Lucky Leap Day by Ann Marie Walker is getting published on January 18th, 2022. This was an advanced reader copy that was offered by NetGalley. I was very interested in the concept of a sudden marriage and then falling in love after the fact. The cover was cute, and I was hopeful that this would be my new favorite romance of 2022.
Alas, dear reader, I was fooled. This book opens with an almost eerie likeness to the beginning to The Hangover where Cara has no memory of the previous night and if she did or did not have blackout relations with the naked boy next to her. Y’all, I had to physically stop the audiobook to take a deep breath and accept that this is how we were starting a book that was published in the Lord’s year 2022. I wish I had more space to explain how socially and morally wrong this intro is.
Once we get to the big reveal that Cara is married to Finn and *shock* she has no memory of it, but we just must accept this is something that’s happening in this story. We suspend disbelief and then hear the inner monologue of Cara who says about every chapter “I can’t believe I got MARRIED in IRELAND”. It feels whiny, the conflict of the romance doesn’t really add up for me. The final, big action to pull them back together, is riddled with nuance of trying to make it all work in the post 9/11 era of airports and it’s just a bit clunky.
Overall, I was really excited for this book, but the characters and the conflict really didn’t do it for me.
