Her Big City Neighbor

Reads like a strange travelogue written by a precocious seven year old (“I tried this! We ate that! And then we went over here! SO FUN!! Wow, big city!”)… except she’s a grown woman who sometimes has sex. Couldn’t finish, too annoying.

What an enjoyable book! Loved it, from start to finish. The main characters were smart and engaging. I really liked the thoughts they had and the way they dealt with their feelings.

I really enjoyed this story. There was a lot of focus on food and trying new experiences. At first this seemed odd, but it was a bit like mindfulness in some ways. There isn’t anything super complicated about the story, and it makes for a light, quick read.

Follow an extroverted straight cis white lady as she skips through her new life exploring the local food scene and lusts after her neighbor in a predominantly aimless story outside of being a Toronto food tourism ad. Not until roughly forty percent of the way through the book is there any sense of direction, and even then the plot continues to be flat due to a lack of any real conflict until around the eighty percent mark, where they’re almost immediately resolved. Although research is evident in the writing, there were several typos, a couple of continuity issues, and it doesn’t flow very well. When attempting to paint a picture or illustrate an experience, an abundance of mundane and superfluous thoughts and details demonstrate an inability to identify what parts of a scene form the necessary foundation that allows the brain to fill in the rest, and which are important enough to warrant taking a moment to expand on. Amy and Victor as main characters aren’t very original and don’t have much room for growth. Their relationship is forced, in no small part due to the overuse of “for some reason” which signals to readers that the author couldn’t think of a plausible reason for events to occur but didn’t want to rewrite what they already had. While I liked how the author brought attention to some challenges introvert-extrovert relationships can have I wish it was explored more. Their internal monologues get repetitive, there’s awkward queerbaiting with some of the other characters, and some of the commentary on race dynamics also feel forced. Having said that, as a product of Chinese diaspora with parents from Guangzhou and Hong Kong, I appreciated the informed Cantonese touches in a literary world disproportionately full of white lenses.

Boring!

Okay, I love the romance genre, even though I complain about it all the time. But I’m super picky. I want a romance novel that is feminist—I’m sick of romance authors sticking to gendered stereotypes. I want a romance where the couple are actually really good together and care for each other—surprisingly this is hard to come by. And I want realism and believability. Oh, and I like hot sexy scenes too. This novel checks all my boxes. And more! I’m not a foodie, but I will be now. After reading this, I want to go to Toronto and eat everything! I love novels that feature loving families, and this has that. I wish Victor’s mother had been my mother! Oh, I just loved everything about this book! I will now go buy all the author’s books! So excited and happy!