Heart Strings
Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for the digital review copy in advance. This book hits shelves on August 12th.
When I picked up Ivy Fairbanks’s debut novel, Morbidly Yours, late last year, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My bookstagram friend, Nicole, over @finding_fables had highly recommended it and I thought I’d give it a try. She’s a fan of “soft girl fantasy and kissing books” (she wins the award for cutest bio line, okay?) and most of the time, so am I. It did not disappoint. Although I usually read romance with fewer on-page intimate scenes, they made sense for the plot of that book. I loved the quirky characters of Callum (an undertaker) and Lark (a film animator).
When I saw this book pop up on NetGalley, featuring Lark’s cousin, Cielo, I immediately requested it from the publisher. This one is set back in Galway, Ireland with Lo as a medical resident. Aidan, the solicitor/lawyer and musician from Morbidly Yours, is the love interest and these two get a second chance upon the wedding weekend of Callum and Lark.
I found this to be enjoyable but a little lackluster. Cielo’s lack of communication, her desire to take care of herself without letting others in, etc. was frustrating to me, and I didn’t really see her character grow much because the tension got resolved so late in the story. The sexual content was also a lot for my taste, and while that made sense to me in the previous book, it didn’t work nearly as well here. My favorite parts were those with cameos of beloved characters rather than the moments between the main characters of Heart Strings. If I’m being brutally honest, I think I would have preferred a short story of “where are Callum and Lark now?”
Overall, I still found the setting charming and the humor grin-worthy, and I haven’t written off reading “Love in Galway” book 3, as Saoirse has been a favorite side-character in these first two.
The bottom line: This was fast and fun, but not perfectly suited to my taste.
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🌶️ This book contains multiple on-page intimate scenes in chapters 16, 18, 23, 28, and 39.
