From the publisher:
Three women who seemingly have nothing in common find that they’re involved with the same man in this smart new rom-com by Beth O’Leary, best-selling author of The Flatshare.
Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth.
These three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They’ve all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up—Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the same man.
Once they’ve each forgiven him for standing them up, they are all in serious danger of falling in love with a man who may have not just one or two but three women on the go….
Is there more to him than meets the eye? Where was he on Valentine’s Day? And will they each untangle the truth before they all get their hearts broken?
https://amzn.to/3uAgp3V
This was a slow start for me, but I stuck with it and ended up loving this story of a good guy acting badly, who may not be as bad or good as he seems at first glance. This book surprised me, and that rarely happens, especially a romance. Most are very formulaic: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and happily ever after. This story was quite a bit more complicated than that.
These three women are all very different, but all are involved with the same man. Jane is volunteering at a thrift shop in the small town outside of London where she grew up. She is hiding from the world after something happened at her job. We don’t find out what it was until the end, we just know that her self esteem is nonexistant, and she is dealing with her issues by carefully monitoring her behavior. She seems a bit OCD, wearing the same outfit every Monday, a different outfit on Tuesday, and so forth. She allows herself to read one book per week. But then she meets Joseph in a coffee shop, and they form a book discussion group of sorts: just the two of them discussing a different book each week. They read all sorts of things, but when Joseph suggests she might want to read another book during the week, Jane is horrified at the thought of such an interruption to her carefully regimented life. Joseph is not deterred; he starts leaving her books on her doorstep, and she finds it almost thrilling to read another book during the week. Jane starts falling for Joseph, but they remain just friends. Until he stands her up on Valentine’s Day.
Siobhan, Shiv to her friends, runs a very popular women’s empowerment website with her best friends from college. Shiv doesn’t have time for a relationship. Early on, she meets Joseph in a club, and the spend the entire night talking. But she knows she has to invest all her time into her new business, and she ghosts him. She likes having a friend with benefits though, and pencils herself in for the first Friday of every month to have sex with him. He wants more but when he suggests it, she ghosts him again.
Miranda is a tree surgeon, a female rarity who works with a team of men. One of the men, AJ, is known to be a womanizer and when he starts flirting with her, she quickly shuts him down, telling him she has a boyfriend. Carter is a good boyfriend, a nice guy, but there is something a bit off there and she isn’t sure what it is. Eventually, she is also stood up on Valentines’ Day and that sets Miranda on a path to find out what is really going on with him.
This is a gentle romance that moves seamlessly between these three women, weaving together three disparate parts into a shocking whole story. It is an emotional read, often funny but other times inducing tears. I loved it!
4/2022 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE NO-SHOW by Beth O’Leary. Berkley (April 12, 2022). ISBN: 978-0593438442. 352p.
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These reviews are one of the reasons my TBR list on Goodreads is over 3,000 books!!
I feel your pain! So many books, so little time…