Kris Ripper

Books: Romance | LGBT

The Love Study (2020)

To say that Declan has commitment issues is an understatement.

He left his boyfriend (and best friend) at the altar, and refuses every offer of permanent employment he receives, preferring to remain with the temp agency.

What I especially like about temping at offices: never feeling like I'm trapped in the same desk with the same tasks seeing the same faces hearing the same voices forever. I love being able to move around and start new jobs.

But it's been six years, and he's beginning to wonder if maybe he might consider starting to think about perhaps dating again.

When Sidney joins Declan's friend group, they offer to have him on their blog, to do a series of episodes about dating they would call the Love Study where Sidney would help set Declan up on a series of dates.

Except that Declan seems to be falling for Sidney rather than any of the blind dates.

I'm having a difficult time rating this story.

First, it's the first romance I've read with an NB main character, so I wanted to love it for that. Second, all the characters are queer and accept each others (even if perhaps their blood families are not as accepting).

Problem one was that I had a difficult time getting past Declan's having left Mason at the altar. That they were still friends I understood, but that's just… such a big thing.

I want, like, romance and flowers and shit. You aren't even a little interested in that stuff, which I thought was a compromise I could make, but in reality it would have hurt me too much.

However, as much as Declan's friends joked about it, is obviously really still bothered Declan, and gets worse as the story goes on.

Which is far more difficult to read than you'd think.

Then there is The Big Misunderstanding and I found it aggravating, because Declan seems to have learned nothing from his past with Mason, which is TALK ABOUT IT.

I also wasn't ever quite sure how I felt about Sidney. Declan seemingly idolizes them, so we don't really see much in the way of flaws or mistakes, which made it hard for me to like them, since they never quite seemed real to me.

Which I found disappointing.

So, I wanted to love it, but I just…didn't.

Publisher: Carina Press

Rating: 6.5/10