Title: The Start of the Story
Author: Jane Lovering
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Netgallery
Rating: ★★★★☆
Blurb: Rowan Thorpe can be forgiven for living with one foot in the past.
Since having to say goodbye far too young to the future she had planned, moving on still feels a daunting task. So, when historian Connor O’Keefe strides purposefully into her office and life, looking far too handsome for his own good and threatening to undermine the local legends she holds close to her heart, she is more than a little unsettled.
Connor has a past too, and his own reasons to keep his heart under wraps. But when a combination of fate and an unexpected snowstorm mean that Rowan and Connor have all the time in the world to swap stories, it may finally be time for an end and a new beginning.
Review: Oh, goodness I loved this book! Lovering sprinkles comedy through the tragedy of Rowan and Connor’s stories, and lifts the prose by doing so. And the flashbacks into the history of the Fairy Stane that Rowan is bent on protecting give a heart-wrenching glimpse into its past – especially when the penny starts to drop.
Lovering also uses some of my favourite tropes – rival-to-lovers and forced proximity – to good use. Being set in winter means there’s a snow-in, of course, and I loved that as well.
Her depictions of grief are cuttingly spot on. Rowan is widowed, Connor has escaped Dublin after an ill-fated love affair, but both are hurt and lost. That touch of common ground is what brings them together. Winter is a perfect allegory for Rowan as well: she’s buried in the snow of her grief but Connor brings the light and warmth needed to thaw her out. Though not without a few bumps in the road.
The Start of the Story is delightfully lacking in a third act break-up, although perhaps there are enough crossed wires to be going on with. I do think omitting one was a good call from Lovering, as the story really didn’t need it. Plus I hate breakups that are shoe-horned in for the sake of “drama” and don’t serve the story.
There is, however, a pinch point where the past and the present collide in a very heart-breaking way. I can’t say more than that, as I don’t want to spoil the story, but it’s foreshadowed brilliantly. Not a shock, but a sad, nodding certainty that I sort of saw coming.
The only reason I haven’t given The Start of the Story five stars is that things past the revelation feel rather rushed. There is an epilogue, but it’s terribly short and, while it does give Rowan and Connor a happy ending, I felt a little short-changed.
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