I perform the task of exhausted women everywhere—taking my bra off without removing my top. Once I’ve pulled it through the armhole of my tank, I fling it onto the old, slouchy couch, sending it the disgusted glare that all bras deserve after a long, hot day.
― Kate Clayborn, Georgie, All Along
CBR17 Bingo: G
This is the book I’ve most recently finished. While I try to follow the order in which I read books, my “to review” list has become so daunting that I’m choosing to review whatever books I feel like reviewing to get the ball rolling once again. Also, I’m jetlagged as hell and don’t want to mentally rewind to April to try to remember the details of a 150-page romance e-book that I got for free and read on a flight. I may write that review someday, but for now, I’m sticking with a review I can smash out in under an hour without having to Google the character names, the world-building, or even the fundamental plot points.
I read Georgie All Along on vacation. If you’re looking for a low-stakes, relatively low-stress read, look no further. Georgie Mulcahy returns to her hometown in Virginia after her boss decides on a whim to retire from a high-stress job in Hollywood. Georgie was a personal assistant, and her entire identity was shaped by what she could do for other people. Now that she has endless time, she must slow down and decide what to do next, which is difficult when she has no idea what she wants. She could return to being a personal assistant, but she is burned out.
She returns to her small town and immediately goes on the defensive. Being an assistant to a famous screenwriter is only as good as that employment lasts. Georgie cannot do the same job in her hometown. However, she has no other choice as she cannot support herself on her own until she decides on her next career step.
To complicate things further, Georgie gains an unlikely roommate in Levi Fanning, the town pariah. Georgie’s free-spirited parents forgot to inform Georgie or Levi that they would both be housesitting while said parents travel the country in an RV. Levi made a life for himself despite his troubled youth, and doesn’t want to drag Georgie into his mess. Georgie likes Levi, but is afraid to want him as she doesn’t even know what she wants for herself.
I liked this book overall. Most of this liking came from the last half of the book. Despite having interesting characters and surprisingly deep world-building, the first half of the book dragged. The thing that saved it was the various reckonings that Georgie and Levi faced in the latter half. What appeared to be a paint-by-the-numbers small town romance turned into something far richer and more satisfying than I expected.