💍💍1/2
THE WAKE-UP CALL
Beth O’Leary
Berkley Publishing Group
Publication Date: September 26th, 2023
368 Pages
Goodreads | Amazon
I really wanted to like this enemies-to-lovers romance but I had a few problems with it. I will start off with something that I did like and that was the dual points of view. Each chapter alternated with our main character’s (Izzy and Lucas) POV. The location of Forest Manor Hotel and Spa was wonderful, especially for a Christmas time plot. The hotel sounds like a place I would like to visit, an old (emphasis on old) manor house turned luxury hotel. I also loved the eclectic group of guests the hotel has.
Maybe it is my age (57) showing but why the hell can’t adults just sit down and talk and be honest about their feelings? They’re nearing thirty years old and they let a whole year go by without discussing what happened. Izzy was way too immature for my liking and the bubbly facade grated on my nerves. I don’t suffer fools very well and if she was my friend or family member I’d be clipping her upside the head (Yes sometimes violence IS the answer!) and telling her to grow the feck up. And the way she used Louis to get back at Lucas made me angry, that’s a terrible thing to do. Is twenty-eight too young to expect someone to say “Hey, I think you’re cute, smart, funny and I like you, wanna go out?”
The whole Ring Thing was just plain stupid. They should have kept the rings, sold them, used the money to fix the hotel and moved on…Problem solved. If they loved the hotel so much why wasn’t that plan put into place right away? Bottom line, this was just too cutesy for my personal taste but I am glad I finally gave this author a go…it is my year of thinking outside the box as far as giving different genres go, and I can’t expect all of them to work for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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