Off The Hook By Julie Olivia || Book Review.

If you faithfully love reading, you can't stay away from it for a long time regardless if you don't have time to read, you are being lazy, busy with life or you are hungover from the previous book that you read. For me, I was hungover from ’Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros’. All the books I tried to pick up to read didn't interest me and I was finding it difficult to read something else. All I wanted was just to read the continuation of the previous book I'd read.

So finally, I overcame my hangover problem and read ‘Off The Hook By Julie Olivia’. This book brutally brought me from the hangover and I'm glad I read it regardless of the fact that I didn't really enjoy it.

’Off The Hook By Julie Olivia’ was published in October 2023 with 414 pages. It is a small town romance novel with the Single dad and Nanny trope. The romance is a slow burn, the MC and FMC are grumpy and sunshine respectively. There is also an age gap between the two main characters 33 and 26 years respectively. Also, it was written in the dual POV of the two main characters.

Little About The Plot.

The plot of this book centers around a secluded single dad, Jasper Davies who lives in a small town called Never Harbour. Summer was approaching fast and Jasper would be needing a nanny to look after his son, Sam. Jasper didn't want to request for his family as he thought they had done so much for him already with Sam.

With the summer here, Jasper realized that he couldn't handle Sam, working at the dock for the whole summer. So he employed his brother's ex-Fiancée, Wendy Darling to be his son's nanny for the summer holiday. Wendy accepted his job offer and began to work almost immediately.

Wendy Darling is like a family member to Jasper because when Wendy lost her parents at a young age, Jasper's family literally adopted her as part of the family. So Jasper trusted her with Sam. So Jasper and Wendy began to spend more time together and get attached to each other regardless of their insecurities. Everything seemed to be going well, until Wendy quit her job? What happened?

My Review And Rating.

This book has a fantastic and engaging storyline. I enjoyed reading it but not too well. It was kind of below average for me. With its interesting storyline, the book had a lot of flaws that made me question why it was positively rated by readers.

It was recommended to me last year by a friend on Goodreads. I won't say I regret reading but I can say, I am grateful I read the book. This book, however, made me realize that I read better books than these and now I have more eagerness to read more. My hangover on ’Ironflame’ is over. The only good thing about this book is the storyline which the author failed awfully in writing it well and failed at world building.

The main characters were well written, I love them. The setting was okay, small town, I loved it. I love reading small town romance. The MC is a grumpy single dad with a lot of insecurities and trauma. Hence why he secluded himself from his town to live close to the dock far from town. On the other hand, FMC is a young lady, who is a teacher, good with children, doesn't know how to say no, always smiling but with past relationship traumas.

As I was reading this book, 60% of the story felt dragged, outstretched with unnecessary scenes and characters that don't have background story connecting them to the main plot. The unnecessary scenes felt like they were used to fill in the gaps. Some of the sub-plot stories were not fully fleshed out. Also, almost at the end, I was being introduced to multiple characters that are not really valuable or connect to the story.

The slow burn romance was painfully dragged and overstretched in a silly way that it began to feel unrealistic to me or child's play. The family dynamics surrounding the storyline of this book was well created but still the family was put in the background while the writer explored mysterious characters. The writing techniques, such as the narrative and description were forged averagely well. Not bad, but in between.

The town Never Harbour was hardly portrayed with words or descriptions. Also, the author failed to paint pictures of how her main characters looked. I had to start creating a picture by myself which ended in me not being able to connect with the characters. Honestly, I had a bit of struggle to finish this one but regardless, I am out of my reading block. Now, I crave to read other books.

Rating this book, I will give it 2 out of 5 stars. It is the same rating I gave on my Goodreads account too. Regardless of my negative opinion on this book, if you are a lover of small town romance, slow burn romance, age gap and single parent trope, you should check out this book. Perhaps, your experience will be better than mine.

All images above are from my E-library

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