Book Review - The Thing About Love by Kim Karr • Ana's Attic Book Blog

The Thing About Love by Kim Karr

Standalone Emotional Romantic Comedy

The Thing About Love by Kim Karr has everything I love in a romance novel. It was funny, emotional and sexy. I think maybe this book was a case of “It’s not you, it’s me.” Because it took me more than THREE WEEKS to read. A lot of that is me. I have been so busy planning Wicked Book Weekend that I haven’t been able to really focus on a book. But you know, when you get sucked in to a book, nothing will pull you away.

Every time I picked up the book, I forgot what I was reading. I had to really think about it, and go back a few pages. I think a big part of the problem, for me, was that I had just watched a Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel called “Marry Me At Christmas”¹, where a wedding planner and the bride’s brother fell in love while planning the wedding, so I totally kept confusing the two. (I’m NOT saying there was anything copied, it’s just the same set-up).

I loved the way Jules met her client’s brother. Jules was determined to save her uncle’s wedding business, but possibly doomed it in the process when she met the sexy Dr. Jake Kissinger. They started as enemies, and I love that kind of banter. And even though Dr. Kissinger was annoyed with the feisty wedding planner, he sure couldn’t ignore the attraction.

“We kissed and kissed and kissed until we both needed air, until our lips tingled, until we couldn’t stand not being naked.”

Jake was a sexy dirty talker who was leaving in 3 months to start a residency in New York. Jules knew not to get involved and protected herself the whole time. She couldn’t get attached anyway, her broken heart was closed to it.

This could have been a great little light romcom with just this storyline, but it felt like another book just totally dropped in the middle of this one. You see, Jake and Jules share a very similar tragic past that made them who they are. I honestly would have loved to see this story as a completely separate book. It felt like two half-written books were put together, and I would have loved to have read them separately.

That’s the thing about love, wasn’t it—you don’t get to pick it, it just happens.

Likes:

I laughed out loud several times and was smiling when I got into it.
Lots of emotion.
Very likable characters.
Perfect amount of sexy times.
I don’t usually love abs or faces on covers, but I love this cover.

Dislikes:

It never grabbed me enough to want to read it.
Crazily similar to a Hallmark movie I had JUST watched so I had a hard time keeping the two separated in my head.
Too many storylines and not enough time spent on each. I would have liked to see the storylines separated into 2 different couples in 2 books.
Took me an unheard of three weeks to read. I’d enjoy it when I got into it, but then get distracted and completely forget what I was reading. I never thought about the book once when I wasn’t reading it.

The Down & Dirty:

Maybe my growing love for audiobooks is part of the reason it took so long for me to read The Thing About Love. Maybe it was my mood. Maybe I was crazy busy. But I never felt drawn to pick up the book, and it took me an unprecedented three weeks to finish. There was a lot of good in the story, and I enjoyed reading it when I was into it, but it was out of sight out of mind for me. I think part of the reason was the similarity to the Hallmark movie I had just watched. But I also felt that there were two distinct stories happening. The wedding planner & the bride’s brother was a fine romcom on it’s own. Then add a drama where a couple had similar tragedy as a child that bonds them, and I would have loved to have read that. But together, the stories just didn’t meld for me.