Interior Design School? Check. Cute house to fix up? Check.
Sexy, grumpy neighbor who is going to get in the way of your plans? Check. Unfortunately.
Grace Travis has it all figured out. In between finishing school and working a million odd jobs, she’ll get her degree and her dream job. Most importantly, she’ll have a place to belong, something her harsh mother could never make. When an opportunity to fix up—and live in—a little house on the beach comes along, Grace is all in. Until her biggest roadblock moves in next door.
Noah Jansen knows how to make a deal. As a real estate developer, he knows when he’s found something special. Something he could even call home. Provided he can expand by taking over the house next door–the house with the combative and beautiful woman living in it.
With the rules for being neighborly going out the window, Grace and Noah are in an all-out feud. But sometimes, your nemesis can show you that home is always where the heart is
| Title: | How to Love Your Neigbor/Neighbour |
| Author: | Sophie Sullivan |
| Series: | n/a |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Contemporary |
| Trope(s): | Enemies-to-Lovers Neighbours-to-Lovers |
| Point of View: | Third Person, Past Tense |
| Location: | Harlow Beach, California, USA |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 18th January, 2022 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Just not for me
This is my first book by Sophie Sullivan and what appears to be her second published book after last year’s Ten Rules for Faking It.
From the first, I just couldn’t get into this story no matter how hard I tried. The writing style, while obviously accomplished, was very wordy and felt like streams of random thoughts rather than a coherent and clear descriptions. I found myself continually re-reading sentences that I didn’t quite understand the first time round. This really dampened by enthusiasm for this book which never picked up again, sadly.
There were a whole host of characters in this story and a really rich picture is drawn of Grace, Noah and their friends, families, co-workers etc. While that may work for some people, I found it a bit much, if I’m honest. I want to care whole-heartedly about our couple, not half-heartedly about a whole bunch of folk. Each character was well-written, however. Morty stood out as very true to life – it’s a shame, then, that he made me feel equal measures of guilt and annoyance.
“…I just couldn’t get into this story no matter how hard I tried.”
This is billed as an enemies to lovers trope but there really wasn’t very much enemy-ing, in my opinion. Certainly not the hard-core hatred that I’ve seen – and liked – in other books. It was all a bit tepid. And that goes for the love scenes, too. If a story is strong, I don’t need sex to make a book a winner. I feel that in this book, had the doors stayed open, it might have helped this book somewhat. But I’m not going to fault a book simply because it doesn’t have decent sex in it.
This is a really difficult review to write as I hate to be negative, especially as I’ve read other reviews where they have just adored this story, cast of characters and the love between Noah and Grace. I just felt very little, and my lack of connection with Ms Sullivan’s writing style really was the beginning and end for me.
If you’ve read and enjoyed Sophie Sullivan’s first book – Ten Rules for Faking It – then I have absolutely no doubt that you’ll love this story just as much. It’s not one for me, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad story so if you fancy it – buy it. I hope you loved it where I did not. Sadly just 2 stars.
* I received this book in exchange for my honest review *
Sophie Sullivan is a Canadian author as well as a cookie-eating, Diet Pepsi-drinking, Disney enthusiast who loves reading and writing romance in almost equal measure. She writes around her day job as a teacher and spends her spare time with her sweet family watching reruns of Friends. Ten Rules For Faking It was her romcom debut novel, but she’s had plenty of practice writing happily ever after as her alter ego, Jody Holford.
 |  |  |  |  |  |
No Comments