Hey Everyone!

I’m writing this review ahead of time ready for my stop on the review tour, so you’re currently getting word from past Sarah. Past Sarah has had a marvellous weekend of doing not a lot of anything and being very chilled. She still isn’t looking forward to a week of work though. She sincerely hopes that future Sarah has had a good week so far and is excited that by the time this review is posted, it will nearly be another weekend.

Book 📖

Thank you to @instabooktours for having me on this fantastic book tour and readalong and thank you to @emblabooks for this copy of Amy Perry’s Assumptions by @laura_starkey in return for an honest review. Amy Perry’s Assumptions was published on 10th January 2023 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

Amy Perry is career focused, driven and there is very little that takes priority over that; including her boyfriend. In Amy’s opinion to survive within the publishing world and in London, this is the way it has to be and given that she is the most unromantic person ever it suits her fine.

Until she’s forced to leave London and return to the small village in the Midlands in which she grew up. This is sold to her as an opportunity and career progression, but Amy is struggling to see how that’s so when it feels like her worst nightmare. The girl who doesn’t believe in butterfly inducing love working on an imprint for romance books? Surely this cannot work out. Not only that, but Amy is forced to confront someone she has tried very hard to forget over the years.

It’s not long though until Amy is very much back into the swing of village life and she realises that there are some commonalities between the characters and plots in the romance manuscripts she’s reading and her very own life.

General Thoughts 🤔

Every now and again, I read a book that just speaks to me and it feels like the author has picked things to include that could literally have been lifted from my own life. Amy living in a small village in the Midlands; I’m from a small village in the Midlands. There’s a miniature sausage dog; I have a miniature sausage dog. Ok, that’s pretty much it, but still, it all felt lovely and familiar and I think it contributed to how much I enjoyed this book.

I was a little bit naughty and read ahead of the readalong schedule because once I hit a certain point in this story, I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going and find out how everything was going to unfold. I was dying for these characters to get out of their own way and take the plunge which meant that I was equally frustrated with and in love with these characters.

Characters 👫👭👬

Firstly, there was one character that gave off all the main character energy and stole the entire show in my opinion and that was Bertie. Yep. The dog. I seriously don’t think that there’s another breed like a Dachshund and Bertie was the perfect depiction of their character traits. He stole my heart just like my own little sausage dog did.

With regards to humans; I may be a little bit in love with Sam. He was such a good guy and I found it very frustrating that literally everyone in the village knew it apart from Amy. I think that Amy did know it deep down, but a certain amount of pride and stubbornness meant that she wouldn’t let herself admit it. If I was Amy’s friend, I would have been shaking her at the shoulders and telling her to give her head a wobble. Equally, if I was Sam’s friend, I’d be telling him to suck it up and go grab the girl that he was so obviously in love with the entire time.

Writing Style ✍️

This is Laura Starkey’s second book and from what I’ve read; highly anticipated after the success of her first. I really enjoyed her writing and I think she was great at creating a feeling of authenticity and “home”. The village of Rowton felt like somewhere I’d love to live and I think the way the sideline characters were written into the story helped to create that feeling.

I liked that although this book was a contemporary romance, it was also very much about Amy’s growth. I loved the plot line following her career (I have career jealousy) and I also liked that we as readers got to see Amy develop and mature as a person. The romance and personal growth were weaved together really well and it made for great reading.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

Amy Perry had obviously never heard of the expression “you should never assume, it makes an ass out of you and me”. Thank goodness she hadn’t, because this enemies to lovers story was frustrating and marvellous all at the same time. I loved reading this story and I particularly loved the characters (Bertie would definitely get best supporting actor if this made it to a screen adaptation). I devoured this book over a weekend and it was a great companion for some cosy, romantic feels. I’ll definitely be reading Laura Starkey’s first book and can’t wait to see what she does next.

😍😍😍😍😐