Book Review: Hello! A Modern Love Story by Ejourney

Title: Hello! A Modern Love Story

Author: EJourney

Genre: Romance, Contemporary Romance

Age Group: Adult (18+)

Rating: 4 stars

Purchase:

Review copy provided by Enchanted Book Promotions in exchange for an honest review.

Heartache and the specter of revenge follow when sparring partners spend the night together two days before he weds someone else.

A deliciously romantic romp with a good dose of realism and a twist of mystery.

A clash of wits, more than of wills, drives the love story in this modern-day pastiche of 19th-century romance novels by Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South) and Jane Austen.  The main protagonists deal with messy feelings and events that could happen to any of us:  The heroine, a bright young lawyer, confronts choices about career, abortion, and reactions of parents, friends, and men; while he, an alpha male, is haunted by past relationships, but with a sensitive, caring side that emerges as he woos the heroine.

Hello! A Modern Love Story is a little differnet from most of the contemporary romance novels I’ve read so far. We meet Greg and Elise when they already know each other for over a year. Greg has felt attracted to Elise from the first moment he laid eyes upon her, but the feeling isn’t mutual. When they get to know each other better, however, Elise starts trusting him and starts developing feelings for him. When they spend a night together two days before his marriage to another woman, it’s an eye-opener for both of them, and they realize they’re in love with each other.

But Greg struggles with his ex-fiancée, Lori, who wants to make his life a living hell. Worried something might happen to Elise, he wants to deal with his current issues first. Elise thinks their night together was nothing but a fling for Greg, and even though she suffers the results of that fateful night, she adapts to her new life, without Greg in it.

Two years later, Greg attempts to reconnect with Elise, but he may run into some unexpected surprises.

I liked the initial set up of the two of them, both attracted to each other, spending one night together and realizing they’re in love for the first time in their lives. I could live with what happened next, but Greg’s decision to disappear off the face of the earth for two years baffled me. And how easily Elise let him back into her life, accepting his absence and his lame excuse he was on a journey to find himself, baffled me even more. Nobody seemed to care, or even be remotely mad at him, for not giving them any news for over two years. I had trouble grasping why she let him off the hook so easily.

Apart from that, I enjoyed the story. It’s very down to earth, with which I mean there’s nothing dreamy about it – it talks about life the way it is, without rushing into fantasies about prince charmings and being rescued and damsels in distress. The author manages to portray the characters and their emotions quite well.

If you like contemporary romance that focuses more on the characters and their growth than about the actual romance, then you’ll probably like this book. If it’s truly reminiscent of the authors it’s inspired by, like Jane Austen, well, I’m not sure about that. There’s an element of mystery but it’s an easy mystery to solve, and doesn’t take up a huge part of the book.