The Love Square: The funny, feel-good romantic comedy to escape with this year from the bestselling author of Our Stop

Although The Love Square is not unbearable, the story is forgettable and easy-going. It is loaded with emotions, but it is just a casual read.The story revolves around the life of Penny, who runs her own cafe called the Bridges and is worried about her boring life until she meets Francesco, a handsome Italian pastry chef. The story proceeds to narrate the life changes that Penny has to undergo against her wish. She experiences her fair share of misunderstandings. However, she tries to stay light-hearted when she moves to a new place and has a fling with a fun-loving Thomas, and an older Priyesh. All goes well until she realizes she is in a love square and the reality of life comes crashing down on her. She has a hard time figuring out what it is that she actually needs in her life. The climax is good and satisfying.

It was a bit slow in the beginning. Easy read with pop culture references. Unfortunately it wa slow and predictable. It's a light read as I mentioned first and I did root for for the protagonist, but the book didn't work for me. What I liked about it was the LGBTQIA+ representation, people of different religious beliefs and people of colour. The inclusivity was great. So were the restaurant parts. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for an early review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams is a light read. It is a fun and fast-paced romantic comedy, which deals with the story of Penelope Hermione Bridge, our heroine, who struggling to get dates, ends up in a connection with three guys at once, thus forming a love square geometrically!There is something inviting about chefs falling in love, what with all that tantalizing aroma around their food and eventually themselves. This book cleverly banks on the same, and delivers as expected.The love making scenes, though few, were not erotic enough for an adult romcom. Now, I don't mean for them to compete with the erotica genre itself, but something was definitely amiss here.Thanks to the author and the publisher for the ARC.Verdict: One time read.

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams is a contemporary Women's fiction. It is the story of an accomplished woman who is following her passion, has her own business and lives life on her own terms. She has faced great challenges in her personal life. Despite all these things there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction due to her dating life. She finds that she is never asked on second dates.With this backdrop I fell in love with the character of Penny Bridge. She is everything any young woman aspires to be. She has amazing family relationships and friendships. When Penny is really going through a bad patch of low self esteem she meets Franscesco who is everything she ever wanted in a partner. Life circumstances push them away and then Penny meets another young man and then another. She is strongly attracted to each one of them for different reasons and the time comes for hr to choose who is the one. Whom dos she choose.The good part of the story is the journey of Penny in discovering what or whom she really wants. Having said that and having liked Penny, I still couldn't relate to a part of the story. That could possibly be due to my biases but i really couldn't understand her adamant behaviour at some point. Having said that I persisted and liked how the story progressed.If you are a lover of women's fictions and like to read about strong women protagonist then you will enjoy this story..I thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of the book and the opinions expressed are entirely mine.

It was an entertaining, fast pacing, swoony, cute reading makes you smile, occasionally makes you mad with Penny, but at the same time gives you positive energy.So, the Plot...Penny was unhappy in love, until she finds 3 charming, sexy men all interested in her. She needs to choose wisely, and sometimes that let her to not be very careful about how her actions would make them (or one of them) feel.Maybe I’m old school when it comes to love because Penny’s indecisiveness till the end about her choice and flirting with three men at the same time just a little irritated me. Her confusing mood made me lose my connection with her. (Come on Penny!! When your heart knows something it always whispers to your brain. What are you still thinking?)

I loved this so much. Funny, clever and heart warming. It’s the best Sunday date with a book.

This was a did not finish for me. I just couldn’t like any of the male interests.

I would like to start by saying that I felt like the summary was misleading. I expected something a lot more fun and light hearted. While there are some funny scenes, there’s more pain, bad decisions, and growth. I cried more than I laughed.I really liked Penny, for the most part. She was definitely problematic- low self esteem, inability to say “no”, and she’s often lost in her own mind and past. On the other hand, she was willing to learn and grow- to see people and change her opinions. Her loyalty is also one of the things I loved about her, even when it frustrated me because her loyalty to her uncle got in the way of her living her life. Through out the book she met three very different men that showed her very different parts to relationships. She “fell into friendship” with an Italian chef who, if not for bad timing and a huge misunderstanding, could have been love. Then there was the blonde in the music industry that introduced her to ten mile hikes and “non-monogamy”- sweet, funny and charming, he helped her find herself again. Lastly, the older, serious man with a naughty streak. A physical match made in heaven… but can any of these men become her everything?The book spent a lot of time going through the different relationships, but also going over her past, the loss of her mother and her own status as a cancer survivor. When David got sick she had to set her own dream of motherhood (as she is now infertile, she had her eggs harvested and fertilized; ready for a surrogate), and her three week relationship with the Italian to head to her home town and run his pub. She would have brought Francisco, but… misunderstandings. Six months later she’s met Thomas and Preyesh. Thomas is on the road again and she and Preyesh are a thing…. but suddenly she and Francisco are not only talking again but “friends” who decide that he would be the perfect pastry chef for the pub. What? The man hurt her, deeply, and it only just got to the point that she can even say his name and then… this? She could have handled everything better, differently. The relationships, and how they found out about each other, was definitely off putting. Also, she was lost and maybe using these men to make herself feel better. I liked that once she saw what she had done, though, she owned it. She went to therapy, she got help, she thought hard about what she wanted in life. The amount of character growth in the last third of the book alone made up for a lot of the messy drama. In the end I was actually sad to say goodbye to these characters, I would have loved to see more of Preyesh especially, and hope he gets a love story down the line.As far as the writing goes, there was no real flow to the book. There were times where it dragged so badly that I had to set it aside, and there were times where it flew by things that I really wanted to explore. Most of the narrative revolves around Penny (third person), but there are times where you see thoughts and feelings from others even though it doesn’t seem like the author meant to break the narrative. It’s a bit sloppy, but forgivable- small issues, really, when you think about it. For me, this is a four star book.⭐⭐⭐⭐Rating: 4 out of 5.On the adult content scale, there is a lot sexual content, but none of it is too explicit. There’s language as well. I would say that this one is for a more mature crowd. PG17 at the very least.I was lucky enough to receive an eARC of this book from Netgalley and Harper 360 in exchange for an honest review. My thanks!

I was lucky enough to read Laura Jane Williams’ latest book, The Lucky Escape through Netgalley and then found her previous book on a Kindle Deal recently. I think I preferred this one. Penny is a chef who owns her own small cafe in London. She lost her mother at a young age to cancer and then battled it herself. At the time she arranged for her eggs to be harvested and fertilised with help from a donor and now that things in her life have stablised, she is considering a surrogate to start her family. The only problem is that she hasn’t had much success with a partner. So when Italian chef Francesco comes to deliver bread one day to her cafe and her colleague takes his details she doesn’t get in touch even when she is tempted. Then just when the two do connect again, her uncle is ill and she needs to take charge of his pub in the country and leave London. Then starts a situation where Penny doesn’t just have one person interested in her but three... Thomas who isn’t into monogamy, Prijesh the older wine dealer and then Francesco who arrives back in Penny’s life. But really Penny needs to decide what she truly wants and not live her life to please everyone else. I really enjoyed this story and struggled to put it down until it was finished! ❤️