Review: One Summer Weekend

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Alicia Marlowe’s life as an executive coach is well under control – until she meets her new client, Jack Smith. Jack’s reputation precedes him and Alicia knows immediately that he spells trouble. Not least because he reminds her of someone else – a man who broke her heart and made her resolve never to lower her guard again.
Taking Jack on as a client is a risk, but one that Alicia decides to take for the good of her career. As long as she keeps him in his place, she might just make it through unscathed. But Jack has other ideas – including a ‘business’ trip to the Lake District. One summer weekend with him is all it takes to put Alicia’s carefully organized world in a spin …

Genre: contemporary romance

Publication date: June 2018

Mature content: no

Review: One Summer Weekend is a novella that reads like a full sized novel - in the best of ways. Nothing seems rushed, the characters are well developed and the plot is interesting.

Alicia and Jack start out with a business relationship - but the fact that they end up together for a weekend in the country and in front of his friends she has to pretend to be his girlfriend, quickly muddles the waters and it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the business from the personal relationship.

I had just two concerns with One Summer Weekend, and they are the reason I'm not rating it with five stars. First, given Alicia's negative past experience in mixing business and pleasure, I didn't quite understand how she could so quickly accept Jack's proposal of a weekend out with his friends - it seemed so inappropriate from the start, that it was difficult for me to accept that development in the story. I know she wanted to succeed in successfully coaching Jack, but it still seemed a stretch. And second, when you look back you notice that the story takes place in such a short period of time that it's hard to come to terms with how quickly Jack and Alicia progress from almost hating each other to talking about marriage and children.

Still, while One Summer Weekend may not be entirely realistic in terms of plot, it's still a very nice romance novella that will make you smile and root for a happy ending - and sometimes that's just what we need. Recommended.

Happy readings,