Kate Clayborn

I love Kate Clayborn. She writes contemporary romances with good depth and well-developed relationships both between the main characters and the secondary ones. This latest novel is almost as much about familial relationships as about the romantic one, and it's very well done.

Jess has spent the last 10 years raising her half-sister after their mom takes off. As it happens, the mother left with a notorious con man, and a famous podcaster has appeared, wanting to tell the story. What ensues is a road trip, a love story, and a journey to healing. Clayborn is adept at writing fully believable female AND male characters, and at walking the line in developing conflict and angst without pushing it too much. This might not be my favorite of hers, but it was a good read.

4 stars… (plus d'informations)

Love at First is about orphans and family, loyalty and betrayal, letting go and holding on. It’s about seeing (or not seeing) different perspectives.

At first. The novel opens with sight, and it’s easy to think that’s the point—Will’s love at first sight of Nora when they are young teenagers. Even though he couldn’t actually see her. He more heard her and felt her presence. After he looks up at her on the balcony and struggles to see her, it’s easy to think this is a story all about sight and seeing things clearly. But like the characters in the book, we learn it’s not about seeing clearly. It’s about seeing differently. A different perspective that heals two broken people.

There are so many different shifts in perspective throughout the story and among all the characters—a mixture of lovable and eccentric and delightful and funny family members (no one is actually related outside each apartment, but they become each other’s family, nonetheless). The characters come to see each other and themselves differently. The biggest change in perspective is how both Will and Nora come to see themselves through the trauma and grief that’s shaped them, and what they find is a home in one another. They learn, in the end, how to love one another without restraint because: “You don’t have to love the people the way you learned at first” (278).
… (plus d'informations)

Aiden is still angry and grieving his twin brother Aaron's death; Zoe is one of the lawyers who represented the drug company in his settlement. But Zoe quits the law firm and goes on a sort of apology tour; she means to visit Aiden's parents, but finds him instead. And what Aiden needs is a fake fiancee, to help him win the chance to buy the campsite he and Aaron attended as kids (he thinks that the camp's current owners will look more favorably on families rather than individuals). Zoe agrees to the fake relationship, and even helps Aiden with his proposal to turn the camp into a rehabilitation and wellness site for recovering addicts, like Aaron. But as the two get to know each other, and challenge each other, they realize that they both need to make some changes to their plans. Of course, they end up falling for each other, and of course, their ruse is discovered, but they find their way back to one another.

Quotes

"We need to tell a story. That's what all good arguments are, really. Stories." (Zoe, ch. 6)

It's just time, I guess - [it] keeps moving forward, no matter how you try to stay perfectly still in your anger. (Aiden, ch. 8)

"How much work you do on something has nothing to do with whether it's the right idea." (Zoe, ch. 10)

It's scary, the way Aiden and I know each other, when we've spent all this time trying not to. (ch. 13)

"For helping me see that sometimes you start something for a selfish reason, but you can continue it - you can finish it for another kind of reason. A good, kind, unselfish reason." (ch. 20)… (plus d'informations)