Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Man, I hit a bad streak this week. I don’t even know what to say is that I love friends to lovers romance books, but this was we are not together for the dumbest things known to man for years and I lost patience with everyone involved at 50 percent. Following the love interests to various weddings over a 5 year period was a cute idea, but it just started to drag and get repetitive. It didn’t help that I got really tired of reading Ren’s name. I kept singing Happy Happy Joy Joy to myself and now I hope you do too, enjoy.
“Friends to Lovers” follows long-time best friends Joni and Ren. Joni is back in her home state to witness her sister getting married. What no one knows is this, that Joni and Ren haven’t been best friends for a long time. They both want to keep what happened between them and what led to their falling out behind them so that Joni’s sister has a great wedding weekend. Of course, close quarters and all of that, yadda yadda yadda.
I think what kills me the most is that I didn’t see the chemistry between Joni and Ren even a little. Blakely takes a long time to get you to “the moment” and I maybe went, really? And then the reason for the silence and end of friendship had me go, my God both of you get over yourselves. The wedding scenes we get start to feel repetitive too. I don’t know. I think if I met Joni in real life I would get really sick and tired of her. What kills me is that she has a job making puppets or stop-motion puppets? I think? It was thrown out here and there and I really wanted to know more about that. What drew that into her. Have the talk about her job be part of the story more than it was. It’s just a plot point that we don’t get to dive into at all. As an aside, dolls of any kind are creepy, but I still wanted to read more about it.
What’s weird to me too is that the sibling relationships were the tightest developed part of the book. Joni/Ren, nope. The parents were not developed at all. It’s especially weird since the two families bought a house together that they come to every summer and the two moms are best friends. I don’t know, they just were there to move the story when needed. Also, every time Joni mentioned her father I would get surprised. They were just there as background noise and that was it.
The flow was awful. It just jumps from the present and goes the whole way back to when Joni moved to New York and she and Ren promised to be plus ones with each other for weddings. And then the flashbacks are different weddings. I swear this book reminds me of a tv show or movie I saw and it’s going to drive me bonkers until I remember it.
The book ends in a Happy Ever After (HEA) for you romance readers out there.