Release date: 31st March 2021
From the bestselling Australian author of The Hating Game comes the clever, funny and unforgettable story of a muscular, tattooed man hired as an assistant to two elderly women - under the watchful eye of a beautiful retirement home manager
Distraction (n): Something that turns your attention away from something you want to concentrate on. See: Teddy Prescott.
Ruthie Midona is twenty-four (going on ninety-four) and fully
committed to her job at a luxury retirement village. Keeping herself
busy caring for the eccentric residents means that Ruthie can safely
ignore her own life - what little there is of it.
Teddy Prescott is practically allergic
to a hard day's work. When he rocks up as the retirement village's
newest employee, Ruthie is less than impressed. The last thing she needs
is a distraction as irritating (and handsome) as this selfish rich kid.
Lucky for Ruthie, her favourite pair of mischievous residents need a
new assistant to torture . . . so she hands over Teddy, ready for them
to send him running.
Except Teddy may be about to surprise her
- not just by surviving the old women's antics, but by charming Ruthie
so much, she starts to remember that there's more to life than work . . .
Could Teddy be far more than simply an unwelcome distraction?
ARC received from Hachette Australia for an honest review
Second First Impressions has been one of my most anticipated books of 2021, so I was over the moon to receive and advanced copy.
This book is more in the vein of The Hating Game (one of my most loved, most reread books of the past 5 years)
Ruthie and Teddy have that push/pull thing going on (though why anyone would want to push him away is beyond me lol). I adored him completely. It took me a little bit to warm up to Ruthie, but as the book moved along she really grew on me. At first I wanted to reach in and pull the stick out of her butt (though I think her co-worker Melanie was already working on that for me).
The residents of this retirement community will keep you on your toes - though there is something revealed that felt unnecessary, and maybe just thrown in as an afterthought? But this could just be me.
And again, this just being me, I didn't feel the relationship between Teddy and his family. Am I supposed to hate them? Feel ambivilent? I just didn't know what
This is a lot of two steps forward, one step back. I enjoy a slow burn, but this seemed like it was never going to get there for a while!
Whilst this is not the dizzying heights of The Hating Game (and let's face it, that is always going to be a big thing to live up to), Second First Impressions was enjoyable and sweet story that I will read again in the future.
Sally Thorne lives in Canberra, Australia and spends her days writing funding submissions and drafting contracts (yawn!) so it's not surprising that after hours she climbs into colorful fictional worlds of her own creation. Sally believes that romance readers are always searching for intensity in their next favorite book - and it isn't always so easy to find. The Hating Game is her first novel.
