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imaginationamuck · 2 years

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Book Review: In A Jam

In a Jam - 5/5

Holy crap, the love I have for this book.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Shay Zucconi’s step grandmother leaves her a tulip farm in the small town of Friendship, Rhode Island, under two conditions, Shay has to move to Friendship and she has be married within a year. Enter Noah, who’s harbored a crush on Shay since high school, now a single dad and willing to help Shay with the terms of the inheritance. Shenanigans obviously ensue.

Things you’ll find in this book: - Single Dad with an awesome neurodivergent child - Awesome six year old that swears like a pirate - Small town - Marriage of convenience - Slow burn - Grouchy Farmer MC/Plus Sized FMC

Trigger/Content Warnings: - absentee parent(s) - brief mention of parent death - brief mention of parent chronic illness - mention of incarceration - mention of temporary foster care placement - reference to teenage teasing/bullying (not detailed, not explicit) - brief incidence of fat-shaming

Things I enjoyed:

“Just because I can plow through by myself doesn’t mean I want to,” I said. “Fuck, Shay. Let me need you, okay?”

Kate Canterbary is an instant buy for me, she is one of my favorite authors, and this book did not disappoint. I loved this book; it’s been nearly a week since I finished it, and I’m still not over it. There’s so much to say about why I loved it. I loved the chemistry between Noah and Shay, how seamlessly they form a family unit while still internally freaking out about the seamlessness of it. The thing I love about Kate’s books are that her characters have great communication. That when whatever the FMC or MC are hiding comes out, it isn’t a blow-up but a true conversation of feelings and truths.

That feelings are validated and are allowed to be felt, and this goes for both Shay and Noah. I loved the female friendships, the male friendships, and the friendships that start to form as the relationship takes shape. I loved how Shay takes the time she needs to understand her feelings and that Noah gives her the space to do that. I love that while Noah is firmly planted in his feelings, he doesn’t expect Shay to get there with him in that moment.

I just… there are so many feels I have about this book. But most of all I loved the fat joy in this book. That while there are incidences of fatphobia, it doesn’t overtake the entire plot or scene. That there’s only annoyance and confusion as to why someone thinks they have a say over someone else’s body and a reclaiming of that opinion. But it’s these brief scenes that just add to the book and to the characters.

“For reasons I’d yet to understand, this town was all too comfortable speaking about him unkindly and having the balls to do it to his face…That everyone felt it was acceptable to discuss is body was the strangest thing in the world to me. It would never make sense”

Overall: Look, I loved this book! I will never shut up about this book. And if you’re looking for a Kate Canterbary book to start with before diving into the Walsh universe and their shenanigans. Then this is perfect.

#In a Jam #Kate Canterbary #Romance #amreading #Bookstagram #bookwarm #bibliophile #reader #kindle #ebook #ARC #advanced readers copy #readers of tumblr #Small town romance #neurodivergent Child

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geekpopnews · 2 months

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"Doce como Você" narra recomeço de noiva abandonada no altar

'Doce como Você', o novo romance de Kate Canterbary, narra jornada de uma noiva abandonada em busca de um novo começo

O que você faria se seu noivo terminasse com você por telefone? E se essa ligação acontecesse três horas antes do seu casamento? Em novo livro, Kate Canterbary explora essa narrativa. A escritora, que já é best-seller, engata mais um sucesso sobre o recomeço de uma noiva abandonada praticamente no altar em Doce como Você. Inicialmente, Canterbery apresenta a triste história de Shay Zucconi.…

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#casamento #Doce como Você #Estreia #fake dating #Kate Canterbary #Livros #Romance

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goodbooksonly · 3 months

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Series: The Santillian Triplets

Book 1: The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Dating.

By: Kate Canterbary

Read on Kindle.

I love the way this book strayed away from the normal girl meets guy then they fall in love and get married. Magnolia decided to take a chance in the dating world by dating a guy from a dating app and a guy she meet in person. They are aware of each other and so the reader is not aware of who she ends up with until towards the end. Some people might have been able to guess but I really did not know. I was clueless lol.

