Today I’m joining the blog tour for Don’t Fall In Love With Me. My review is written with thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me on the blog tour and to the publisher for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

What if the person you love the most is the one you can’t have?

Grace has loved Jackson since she was fifteen – when they spent every childhood summer exploring France’s breathtaking Ardèche region together. They were best friends, until life took its course and Jackson married someone else.

Years later, Jackson re-enters Grace’s life with an irresistible offer: her dream job in the very town where their story began. And he’s newly single.

As memories from those idyllic summers flood back, Grace encounters an old friend Étienne, who proposes a plan to help make Jackson jealous. But as their scheme unfolds, Grace finds herself questioning if the sparks between them might not be so pretend after all…

Unbeknownst to Grace, Étienne is harbouring a secret that could shatter her world.

Will learning the truth finally set her heart free?
Or is this the beginning of a love story bigger than she ever imagined?

Review:

I started reading Don’t Fall In Love With Me when I had just finished reading a very harrowing book, thinking it would provide some light relief from the horrific scenes I had read. I was right that it would be easy to read: the story is fast paced and the writing is slick, but it is much more emotional than a simple love story and Paige Toon really tugged on my heart strings. 

Don’t Fall In Love With Me is narrated by the protagonist, Grace, and this really helped me to get under her skin and root for her as she tries to discover what she wants after working in a demanding job and struggling to maintain a romantic relationship. It did take me longer to warm to the male protagonists, Jackson and Etienne, but I loved the way that Paige Toon plotted their character growth so that we could see how they felt over time. There is also a host of supporting characters who are brilliantly constructed, which creates a community who are a pleasure to spend time with and I loved becoming immersed in their lives. 

The plot of Don’t Fall In Love With Me is more complex than many of the romantic novels I have read before. I appreciated this, as it meant the emotions hit me in a deeper way. The back stories and situations with the different characters meant that it wasn’t always obvious which way the story would go and this kept me intrigued until the very end.

Don’t Fall In Love With Me is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: