Review: Eight Perfect Hours (by Lia Louis)

My Rating:  4 stars

As I'm sure it has been for many, I found the past two months to be especially difficult and stressful — part of this is because of everything going on in the world right now and the resulting negativity that seems to have permeated every corner of the globe.  On a personal level, having to deal with various concerns and issues related to work and family has been tremendously draining, to the point that, most days, I feel too exhausted to do anything that requires any level of sustained concentration.  Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, this has also started to affect my reading life in that my inability to focus has made reading certain types of books more challenging.  It also didn't help that my last couple of reads have been more on the heavy side, with a few that actually bordered on depressing.  

Given all of the above, I was at the point where I was in desperate need of a "palette cleanser"-type read that would help me forget about my worries (albeit temporarily) and hopefully get my reading life back on track. It is within this context that I decided to pick up Lia Louis's forthcoming release Eight Perfect Hours to read, even though a) I'm not usually a fan of romances, especially rom-coms,  b) I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to relationships and so I'm not too keen on sappy, cliched, angsty love stories, and c) this book was pretty low on my "priority" list to read right now due to the fact that it publishes at the end of September and I have a slew of ARCs publishing before this one that I also need to get to.  But like I said earlier, I needed something that would get me out of this reading funk that I'd found myself in, and having read (and enjoyed) Louis's previous book Dear Emmie Blue, I figured at least I'm reading a familiar-to-me author.  Well, this one turned out to be a great choice!

As far as heartwarming romances go, Eight Perfect Hours definitely checks all the boxes. While the story itself wasn't too original (and yes, the plot was absolutely predictable — everything panned out pretty much as I thought it would), I still enjoyed this one quite a lot (both from the story and characters perspectives).  One thing I noticed from reading Louis's previous book and now this one is that she has the ability to create realistic, relatable characters who are tremendously flawed and sometimes do frustrating things, yet we can't help but love them anyway (this goes for the main characters as well as the side ones).  With Noelle, the main protagonist in the story, I didn't always agree with her every decision, but I understood her struggles — of being torn between responsibility to family versus pursuing her own dreams, of feeling like she wasn't being seen, of living her life more for others than for herself, etc. — because I've experienced the same throughout my life, so I could definitely relate.  This was also one of the reasons why I found myself rooting for Noelle throughout the story, even though I already knew she would most definitely find her way to a happy ending (this is a romance after all).  And just like with Dear Emmie Blue, I loved all the side characters in this one nearly as much as I loved the main characters — the wonderful chemistry that all the characters had was a bonus that made this one all the more enjoyable.

Another aspect that I liked about this one was that the author was able to strike a good balance between lighthearted moments and the more serious ones, which I felt made this both a fun read as well as one with good emotional depth.  

For those who enjoy rom-coms, I definitely recommend this one.  Yes, the plot is predictable and there are romantic cliches galore, but the characters are endearing and the story overall is quite charming.  For me, this was exactly the "pick-me-up" I needed to get me out of my reading slump during this time.  I'm glad I decided to read this one!

Received ARC from Atria / Emily Bestler books via NetGalley

Review: Dear Emmie Blue (by Lia Louis)

 

My Rating: 4 stars

I usually don’t do sappy romances, especially ones with too much fluff and not much substance.  But I needed something lighthearted after a slew of heavy reads, plus I figured a bit of “sappy” would even be welcome given everything that has been going on as of late.  After hearing this book described on a podcast that I listen to, it actually sounded like something right up my alley in terms of a lighthearted enough story but with a serious element to it.  Now after finishing this one, I’m happy to say that it was just what I needed, but more than that though, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the characters were developed and also the good balance that the author was able to achieve between the lighthearted elements and the “serious” moments.  Nearly all the characters were endearing and easy to root for, though if I had to choose my favorite characters, they would actually be the side characters such as Louise and also Rosie and Fox.  I think one of the elements that made this story work really well (for me at least) was the chemistry between the cast of characters — the camaraderie between Emmie, Rosie, and Fox; the unexpected friendship between Louise and Emmie; also Emmie’s relationship with the Moreau family (Luke, Eliot, and their parents), etc.  

In addition to the character dynamics, I also like the way the writing flowed.  The entire story was narrated from the first person point of view (in this case, entirely from Emmie Blue’s perspective), which I will be honest in saying that I’m not generally a big fan of in fiction because, depending on how the author handles it, writing from first person sometimes throws off the flow of the story, especially when there is too much description.  However, in this instance, the first person narration (no doubt helped along by the fact that there was more dialogue than description) worked well, to the point that I was able to get into the story pretty much right away and breeze through it fairly quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed this one quite a bit, even though the story was technically not very original — it was actually pretty easy to see how everything was going to pan out in terms of the plot (funny thing is that the ending scene I actually guessed within the first few chapters and it played out nearly identical to how I imagined it, ).  This is one of the reasons why I decided to keep this review brief and not delve too much into the plot, as there isn’t a whole lot more that can be said (outside of what is already mentioned in the book’s summary) without giving away the rest of the story.  

If you’re looking for a well-written, “feel-good” read during these current turbulent times, I highly recommend Dear Emmie Blue. Added bonus is that this definitely doesn’t fall into the “fluff” category— rather it does a nice job balancing “sweet” with “serious” and therefore brings an unexpected but greatly appreciated substance to the story.