Just The Way You Are: The perfect uplifting, feel-good read for 2022 by Beth MoranMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ollie Tennyson wrote a Dream List when she was sixteen, fourteen years later none of her dreams have materialised because her manipulative mother won't let her have a life. Every time Ollie tries to go on a date, or on holiday with friends, her mother fakes a panic attack, or heart palpitations or some other illness to keep Ollie firmly by her side.
But when Ollie discovers her mother has ransacked her bedroom drawers, opened her diary and dug out her Dream List, proposing the two of them do many of the things on the list for Ollie's impending thirtieth birthday, something snaps and Ollie decides to move out.
Ollie's best friend has her own burdens (I assume she had her own book) and challenges Ollie not to swap catering to her mother's very need to do the same thing for a man, persuading her to sign a Man Ban until Ollie has completed all the things on her list (many of which she dreamt of doing with her dream guy) solo.
Ollie loves into a tiny end of row cottage, her two neighbours being an elderly, bad tempered, man and a single mother with a pre-teen daughter. Oh, and there's a hunky forest ranger who patrols Sherwood Forest which extends just beyond the cottage's shared garden.
Can Ollie become her own woman without a man?
This is a sweet, fun, contemporary romance. Ollie's Pollyanna-like charms soon help her befriend her new neighbours, foster romance between her adult-literacy clients, and melt the heart of the prim and proper local librarian.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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