40-Love by Olivia Dade

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Before starting the Historical Romance Readathon, I had time to squeeze in one more read. I went with book 2 in Olivia Dade's There's Something About Marysburg, 40-Love. As mentioned in me review for book 1, this covered prompts in all three of my summer reading challenges. I applied 40-Love to vacation romance for the Romancing Summer Challenge, step in tropical or beach location for Summer of Swoon and wardrobe malfunction for the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo.

Tess, assistant principle of Marysburg High School, is on vacation with her best friend at a resort in Florida. One morning, she's out in the water early and ends up losing her bikini top. She yells for a man on the beach for help once kids start showing up on the beach. The man is Lucas, a former tennis pro and the instructor at the resort. He is in his late twenties and Tess is turning 40 on this trip. They feel a connection and both decide to try to make things last after her vacation.

I really enjoyed this and more than I thought I would. I had heard a lot of good things about 40-Love, but I was nervous about listening to the hype too much. The thing that stuck out to me the most the level of emotional maturity between them both. Yes they are both older, but Tess and Lucas apologized when needed. They also talked about everything and were really conscientious of their feelings and how to deal with those emotions. It just was so nice reading good communication between the main couple. They both have their insecurities, but even when they do go wallow for a little bit, it never lasts long. They both really pushed each other to open up. This was also pretty steamy. Lucas was so gone for Tess and was such a thoughtful cinnamon roll. I really don't have anything bad to say about this book. If anything it would be how much Tess points out she's "old." 40 is not that old.

While I'm not the biggest fan of age-gap, even more so when the woman is older, I really enjoyed this. Every time I thought, "I don't like this" or "how are we coming back from this" Olivia would surprise me and deal with it so superbly. There were a couple moments after an argument or something more nasty said that I had to take breather for a minute and prepare myself for it to not be dealt with how I wanted. Every single time I dove back in I was so pleasantly surprised.

I feel like this series is starting to cement Olivia Dade as a favorite author. I've enjoyed everything I've read from her so far and will definitely continue to read her works. Maybe I'll even get to Spoiler Alert sometime soon. I was waiting for the hype to die down, and now will just need to fit in before the end of the year. I know the sequel comes out in October, so hopefully I'll get to it by then.

Have you read 40-Love?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: 40-Love, Olivia Dade, 5-stars, 1 day, eBook, 320 pages, published in 2020