“I didn't know how it felt to be wanted and I didn't know how I'd handle it if I ever found out.”

“I wanted to be someone worth getting to know. And then, I wanted to be someone worth treasuring.”

“I wanted a partner who'd rearrange the world for me. That was what I wanted. That was it. That was my thing. Right there.”

“You strike me as the type of woman who'd survive in a world that wasn't ready for you.”

“I needed me and nothing more. And that was the ah-ha moment of all this—the delicate space between needs and wants. I needed to know and love myself and I wanted a man who knew and loved me as I was.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Book 2: Boss in the Bedsheets.

Ash and Zelda’s story. They met on a plane and fell fast.

“"Are most days like this?" The doctor said something about the next part being quick and advising me to take a deep breath and breathe through it, but I asked, "Is it wrong for me to want them all to be like this?"”

“"You should know by now I need you more than I care to admit."”

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Book 3: The Belle and the Beard.

Linden Wolf Santillian & Jasper-Anne Clearly

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

You know how people do it? They decide to fuck the plan. Seriously. Fuck the plan. Walk in the woods. Reject anyone’s definition of success. Abandon exceptions. Listen to your heartbeat. Take no one’s shit.

“Nothing blooms in every season, I said. “You shouldn’t expect that of yourself when it doesn’t occur in nature.”

… people weren’t supposed to be one stationary, static thing their entire lives. People were supposed to live a lot of lives in their time on this planet. They were supposed to reinvent themselves and reevaluate their beliefs. They were supposed to look back and shake their head at the things they did before they knew better. They were supposed to get all of the second chances.

Has it occurred to you even once that I do these things for you? And I like doing these for you?

There’s no limit on the number of acts in your play. You get as many as you want. You just have to keep getting on stage.

Yeah, she could crack the earth open. She could snap me in half. She could do anything she wanted and I’d let her. I’d fucking let her.

#bookaddict #bookworm #bookish #book blog #books #happiness #books and libraries #librarylife #librarylove #booklr #kate canterbary #magnolia #ash and Zelda #the santillian triplets

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overflowingshelf · 3 months

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January 2024 Reading Recap

Well, 2024 started ROUGH. I had such high hopes for this year, but unfortunately, I was laid off from my job the first week of the year, so things didn’t start on the right foot. That definitely impacted some of my plans for the blog, but I’m hoping to get back in the swing of things in February as I’m in a much better mental space now. Thank god for reading. That was my safe space while I was…

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#Boss in the Bedsheets #Cara Devlin #In a Jam #January Recap #Kate Canterbary #Lindsay Lovise #Lorraine Heath #Naina Kumar #Nature of the Crime #Never Blow a Kiss #Reading Recap #Say You&039;ll Be Mine #To Marry an Heiress

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jeevesreads · 6 months

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THROWBACK RECS: Fling to More Romance Books

I need one more day to put together my November release calendar (Amazon’s search features are still partially broken and it’s taking forever), so I’m sharing some throwback book recs in the meantime! This list features 15 fling to more romances, where our couples thought they could keep things casual. That obviously isn’t how things work out in the end, lol! I’m a slow burn lover most of the…

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fated-mates · 2 months

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A classic among classics, we’re talking ENEMIES TO LOVERS this week! We get to the bottom of what we think of as “enemies,” and how it differs from “rivals-to-lovers” and “friends-to-enemies-to-lovers” and “friends-to-lovers” (jk, we’ll never understand friends-to-lovers). We revisit some of our very favorite romances, talk about stakes, about impossible situations, and about how sexy hating someone can be.

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critical-quoter · 2 months

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But that was the whole thing about chaos. You had to take your mismatched parts and soul-sucking career prospects and the childhood epilepsy you never outgrew, and build a life out of it. Create a path that didn’t make you dread Monday and every day after that. Construct a world for yourself, even if you had no idea how to do it. Fuck around and you’ll find out.

