Friday, November 17, 2017

Review: Bad at Love


I've been reading Karina Halle for a long while now and I'm thrilled that she's been writing more contemporary romances lately. She is one of the best at writing romances that are realistic, heartwrenching, sweet, sexy, and funny. It sounds like a tall order but she does it well! Bad at Love had all of those elements and was a really enjoyable read.

Here's the synopsis:
She's bad at love, but he's even worse...
Marina is hot, blonde, and wickedly smart, but when it comes to men? She's hopeless. Between her quirks and her lack of filter, there isn't a man in Los Angeles that will stick around after the third date.
Her handsome, charming friend Lazarus has the opposite problem. Everyone wants to be his girlfriend, but he gets bored and moves on quickly.
There's only one way to figure out why neither of them has cracked this love thing-- they'll date each other. On paper, it's the perfect experiment. But in reality, things between Marina and Laz get complicated quickly.
They might be bad at love, but they are even worse at being friends.
The main characters in Bad at Love were really interesting. Their career paths were ones that I definitely hadn't read about before. Marina is a beekeeper and Laz fronts a Depeche Mode cover band and is an Instagram famous poet. They're both still working hard to make it in their respective careers which I could identify with as I'm about the same age they are.

Even though I knew why Marina and Laz were bad at love and what was going to happen by the end of the book, I was still completely drawn into their story. The people who say romances are boring or terrible because they're so predictable obviously haven't been reading the right romances. Halle writes the right kind of romances. They're sweet but steamy. They're dark but light. Some have more elements of one than the other but they're always balanced perfectly. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to Halle's books again and again and again.

In fact, dark and light played a big part in this story. Marina is all light and sunshine and honey whereas Laz is dark and brooding and a bit mysterious (I think it's the poet/musician persona). At one point someone (it might have been Marina's best friend Naomi...maybe?) mentions how Marina and Laz really balance each other because neither is fully dark or light. Marina has her shadows and Laz can be a goofball too. It was so perfect and really shows how right the two of them are for each other.

There's more to the story than just Marina and Laz finally figuring out how they feel about each other. They each have issues and, because they're such good friends (which, by the way, I'm really glad they were friends for so long before they started "dating"), both Marina and Laz aware of the other's issues. However, they're each still holding back and part of their relationship building is fully letting down those walls and allowing the other to fully see who they are and help the other to move past their...demons, shall we say. It was really interesting (and a bit heartbreaking) to read but I was rooting for the two of them the whole way.

Bad at Love was another wonderful read from Karina Halle. I was really glad I got the chance to read it and get to know Marina and Laz (even though my heart was being broken in some parts). Definitely get your hands on this one if you like romances that have a little bit of everything and are well-written!

Meet Karina 
Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Love, in English, The Artists Trilogy, Dirty Angels and over 20 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.
Halle is represented by the Root Literary and is both self-published and published by Simon & Schuster and Hachette in North America and in the UK.

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*An eARC of this novel was provided by the author in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

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