“Love couldn’t solve everything, but without love, there was nothing to solve.”
Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Spicy Meter: 4 fire emojis
Content Warnings: Considerable age difference couple, physic injuries, competitive sports injuries, and mentions of cheating and fat-shaming.
Where to begin. 40-Love follows Tess Dunn, a just-turned-40-year-old high school assistant principal on an all-inclusive island vacation, and Lucas Karlsson, a 26-year-old tennis instructor at the resort Tess is staying. Following a questionable meet-cute, Tess knows this summer flings will only crush her, but what if it went past that? Lucas wasn’t looking for another fling and was more than sure Tess was what he wanted right now. Will their chemistry overcome all odds or will the age difference pull them apart?
Oh God. I love Olivia Dade. Really. She’s one of my favorite authors for sure. But oh did I feel uncomfortable throughout this whole book. Call me a hypocrite, because I do enjoy some age-difference novels now and then, but 40-Love really wasn’t it. Because putting the age difference aside, there were some very clear power imbalances that I just didn’t feel comfortable with. The romance scenes were great, A+ in the spicy meter, but I just couldn’t get their differences out of my mind. I am sorry, but if a 26-year-old is willing to flip their life around for any person they just met, they should be going to therapy instead because there are some unresolved things there (and that’s ignoring the fact that that person they’re leaving everything for is 40 years old, which just unravels a whole other level of mommy or daddy issues to add upon that).
I think I’m being generous with the 3-star review. I don’t think I would personally recommend this book when recommending Olivia Dade, but if you like big age difference romances then grab 40-Love. This is supposed to be the second book in a series, but it works really well as a stand-alone.
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andrea's galley 