Shucked - Kate Canterbary

#book #books #booklr #book lover #book quotes #novel #reading #quote #lit #literature #shucked #kate canterbary

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b-andherbooks · 1 year

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beth G. (@b.andherbooks)

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i keep ending back on the Kate Canterbary rotary of binge reading and i'm not mad about it.

#in a jam #kate canterbary #romance books #b.andherbooks review'#breakfast #Instagram

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bettslovesromance · 1 year

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It's still tuesday so here is my #TropeTuesday post!

I recently saw a tweet asking for neighbor romances and I realized I've read a few of them that have that dynamic and that I either loved or really liked, so here's a list with a few of them.

Have you read any of these?

#romancelandia #romance novel #book recommendation #historical romance #kate canterbary #contemporary romance #romance tropes #trope tuesday #trope post #meeka james #jackie lau #delilah peters #molly o'keefe #adriana anders #tessa dare #kristen callihan

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taterturnspages · 1 year

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IN A JAM BOOK REVIEW

Genre(s): Fiction, Romance, Contemporary

No spoilers, but does include description of events in the book that are not inherent to the plot

STAR RATING: 2/5

SPICE RATING: 3/5

SYNOPSIS:

Shay Zucconi, a Bostonite kindergarten teacher, has a tulip farm fall in her lap after her step-grandmother dies. Shay’s inheritance of Twin Tulip is conditional on two requirements. First, Shay has to move to the small town of Friendship, Rhode Island. Second, she has to be married within one year.

This comes troubling to Shay, as she was about to say ‘I do’ in a few short hours when her ex-fiancé called off the wedding. Shay is not comfortable even thinking about marriage right now. However, she finds herself more uncomfortable with the thought of her only real childhood home belonging to someone else.

Noah and Shay formed a deep friendship during their time in high school. To Noah, it was more than just a friendship. He loved her deeply in high school, but he was terrified of confessing his feelings to the beautiful popular girl when he was too awkward to even string coherent sentences together.

Noah has his hands full running the family farm, several associated businesses, and raising his niece. Love is the furthest thing in his mind, except when Shay shows up in Friendship, Rhode Island and turns his life as he knows it upside down.

READ THIS IF YOU:

Don’t mind miscommunication between hero and heroine

Enjoy cozy farm/cottage vibes

TROPES:

Grumpy x Sunshine

Marriage of convenience

Second chance

Small town romance

CHARACTERS:

Shay Zucconi:

Shay is a fun-loving, quirky kindergarten teacher that everyone seems drawn to. She genuinely seems like the life of the party, and it makes a lot of sense why she was the popular girl in high school. Shay quite literally puts the ‘sunshine’ in the ‘grumpy x sunshine’ trope. Shay had an extremely shaky childhood and it seems like those issues follow her into adulthood. After her ex-fiancé left her at the altar, those issues were really put under the spotlight. All things considered, Shay isn’t a bad person by definition, and she may even be likeable at times. However, her coping mechanisms were absolute trash. After Xavier called off the wedding, it was mentioned on several different occasions (several different days in book time) that Shay would drink away her sorrows during the day and would avoid any and all responsibility. To me, this seems like alcoholism even on a minor level. I’m sure the author didn’t intend this, but I could not shake the feeling that Shay was coping with stress and sadness by getting day-drunk and trying to romanticize it as if that isn’t a big deal?

Also, Shay is supposedly thirty-something years old. I honestly never would have guessed that if her age was never mentioned in the book. The way she handles problems, inconveniences, and communication with others screams immaturity. I realize that Shay has deep-seated childhood trauma and those actions in her adult life are trauma responses; which is obviously devastating and terrible, but now that Shay is well into adulthood, it is her (and only her) responsibility to resolve that trauma to make sure that she doesn’t hurt anyone in her life as a result. Shay frequently mentioned ill-feelings about her childhood, yet there is zero mention of her getting help, or considering getting help, for those problems.

