ARC REVIEW: Living Your Best Life – by Maxine Morrey

Title: Living Your Best Life
Author: Maxine Morrey
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
First published: March 8th 2022
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Finished reading: February 15th 2022
Pages: ?

“Comfort zones are nice, but stepping outside them can bring you things you never dreamed of.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Boldwood Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

I’ve been meaning to try this author for a while now… I already had a title on my kindle, but I really liked the sound of Living Your Best Life so I decided to read her newest story first. From what I could see, it sounded right up my alley and I had high hopes that this story was going to be a winner for me. Imagine my surprise when I ended up struggling considerably instead! Especially considering I was in the mood for some romance and I’ve been enjoying the genre more and more in recent years. I’m keeping this review short to avoid turning it in a full blown rant, but below you can find why this story didn’t work for me personally.

First of all, I have to say that I usually do like the friends-to-lovers trope, as they tend to go mild on the sexy scenes and it’s fun seeing the friendship turn into something more. Sadly, in this particular case I can’t say that I was a fan of how the trope was developed. It was so blatantly obvious that the two were into each other, and while that alone wasn’t enough to be a dealbreaker, the fact that Bee constantly looks down on herself and repeats that she is ‘not good enough’ for Luca is. And then I’m not even talking about how Luca finally ‘revealed’ his feelings without any consideration for Bee or respect for her feelings… A huge no-no for me.

On top of this, the story includes major pet peeves like a love triangle and a cheating element, which were both a letdown for me. Especially the cheating element I felt was completely unnecessary and especially how everything was handled… It made me want to throw my kindle against the wall, and that would not have been pretty. The main characters Bee and Luca in general are completely frustrating and while initially I thought they had promise, I soon stopped caring about them due to their behavior. And then I’m not even talking about the cliches with the superhot male lead, an Italian loving food, the female lead looking down on herself etc etc.

I also felt that the pace of the story was considerably slow, and things in general could have moved a lot faster. Except for the ending, which was actually super abrupt and not at all satisfying. As you might have guessed, Living Your Best Life and me most definitely didn’t get along and I came close to just DNFing it more than once. All in all sadly not the fun romance read I was hoping it would be!