Learning Curves by Molly O'Hare

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With a little more time for mood reading, I randomly picked up Learning Curves by Molly O'Hare. I recently picked her up for the first time and wanted to try more of her books. Thankfully I was able to use this for the Love Has Sprung prompt diverse heroine and the Taylor Swift Quarterly Challenge prompt You Need To Calm Down (blue on the cover).

Spencer has moved to a new state to find a good elementary school for his daughter Annabelle since she has dyslexia and other learning disabilities. When they arrive to meet the teacher before class begins, she is running late. He agrees to a meeting a couple days later, but stays on pins and needles that first day after his daughter's horrific experience at her old school. When he picks her up after the first day she is over the moon and loves her new teacher. When Spencer and Ellie meet up for the first time, things go wrong and misunderstandings occur. Ellie, someone who grew up with similar learning disabilities herself, is now both a special education teacher and a registered psychologist. She loves teaching and helping her students find the best way for them to function in school. As Spencer and Ellie find themselves bumping into each other around town they start to let down their guards.

This was so super cute and I really loved Ellie, Spencer and Annabelle. There is a small prologue to start things off, but it's actually more of an author's note since it is written by Molly and goes over her own experiences with learning disabilities and her inspiration for not only this book, but Ellie. It pretty much had me in tears before the book started. I loved that we didn't really get a third act conflict that was typical of contemporary romances. While this was a little quick, I did like that the characters themselves did talk about it and still approach some situations with caution. Even though it was a little quick, it felt natural that everything just seemed to click. I think it definitely helped that Spencer and Ellie were both older so they definitely knew what it was they wanted and needed.

Now, my only real detractor was the side characters. Usually I can set them aside, but it was just too much that it actually started bothering me. I liked Spencer's father and while there was some quirkiness from him, it was paired with moments of serious or just calm thought out conversations. Where my issue was is with Ellie's support system. It was just too much and it really started to bother me. Her friend Sally was overly quirky, her mom was overly quirky and her father was overly quirky. They were all different kinds of quirky, but it just felt like too much. There were a few times when Ellie would ask them to stop or move on and they just wouldn't listen to her. Yes there were times it was all in jest and they were playing around, but it wasn't like that all the time. We hear from Ellie that there were moments of serious between them all, but we don't really see it in the book. Like I said, it just was too much so eventually it just started to rub me wrong. I was able to get past it overall, but I just want to let others know since I know that can be a pet peeve of readers.

This was cute and the core relationship really made the book for me. I just loved the connection between Spencer and Annabelle, Annabelle and Ellie, and Spencer and Ellie. I'm really enjoying Molly O'Hare's backlist and am excited to get to more of her books. They're just good fluffy happy books and sometimes that's really what I need to be mixed into my normal reading routines. If you haven't read Molly O'Hare before and like sweet romcoms, definitely check her out!

Have you read Learning Curves?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Learning Curves, Molly O'Hare, 4 stars, 1 day, eBook, 253 pages, published in 2020, indie published