Review: Written in the Stars

Yesterday I shared a list of my favorite romances. Today I have another romance recommendation, here is my review of Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur.

Synopsis

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy… a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle’s new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because… awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?

Why I Decided to Read this Book

This was my book club’s pick for January. We had been reading a lot of heavy books and wanted to read something lighter.

Rating

3.5 Stars (I Liked it!)

My Thoughts

I was so nervous to read this book because I had heard that it was “steamy”. You know I have a love hate relationship with romance books. Well, I am happy to report I liked it! This was my first female/female romance book and I really enjoyed it.

I really liked the characters and identified with both in certain ways. This is an enemies to lovers/fake dating trope type of romance book (I’m not an expert on the genre but I know tropes are a thing!) which I thought was well executed and written. While it has a predictable ending you can’t help to root for them.

As you can see in the synopsis there are some astrology elements incorporated in the story (Elle is very into it). I thought it was incorporated in a great way. I am not super intro astrology (though I do love my Birthdate candles) but I still enjoyed it and some parts were funny.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book was that it didn’t focus on the characters coming out. It was a story of two women that liked each other. I think stories that focus on the aspects of queers coming out are important but also it is important to normalize love of all kind.

Lets talk about the steam level. There are two sex scenes in the book and in my opinion they are very well written. The first one doesn’t happen for over 100 pages so you are already invested in the story. Do I think the book NEEDED to have the scenes? Maybe not but it didn’t bother me.

The reason why I didn’t rate this book higher was because towards the end one of the characters was really annoying and there were some things that were not as believable. Overall, I think this is a charming story, I am glad I read it with my book club and I recommend it!

Content Warnings

Sexual content, infidelity

Who I Recommend this Book to

If you love the romance genre you’ll like this one! It is set around the holidays so I think its a great book to read in the winter.

Get the Book!

Did this review of Written in the Stars convince you to read it? Check out the links below to get it from Bookshop.org and libro.fm. Please consider ordering it from a Black owned independent bookstore. This list of Black owned independent bookstores accepts online ordering.

>>Shop on Bookshop 

>>Shop on Libro.fm (use code GISSELLEREADS for a discount if you want to start a membership)

If you’ve read this book let me know your thoughts in the comments!