TESSA TALKS BOOKS

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Duvet Day by Emily Kerr

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‘Full of sparkle, charm and properly laugh-out-loud moments! Alex Brown, bestselling author of A Postcard from Italy

Young lawyer Alexa Humphries’s one true love is her precious duvet, yet she is torn from its comforting embrace every morning while the foxes are still scavenging the bins outside and she doesn’t get back until long after most normal people are already asleep. Worn down by the endless demands of her suspicious boss and her competitive, high-flying housemate and fellow lawyer, Zara, Alexa barely recognizes herself anymore. This wasn’t how life was supposed to be.

But today is different. Today, Alexa just cannot get out of bed to face the world. Everyone deserves a duvet day, don’t they?

‘Feel-good, fast-paced and fabulous fun!’ Sunday Times bestseller Cathy Bramley

Duvet Day by Emily Kerr is the perfect reminder that eventually, everything will fall into place if you follow your heart. Alexa Humphries is stressed beyond reason as she is trying to pay her dues as a young lawyer in an established firm. After she is told she must work every waking hour to meet her billable requirements, she finds herself in need of a duvet day to combat the stress of the unreasonable expectations. She sends an email that she is sick and won’t be in, and everything that follows had me laughing out loud as she went from one misadventure to the next. I loved the laughs, and I loved how the story ended. I feel that, even though this is a light-hearted romp of a romantic comedy, it also contains an essential message about never giving up on your dreams. If you are looking for some relatable laughs and a character who is not afraid to wear a unicorn onesie in public, then Duvet Day is the perfect book for a weekend read that will leave you in stitches.

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Better Together by Christine Riccio

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Jamie’s an aspiring standup comic in Los Angeles with a growing case of stage anxiety.

Siri’s a stunning ballerina from New Jersey nursing a career-changing injury.

They’ve both signed up for the same session at an off-the-grid Re-Discover Yourself Retreat in Colorado. When they run into each other, their worlds turn upside down.

Jamie and Siri are sisters, torn apart at a young age by their parent’s volatile divorce. They’ve grown up living completely separate lives: Jamie with their Dad and Siri with their Mom. Now, reunited after over a decade apart, they hatch a plot to switch places. It’s time they get to know and confront each of their estranged parents.

With an accidental assist from some fortuitous magic, Jamie arrives in New Jersey, looking to all the world like Siri, and Siri steps off her flight sporting a Jamie glamour.

The sisters unexpectedly find themselves stuck living in each other’s shoes. Soon Siri’s crushing on Jamie’s best friend Dawn. Jamie’s falling for the handsome New Yorker she keeps running into, Zarar. Alongside a parade of hijinks and budding romance, both girls work to navigate their broken family life and the stresses of impending adulthood.

Better Together by Christine Riccio is such a fun concept and is handled flawlessly. The story is engaging with a good balance of laughter and seriousness led by the sisters who are an intriguing pair that look a bit alike but have vastly different personalities and interests. The parents are both incredibly involved in their careers to the point where they have no idea of the reality around them. And the grandparents are just the opposite of the parents, but they feel it is not their place to involve themselves in their children’s lives. All characters are fairly well-developed with the sisters’ personalities, flaws, and scars taking front and center. I just wish that the book ended at the end of Chapter 99 or with the events from that chapter, and that the whole story had been streamlined a bit. At times, the story lost my attention and I just felt like, “Alright already. Just get back to the story.” It is a surprisingly longer-than-expected read that had it’s ups and downs for me, as the reader, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a story that goes down the luck trail where magic is sure to happen.