Lastly, Shay repeatedly reiterated that her ex-fiancé meant nothing to her and anything bad that he said about her went in one ear and out the other. But that is abundantly untrue. Shay spent a large percentage of this book replaying the words that Xavier said, taking them to heart, and even genuinely believing them. To make matters worse, Xavier reached out to Shay asking to meet up with her in person after several months of no communication. Shay threw herself at this opportunity after she claimed to be invested in Noah and had feelings for Noah. Homegirl…if that really is the case, why are you crawling on your hands and knees for the trail of crumbs that your ex is giving you?

Like I said in the beginning of Shay’s character analysis, she is likeable at times. Her personality flourishes and she surely has a heart of gold. It really is hard to not like her, but for purposes of reviewing this book, I feel like I have to mention her extreme flaws.

Noah Barden:

It doesn’t take much for me to fall in love with the hero of romance books. The bar for fictional men is in hell in all honesty. But I strongly considered DNF’ing this book solely because of Noah Barden. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Noah is the kingpin of Little Star Farms and despite all of the headaches that come along with farm life, he seems to really enjoy his occupation. Before returning to Friendship, RI to take over the family farm, he was a big-shot lawyer in New York City. Noah brings both blue-collar and white-collar traits to the table, which is immensely attractive to me…usually.

To put it lightly, Noah is downright insufferable. He has the emotional intelligence and emotional maturity of a pond pebble, and he happily admits that in this book as if he is proud of that. Again, I never would have guessed that he is thirty-something years old. My absolute largest issue with Noah is that he takes the ‘grumpy’ trait a little too far. On top of that, he is physically incapable of communicating his feelings, so Shay believes for a very long time in this book (literally up until the last fifty pages) that Noah despises her. Honestly, I thought so too.

Did I say that was my absolute largest issue with Noah? Actually, I changed my mind. The real problem at play here is Noah gives off MAJOR narcissistic vibes. I’m sorry, but I feel qualified in saying that because I endured the wrath of two different narcissists in my life for several years. For example, Noah only ever did “nice” things for Shay when other people were watching. I have two examples of this (because there were only ever two scenarios of him doing nice things in the book): 1) Noah brought Shay homemade baked bread on ONE occasion, conveniently the ONLY occasion that Shay had company at her home in Friendship. Noah claimed to not be aware of her company, but they are literally neighbors. I’m sure he saw the vehicle in the driveway that was not hers. 2) He baked her a homemade cake and cooked dinner for her on her birthday, ONLY AFTER Shay’s best friend (Jaime) threatened Noah with the mafia if he didn’t do exactly that for her birthday. I’m not convinced he would have done anything for Shay’s birthday if Jaime didn’t ask him to, to be honest.

The cherry on top of all of that, is that Noah never ONCE talked about, let alone executed, a date with Shay. And the absolute monstrosity of it all, is that Gennie (Noah’s niece in his care) who is S I X Y E A R S O L D had to tell Noah to take her out on a date once in a while. Like, are we actually sure this man is thirty-something years old? And I’m supposed to believe Noah had feelings for Shay?

Again, Noah was insufferable. Regardless of if he’s attractive or not, this man has the personality of a wet mop on his best day. It felt like I was supposed to congratulate and romanticize Noah for doing the absolute human bare minimum. I refuse to do that. I truly don’t think I have one good thing to say about him, because every word out of his mouth seemed fake and never ONCE did his words match his actions (except for when he wanted to get freaky with Shay, only then was he the all-mighty communicator and sweet-talker). Narcissist.

