niggle for me. (Also a minor niggle: Bonham Young and I disagree on appealing women's names. Here we have Prudence, and in a prior book we got Winnifred, and these names suggest someone wizened with a constant expression of thin-lipped disapproval. This is, I know, a me problem.) Pru's affixation to home is made semi-sensible when her beloved mother begins show more showing signs of early-onset dementia. By the time we join the story, things have progressed, and Pru's mother is almost entirely detached from reality. Pru shares primary caregiving responsibilities with her father. No one resents this. It is clear that before she became ill, Pru's mother was a wonderful person, so the love and generosity make sense. That said, showing caregivers sometimes losing patience, folding a bit under the stress, hurt feelings, and mess, and pushing through the difficulty of caring for someone with dementia would have made this all more true and moving. Anyway . . . Milo (she does far better with male names) came from an abusive household and has grown into a constant wanderer, an experience junkie. I understand Milo, but I really do not fully grasp his conversion to devoted BF. That said, I will allow it because it is sweet and lovely, and romance should be sweet and lovely. Milo is in town to help out his brother and his brother's wife and their eleventy children, but he has one foot out the door before he falls instantly in love with Pru.

I guess my biggest issue was the balance of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's and falling in love. This is romance, and that means for me the shmoopy parts have to be front and center. Again, that is a me thing. There is a lot to love here, but I personally could not sink into fantasy because the fantasy involved so many things that simply would not feel good to me. So I guess I would say that this is a 4-star if you are a more generous and trusting person than I am, but a 3-star for me.

I should mention I think the audiobook readers, Victoria Connolly and Brandon Francis, were excellent! show less

People Watching is a story set in a small Canadian town. Prue still lives with her parents and is taking care of her mother who has Alzheimer's. Milo is back in town to help his brother open his new bar. Milo and Prue meet and start to fall for each other even though she's a virgin and he's a playboy.

I love this author. She's an auto-read author for me but I was kind of disappointed with this book. The thing I love about her is her characters: how they interact with each other, how they overcome obstacles, how they feel so real that they could easily live off page. This book had that in the beginning. We got a slow-burn romance, family hardship, acknowledging life isn't always perfect.

Then the middle of the book hit. This took me show more forever to read through and it didn't feel like this author's normal writing style. In the middle of the book, the characters and the plot disappeared and it felt like any other romance book on the shelves. It delved into smut way too fast and it felt rushed. Normally her books hit at just the right time and don't feel like the entire plot of the book.

Luckily, I powered through and everything came back in the end. The characters were shining again and the plot returned.

Overall, it's a good book and if you're super into smut, you'll love this. I personally would rank this at the bottom of all her books that I've read. show less

Thank you to PRH Audio for an advance copy of the audiobook. I’ve loved everything I’ve heard of Victoria Connolly’s narration and Brandon Francis is new to me.

This however, I DNFed at 30%. All of Hannah’s other books have mains that could charm a brick wall and I don’t feel it on either of these. She has a lot going on, yes. But she’s unfairly annoyed with him to start out with and swings back to wildly attracted after about 10 minutes together. It felt like we skipped chapters of character development.

I love Milo, I’m glad he recognized that everything he needed was in the little town of Baysville.
I loved his brother’s love story, Prudence’s parents love story, and Milo and Prue’s connection and trust.

Happy Pub Day!

I just found out that Prue’s mother was called Julia because of the Beatles song. That song was about John Lennon’s mother, who was a really lousy mother, so I’m not sure how impressed I am with that little Beatles Easter egg