40-Love

There's Something About Marysburg Series, Book 2

De: Olivia Dade

Narrado por: Kelsey Navarro

Duración: 10 h y 1 m

Resumen del Editor

This match is no game.

When a rogue wave strips Tess Dunn of her bikini top, desperate, half-naked times call for desperate, please-cover-me-kids-are-coming-closer measures. Enter Lucas Karlsson, aka that flirty Swede-in-the-water-nearby. When he prevents her bare buoys from being exposed to fellow vacationers, even an ocean can't drown the sparks that fly.

Lucas, a former top-level tennis pro now giving lessons at the resort, fled there after the abrupt, painful end to his injury-plagued career. But he's finally ready to move on with his life - and after a few late-night hands-on sessions with Tess, he's eager to prove he's the ace she wants.

But this match comes with challenges: She's 40, and at 26, he's barely old enough to rent a car. Worse, they only have two weeks together before Tess returns to her assistant-principal life in Virginia. During that brief time, they'll have to play hard, take a few risks, and find out whether their chemistry is a one-shot wonder...or whether they're meant to be doubles partners for life.

©2020 Olivia Dade (P)2021 Tantor

It’s just kinda boring

To her credit, Olivia Dade is really great about delving into characters’ insecurities in realistic ways. These characters are very normal people making very normal mistakes, with more than a normal amount of pride and angst. Relatable, but not gripping. Not the escapism I’m looking for in a romance. I’ve liked some of her books in the past, but just can’t get into this one.

Vacations Rule!!

Picture it, an island, palms swaying in the light wind, waves lapping on the glass like shore.
This is where our story begins! Friends on vacation, a tennis pro who likes to save topless women in the ocean... You can just imagine where our story goes from here.
There is something about Marysburg, well written, aignst, steamy, and love. Olivia Dade does it again!

The gateway drug to my OBSESSION with Olivia Dade …

I picked this book out for a vacation listen and YES!!! Walk, don’t run, Olivia’s amazing storytelling wants to to be safe and easy on those knees.

All of her characters make me FALL in love and this is a couple that I come back to time and time again. The universe she creates a better version of our world, and I want friends and partners like the ones she leaves on the page.

Buy everything she’s ever written, and have so much fun reading for the first time. There will be a second … and third, and —

Well you get the idea 😏

Another win from Dade!

I love the main characters in this book and their story arc. They both had difficulties and faults, but they helped each other grow and see their own strengths. I love the body diversity and the nod to chronic pain and injury. Wonderful book and so glad I read it.

Not great

Started out bad and stayed that way. I didn’t like any of the characters and found it hard to get invested.

awful

Awfully awful. Just awful. Awful in every respect. I regret this purchase. It was an awful decision.

Weird clinical prose and over expository dialogue

Setup: Tess is a 40yo professional woman on vacation (with a friend) at a resort on a private island in Florida. She ends up catching feelings for her Swedish tennis instructor, Lucas. A 26yo ex-pro who had to bow out of his career due to injury and chronic pain. Tess also has mild chronic pain. You see where this is going, a lot of talk about (in fact a whole book which is predicated on) physical LIMITATIONS.

Characters: Tess knows what she wants, in fact she’s kinda bossy. Lucas doesn’t know what he wants at all, but he's nice and kind of unmotivated and reticent. You have to like that type of gender role switch up to enjoy this book. Her: a bold, flip, pragmatic, work prioritizer, moralizer and virtue signaller. Him: deferential, an old soul, eager, pleaser, past life manwhore - present life loner.

These two MCs have a lot of awkward sounding conversations. The word choices and the style of what they say aloud to each other definitely isn’t the usual North American grunt and slang.

The talk about human frailty is really high in this book. There's: aging, body weight, sun damage, menstrual pain, as well as the cruelty of beauty norms and standards. Individually the author walked the line nicely when addressing each of these topics, but bundled together it was A LOT.

And the sex, smh. I avoid these trad romances because they prioritize convention over heat. I have never listened to a sex scene like the first one in this book. It LITERALLY cockblocked itself 😂. A 26yo old guy who’s delving into some hot, cougar, plus sized pussy ended up barely touching his partner because he had so much “respect” for her geriatric aches and pains and shower stall soliloquies. God it was brutal. And not arousing in the least. Everything Tess says during sex for the entire book will make all of your orifices seal shut.

As for the rest, a friend who ditched me mid-vacation (one we’d been planning for months) because of some nobody guy, wouldn’t be a friend anymore.

And in the end, Tess only agreed to love Lucas once he had a 10yr plan and retirement investments. It was all so conditional I could barely listen. God forbid their life doesn't go to plan.