If We’re Not Married By Thirty by Anna Bell | Review

Content warnings: sex

Thank you to Bonnier Zaffre and netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was supposed to be on the blog tour for this book, but it was in the middle of my really bad reading slump in October/November/December and I completely forgot about it. But I’m here now to talk about the book.

Things aren’t going well for Lydia, she’s hit a big stumble in her love life and she’s not progressing anywhere in her career. Then at New Year she’s sent on a holiday on her own to Spain to get back in touch with herself. However, after being there a day her childhood friend and longtime crush walks in and suddenly they’re going at it like rabbits and decide to make good on their pact of marrying each other if they’re both single by 30.

I’m a fan of “chick lit” (though not a fan of the name). I find these kinds of books really good as a palette cleanser when I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy and they offer that romantic contemporary vibe without too much detailed sex if you’re not in the mood or not into that.

This book was fun and a good beach read and definitely felt like your classic book of this genre. But I did have some problems with it.

Overall, liked the main romance between the two leads because I’m such a sucker for friends to lovers and when people have a history as well. That’s one of my absolute favourite tropes.

I struggled with the pace of this novel mainly. For the majority of my time reading it I felt like it was just constantly building to the climax and it took so long to get there. The climax was a big fight, like it is a lot of the time in contemporary fiction, and I just kept being like “are they going to fight yet?”. Then when the fight actually came it was so close to the end that the resolution was over and done with in the blink of an eye because there was no time left.

There were times when I really liked Lydia as a main character and there were times when she made me angry. She was humorous and a really hard worker who just wants to succeed in her career, but both her lies and trust issues made me so annoyed at times.

I think if you are a fan of the likes of Lindsey Kelk, Paige Toon, and Sophie Kinsella then this will be a good read for you.

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