Nicole Reads A Lot

This book is, hands down, the best friends-to-lovers book that I’ve read in ages. I started off not feeling too warmly toward Nick, given the details of his and Jayne’s last face-to-face encounter, but his obvious regret, plus their warm relationship, made me realize that it was more of an awful moment in his life than any sort of indicator of his normal behavior. Everybody makes mistakes. Also, this book is set in Canada. It’s possible that my fond feelings toward our northern neighbor translates into an extra half star when figuring out my ratings, but I can’t say for sure; maybe Canadian books are just better.

A lot of romance novels feel to me like those plays that take place in a single setting: claustrophobic and limited in scope. What really worked for me in this book is that the characters do stuff. A lot of non-angsty, not specifically romantic things happen! There isn’t an endless amount of internal dialog, although Ms. Drewry provided a good amount of insight into what each of the main characters was thinking. This title would probably make a good audiobook. A large part of the time you got to see Jayne and Nick working toward something; he has his business, and she is in the process of getting her bookstore up and running.

Jayne is a courageous character and I admired her a lot. At the beginning of the book, she comes back to a town that she’d basically been run out of, first by her cold grandmother, and then by the devastating behavior of her best friend. The fact that she comes back at all and doesn’t hold a grudge is nothing short of remarkable (to me, at least, as I am a champion grudge-holder). She goes out of her way to let Nick know that she was hurt, but there are no lingering hard feelings. Nick is a really dependable guy who tries to do right by everybody. He plays the peacemaker between Jayne and the various people in this book who give her crap, but in a way that is neither off-putting nor overly aggressive.

I found the secondary characters in this book uniformly interesting, even the ones who I didn’t like a ton. It wasn’t difficult to put myself in Lisa’s shoes and see why she would have a problem with Nick and Jayne’s closeness. Nick and Carter’s relationship is a thing of beauty. It’s nice to see male cousins who so shamelessly enjoy each other’s company, and who can communicate using more than grunts and insults. I liked how Jayne’s new female friends help her feel more integrated into the community, even though there were a few rough moments within her new group that I didn’t feel were satisfactorily resolved.

I think that anybody with longstanding friendships would agree that Ms. Drewry did a good job of capturing the routines and nuances of a 25 year friendship. Nick and Jayne have their own shorthand, and know each other so well as friends that they’re the last two to catch on to their changing/revealed feelings for one another.

In addition to all of this, this book is sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious. I really enjoyed Plain Jayne and would certainly read another book by Ms. Drewry.

I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and Bruce Springsteen’s phone number.