Romance book – Katie Has Anxiety

GoodReads Synopsis:

Critically acclaimed author Trish Doller’s unforgettable and romantic adult debut about setting sail, starting over, and finding yourself…

Since the loss of her fiancé, Anna has been shipwrecked by grief—until a reminder goes off about a trip they were supposed to take together. Impulsively, Anna goes to sea in their sailboat, intending to complete the voyage alone.

But after a treacherous night’s sail, she realizes she can’t do it by herself and hires Keane, a professional sailor, to help. Much like Anna, Keane is struggling with a very different future than the one he had planned. As romance rises with the tide, they discover that it’s never too late to chart a new course.

In Trish Doller’s unforgettable Float Plan, starting over doesn’t mean letting go of your past, it means making room for your future.

Review:

When I was a little girl, my grandfather took my sister and I sailing in the Hudson River. We cried the entire time as the boat rocked back and forth in the New York night. I hated every minute. Meanwhile my grandfather was a sailor who had sailed the Caribbean and had sailing in his blood, so he enjoyed it immensely.

But. This book made me want to give sailing another shot so that I can sail the Caribbean and find myself. Okay, fine. Find the handsome Irish sailor of my dreams.

GoodReads Synopsis:

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
When his mother became President of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with an actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex/Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.
Heads of the family and state and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: Stage a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instagrammable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the presidential campaign and upend two nations. It raises the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through?

Review:

I’d been hearing about this book for literal years, but I’d always hesitated to read it, because I usually think of my ideal genre as “badass women. That’s it.” I also sort of feel like gay relationships can be idealized and gay characters can easily be caricatures or stereotypes instead of well-rounded characters. So, for a while, I stayed away from it.

And then, I received a copy in the mail as a random act of kindness, started a book club with a few friends from home, and we decided to read it.

And ya’ll… I’m so mad at myself for staying away for so long. The story is heartfelt, the characters are lovable and fully rounded out, the banter is unbeatable, the romance is steamy… and yes, even though the love story didn’t include any badass women, there were still some very badass women featured as characters.

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it also felt so good to be represented, not in a tragic, sad coming out story, (I’m looking at you, The Happiest Season.) but in a joyful romantic comedy. I’ve devoured rom-coms since I was a kid, and for the first time, I really saw a LGBTQ+ couple represented. This book felt like a love letter to the LGBTQ+ community.

One of my favorite parts of reading is when you get so engrossed in a book, you really are absorbed into the story. You stay up late reading, when you’re not reading, you can’t stop thinking about the book, you tell everyone to read it, you laugh out loud at the funny parts, cry at the sad parts, etc. That’s how it felt with this book. I was so enamored with everything about it, and it felt like I couldn’t stop singing its praises.