Review on 'Love Story' by Lindsey Kelk 📑
- Dec 18, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 2
Amazon Link: https://amzn.eu/d/dhce7E2
Author: Lindsey Kelk
Format Read: Paperback
Pages: 374
Publication Date: 4th July 2024
Author Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindseykelk/?hl=en
Review:
The first page drew me in. There was an opening line about romance books, and I just knew that this was something I was going to really enjoy. When the first chapter progressed, I was already so invested, I didn't want to put the book down because I just wanted to soak up the world I was being thrown into. I think the thing that got me the most excited was that the entire book was based in the publishing world. You had characters that were authors, editors, literary critics, creative art directors and just everything about that and my potential future just sold it for me. When I originally bought the novel, I obviously didn't know that it was going to encompass the world I want to be so much a part of, because all I knew was that she had written a novel under a pen name so nobody knew it was her.
Setting the scene is obviously the most important, however, I do have to make sure that it isn't spoiled too much if I want people to go read it and all. 😁 The characters consist of Joe, a publishing house creative director, and Sophie, a primary school teacher who wrote the best-selling novel Butterflies under the pen name Este Cox (which she just thought was a funny pen name). On their first meeting, Joe disses her book by saying that it has unrealistic expectations of women and all it contains is "smut". Probably not the best first meeting... but in all fairness, he didn't know that she was the author. Now, when you hate someone, the obvious thing to do is go sing karaoke and get drunk... right? Some words were said and some insults were thrown, and they decided to never see each other again. Until... the next day when he comes up with his dad to her dad's birthday party to give her lost bag back.
In the nicest way possible, her parents are snobs. Her mum is a literary critic and her dad is a book editor. So, a romance-writing daughter is definitely not what they want... which they say very clearly on multiple occasions. However, the parents, along with all the other family members, add to the authenticity of the novel, suggesting that not everything you do will be accepted by everyone you know, and that it should be just for you instead of for other people. It also added much-needed drama to the book because no family get-together is ever safe from drama. 😄
I must admit, I really enjoyed that there were multiple anecdotes on how people critique the romance genre. Especially with the comment about people not liking cute romance covers, and then Lindsey Kelk perpetuates the stereotype by giving a cute romance cover. The only thing that I think would have made the stereotypes better is if there had been sex in there to annoy the haters, just like how Butterflies in the novel had sex in it. However, I can see this in one of two ways. Either Kelk herself doesn't like when romance novels have what they call "smut" in them, so she doesn't want it in her novel, or she is saying that the haters may not like the smut, and she can prove that there is so much more to a romance novel than just that. Though maybe there wasn't anything that Kelk meant by it, and I'm just reading into things... 🤣
This was a bit different than the normal third-act breakup trope you see in a lot of books. For one, they hadn't really got together, since it had only been a few days that they knew each other. But that wasn't the main difference. In Love Story, they slept together—not different than normal—but Joe said that it was a bad idea and that afterwards he had things to sort out. He was upfront from the start that he couldn't offer a relationship yet, and that made him a character of realism in my eyes. Though what he had to sort out? Shocking. I had to put my book down and think about what had just happened (I don't want to spoil it, but just know that I didn't see it coming... some may get it and some may not... we'll see).
I've never been one for instalove when you've met them and then, either in the same day or in a really short amount of time later, they are in love, but I feel like this was okay. Especially as it was over 300 pages compared to the typical below 100 that I read on Kindle (don't get me wrong, I love them for entertainment, but I don't know if there is much plot or character building as they are more for a quick enjoyment read). So annoyingly, I actually really enjoyed this one with its characters and how they had to be in close proximity for the majority of the weekend to fall in love so quickly.
The characters were gripping and realistic. They weren't perfect with everything going for them; they were complicated and more than just characters in a romance novel. Surprisingly, I find it difficult to explain how connected I felt to them and whether that was just due to the world I wanted to live in or the character storyline themselves. I'm unsure, but to me, this was the epitome of a romance. To me, this was everything that I could ask for and more. That's just it. Period.
Until the next chapter,
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