Only and Forever by Chloe Liese
My Rating: ★★★★
Quick Note: This book is part of a series of books about the Bergman family, but can be read as a standalone. I did not read the other books, but loved this regardless.
About: Viggo Bergman is the hopeless romantic in his family and has been invested in everyone else’s happily ever after, but has yet to have his own. He also has a secret, a dream he wants to keep for himself until everything is ready — owning a bookstore dedicated to romance. Enter Tallulah Clarke, the thriller author who once shared a class with him in college, but seemed to keep her distance. Tallulah has a secret of her own — she’s struggling to finish her next book. What’s holding her back? She can’t figure out her book’s romantic subplot. Running a store is crazy, writing about romance as a cynic feels impossible, but what if the two help each other?
What to expect/tropes:
Forced proximity
Friends to lovers
Grumpy sunshine
Dual POV
My Thoughts: I really enjoyed reading this and ate it up all in one sitting. I know I liked another book from the same author, so you can say I’m kind of a Chloe Liese fan now, too. This author does a GREAT job writing diverse characters that aren’t typically featured (Tallulah has T1D and Viggo has ADHD). But the entire concept of this book was extremely cute, in the same vein as “Not in my Book” by Katie Holt or one of the Emily Henry books about writers (I can’t remember which one…which ones?).
There are some scenes that stick out in my brain, but the part where they act out his advice for a scene in her book? I was BLUSHING. The tension was tensioning and I’m here for it. The only reason this book didn’t get 5 stars was the drunk scene between them, which I felt came a bit suddenly (I promise that isn’t an innuendo).
Words this book taught me:
Schadenfreude
Maudlin
