Review: Blueprint for Love

Blueprint for Love by Jenn Hughes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

Marley is a divorced single mother. A former hacker and CIA nerd she has come to Port Bristol to start over and work with Sam, her BFF Lilian's husband in his new tech start-up. Byron Gallagher is a single father, he owns his own construction business and is looking to develop a block of apartments on the property next door to fund his daughter's future college dreams. Then Marley buys the property Byron has his eye on and it's all-out war between them - until Byron suggest a compromise that could make them both happy.

On paper this is absolutely my cup of tea, contemporary romantic comedy, opposites attract, nerd and the construction worker. Indeed, I actually enjoyed (most of) the plot. Unfortunately I really did not get Jenn Hughes' 'humour'. A grown woman and mother of a pre-teen should not need to use the word 'fork' instead of the four-letter expletive it sounds like, and certainly not 30 times in one novel! All of the humour was overblown and felt like it was written by a horny 12 year old boy. Don't even get me started on the use of the phrase 'her throbbing go-button' !! None of the characters, except maybe Byron felt real they were all 'characters' with no personal motivations other than furthering the plot.

Overall I felt Jenn Hughes just needed to tone it down a bit, stop repeating the same joke over and over again like a five year old and think about why the secondary characters behave the way they do - Marley's ex-husband is a case in point, he changed his attitude so fast he must have got whiplash - no character integrity.

However, underneath it all was a sweet small-town romance.


I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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