Gennie (Imogen):

Gennie is the daughter of Eva, Noah’s sister. After Eva finds herself in trouble and is sent to jail for life, Noah becomes Gennie’s legal guardian. Gennie had a rough life before Noah, which is obvious from her mannerisms and defense mechanisms. I genuinely felt bad for Gennie and the trauma that she endured at such a young age, she didn’t deserve any of it. The issues I have with her are really reflections of Noah’s parenting style, because Gennie is just a kid at the end of the day, so I don’t think it’s appropriate or fair to give a negative character analysis on her. Gennie’s entire personality revolves around swearing in every sentence she speaks and possessing an alter-ego of a pirate. It was cute and funny in the first few chapters, but after there was essentially zero character development for Gennie (other than Noah briefly mentioning that “Gennie is doing much better in school” during the last couple of chapters) it began to get exhausting and (quite frankly) annoying. I felt like Gennie was failed in this book and I wanted so much better for her.

PRAISES, CRITIQUES, AND MY THOUGHTS:

With all my reviews, I praise the positives first and rail the critiques at the end. Don’t expect a lot of praises here, but there are some. For starters, I loved that Shay had a strong circle of friends that supported her endeavor to drop everything and run after her childhood farm. Shay’s friend group was everything she needed them to be, and they tried their best to kick Shay’s bad habits to the curb.

Second, and lastly, I loved the setting for this book. Friendship, Rhode Island is the small town us readers crave. The hometown football games, the seasonal festivals, and the cozy vibes of a weekend farmer’s market had me wishing I lived in the New England farmtown.

But not all glitter is gold, as they say. My problems with this book far outweighed the positives. I felt no chemistry whatsoever between Noah and Shay. Perhaps it was the fact that Noah constantly spoke in past tense about the ‘high school Noah and Shay’ as if he’s forgetting that they are now fifteen years past high school and both Noah and Shay have changed so much since the teenage versions of themselves. Noah made no attempt to get to know present-day Shay, and the only information he had about her was what he could see with his own two eyes and what Shay willingly told him without Noah asking. Shay made more attempts to get to know Noah, albeit they were weak and not frequent attempts.

And the spice scenes??!???!!! Are you kidding me? Reading those scenes felt like I was reading a story about two people who stumbled home drunk from a bar and were having a one-night-stand with no intentions of ever speaking to each other ever again. The way Noah treated Shay during their time under the covers felt borderline nonconsensual, ESPECIALLY during one of their last spicy moments when Shay was literally crying. It was abhorrent to read and at times, made me physically ill and made me cringe until my skin fell off. The chemistry was simply not there romantically. This truly felt like a story about two rekindled friends who made a friends-with-benefits pact (there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m supposed to believe that these two people love each other??).

One of the “terms” of Noah and Shay’s “relationship” was to keep Gennie out of it, because Gennie had endured enough confusion and disappointment in her lifetime. But, as I expected, they did the exact opposite of that. Noah and Shay placed Gennie almost perfectly in the middle of their problems. So much so that Gennie literally ran away from home out of fear and insecurity that Noah and Shay would have a baby and forget all about Gennie and stop caring about her. Noah claimed that he was focused on Gennie and that she came first, but that is clearly another bold-faced lie to make Noah seem like the perfect parent. Poor Gennie just moved in with Noah less than a year ago, so clearly she is not ready for any more changes. With Shay’s tendency to bolt when a slight inconvenience arises (and Noah is aware of this) I am SHOCKED that Noah let Gennie get strung into the crossfire. But also, I’m not shocked because Noah has a terminal case of tunnel vision and lacks all self-awareness.

I honestly could keep going, but I feel like I’ve defiled this book enough to get my point across. The sole reason that this was not a one-star read for me is because I give books that I DNF’d a one star. I rarely ever DNF books and in order for me to do so, the book has to be downright awful or offensive. In no way was this book either of those things, but I still had a tough time getting through it.

I can’t say that I recommend this book, but I know it’s extremely popular. I scrolled through Goodreads after finishing ‘In a Jam’ and I scrolled for a good couple of minutes before I found a negative review. So, maybe it’s just me? At any rate, do your research on this book and don’t say I didn’t tell you so if you end up hating it.

#romance books #in a jam #kate canterbary #contemporary romance #book review #book blogger #bookstagram #romance reader

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