Madyn Rose

Author: Bria James

The hubs and I braved camping with the kiddos over the long weekend, and it was about as rough as I expected 🤣. When I finally got the kids down for their nap, I picked up my preloaded Kindle, poured myself an iced coffee and kicked up my feet. This mama needed to chill out and get lost in a book for a hot minute! A novella was precisely what I needed for this trip. This is a great quickie! Hey, sometimes that’s all we want.

Besides the book’s length, the title sweet heat promises a curvy second chance romance. All things I like. Allegra Montague has given up her family wealth and lifestyle to start a new life on her own a decade ago. She may not be living it up in high society anymore, but she’s doing it on her own and is happy about it. One little heatwave is about to smother her in the past she’s trying to forget. When her office AC unit breaks down, the repairman, Jude (her ex) shows up. It’s been a decade since they last saw each other… wow it’s a doozy when they come face to face. This is either the worst call or the best call of her new life.

The Good, The Bad, The Meh…

Since the book is so short, I can’t give away too many details, but here’s what I liked. The plus-size heroin and second-chance romance tropes. It starts off hot and heavy when Jude and Ally (her nickname) get trapped in the elevator but it takes a sudden chilling plunge when she finds something unexpected in his wallet.

Their story! Ugh 😩 heartbreak and scandal in one! I loved it. There’s enough detail in these scenes to make me feel like I read the whole long version of the story. Well, most of it…

The bad: I found it jumpy in some spots. A couple times I had to re-read a section thinking I missed something. It jumped ahead without a warning if a scene changed. For instance, they went from making date plans to ten dates later?

The meh: Okay, Okay… I know it’s a novella, but I would have liked it to be a teeny bit longer to fill in a few of the gaps in the scenes. Not much, but just enough to round them out a bit more. The book might have been great with the extra 10-15 pages.

I next to never read novellas, but I might start. There are so many perks to it, time being the biggest one. I started and finished it (it was very short, like 40 pages!) I felt like I was reading the book’s best parts without that awkward middle section to bog you down.

I recommend the book if you’re looking for something to fill the time while waiting for something like the tire change, or a doctor’s appointment, or if you’re a mom like me and sneaking in some reading during nap time.

Happy reading!

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