⭐⭐⭐☆
This is the second in the series about the ladies behind LadyLuck, a dating app for lesbians. Though it is a part of a series, it is complete as a standalone romance in itself.
Carter Montgomery is LadyLuck's app designer. She and her friends Avery and Brennan are the three co-founders of the popular app. Pushing Carter to find some romantic (or at least sexual) interest, Avery sets her up on a date using LadyLuck. Carter's date is Jamie Prescott, a roving start-up streamlining and troubleshooting consultant employed by a major venture capital firm based in New York. By the nature of her job, Jamie is never in any city for long and all she is really looking for is hookups in whichever city she happens to be. While Carter and Jamie are intellectual equals, there is no meeting ground in their thoughts, ideas, outlooks or personal wants. Their first date ends with Carter walking away in a huff.
Subsequent meetings don't go much better despite Carter's best efforts. A natural with people, Carter cannot figure out why she can't really have a cordial conversation with Jamie. Being attracted to the infuriating woman doesn't help. When Jamie makes Carter realise that she's looking for love and a relationship, things only get more difficult for Carter trying to balance her long term wants with the attraction for a woman who isn't going to be in town much longer.
The thing that we enjoyed the most in this book were the dialogues. Whether intellectual dialogues about abstractions and concepts; fun dialogues with friends or serious ones with family -- the dialogues are awesome. Then there is great supporting cast of friends (Carter's and Jamie's) and Carter's sister.
Carter and Jamie are very well developed personalities and their baggage (particularly Jamie's) is thoroughly explained. But all the character development and motive explanation in the world cannot make us forgive ghosting -- so Jamie loses points. Plus, between the two, only Carter makes compromises with who she is and what she wants, to be with Jamie, which made us feel that Carter is way more invested in the relationship than Jamie. This feeling remains even at the end. Skewed relationships in a romance don't sit too well with us -- at least in our books, the escapist world should have more balance and emotional equality.
Notwithstanding our need for Carter to get more and to get better than Jamie, this is a well paced, highly readable romance with likeable characters, a well developed context and (once again) great dialogues.
⭐⭐⭐☆
⭐⭐⭐☆
