Book Title: Act your age, Eve Brown (Brown Sisters Trilogy #3)
Author: Talia Hibbert
Year Published: 2021
Genre: Contemporary M/F Romance
Narrative Type: Linear, Third Person, Alternating PoVs
Trope/s: Boss-employee, Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, Grumpy-Sunshine, Forced Proximity (Shared living space)
Maturity Rating: 3.5? (Idk, I'm really bad at rating levels of smut 
, but the scenes are ermm quite ..there)
Book rating: 4.5
Synopsis (my own, not book blurb):
Eve Brown is big, Black, beautiful, badass but also a butterfly who flits and floats and freely flies through every job she's ever had. And not just jobs, she has pretty much done this through school too - dropping out of performing arts school, then law school, then teacher school 😆. When her last job (wedding planner) also meets an untimely death thanks to some starving doves that needed to be freed, her parents give her an ultimatum - hold down a job for a year and stop acting like a privileged brat or be chucked out of the trust fund they've set up for her. Eve is seething with righteous anger and she drives straight out of London to the Lake District and enters the town of Skybriar on a whim because it sounds like a fairytale. And Voila! She finds a job vacancy for a chef at a charming B & B called Castell Cottage. Almost like an unseen fairy godmother has blessed her. Never mind that it is pouring like a bat out of hell and she is soaked. Until she meets Mr. Grumpy (Or Mr. Bitchy McBitcherson) himself, Jacob Wayne, owner of said B & B who is not impressed by her lack of a CV and even less by her abysmal driving skills which might have something to do with him being knocked down by her car and her being thankful he wasn’t a puppy😀. Jacob ends up with his right hand in a cast and having committed to a stall at the annual Pemberton Gingerbread festival (kind of a big deal event), leaves him no choice but to hire Eve as chef. Even if he hasn't yet tested out her cooking skills. (Sidenote: he gets to test out her 'other' skills too but mostly he gets to try out his skills on her! 😆). The two go from being enemies to a tentative friendship and the next step is obviously being lovers. But Jacob's lack of a stable childhood has left him somewhat traumatised and Eve has lots to prove about being responsible to herself and her family. Is there a happily-ever-after for them?
Review:
Let me Squeal first! AHHHHHHHHHH EEEEEEE! I freaking loved this book! ❤️
I've been recommended this series by so many people (I've lost count actually) so I've had this in my TBR for a while. Idk why I started with Book #3. Perhaps because the blurb seemed to be the most intriguing. It also was the highest rated on GR - which I usually never go by, but it did give me the impetus to read this. This was a somewhat slow read for me, I kept putting it down and that made me think initially that it wasn't as compelling as some other romances I've read. But I had this stupid grin on my face when I finished it, and also a lot of LOL moments throughout when I was reading, and it also got me sniffling a bit. So all in all, a pretty satisfying experience for a romance. The slow reading was just due to real-life getting in the way and a possible burnout from reading so much lately. But it allowed me to savour this book more. And there was a lot to savour because Hibbert's language is so quirky and funny and there is a lot of detail. And also it's quintessentially Brit which was another refreshing change cos I've been reading a lot of American authors recently.
Hibbert is also Black so she checks off the WoC author self-imposition I had set myself.
Plus the leads are both Autistic which is a representation that was absolutely welcome.
Eve is also plus-sized which is again a representation you don't see much and I love how that is never alluded to and never a point of contention for anyone. She is beautiful to Jacob right from the get-go.
She is also quirky with her purple hair and her hilariously captioned orange T-shirts. TL;DR she is delightful (and very self-aware of this fact, she reminded me of Jab We Met's Geet here 😆), but she's also a hot mess.
Jacob - OHHHH.EMMMM.GEEE. This guy. This GUY. THIS G.U.Y! Lucky, lucky Eve. But also, lucky Jacob because rarely have I read stories in which both MCs are so friggin' cute.
I love how in sync they are. That comfort is evident even in their initial banter. They never have to hide their true selves around each other. And the banter is delicious even when the initial animosity (really shortlived) dissolves.
“If you ever call me sweet again, I’ll report you to HR.”
“Who’s HR?”
“I’m HR.”
Jacob is stiff, exacting and anal-retentive and Eve does not mince words telling him so even while she sneaks into his office space and makes it her temporary living space. Even when she uses his soap and shares his bathroom. Even when she feeds bread to the evil waterfowl in his pond causing him to chase after them shirtless and causing her to fall into the above-mentioned pond, that in turn causes him to pull her out with his one good hand, algae and slime notwithstanding. With me so far?
He's also anal about how tight the sheets fit. So as his only employee and with him having only good hand, Eve gets a lesson in fitting sheets. She also reads each of his Employee handbooks starting with How not to f*ck up my health rating to Locals love money, much to his amazement. Because he wrote them himself for himself because he does not understand social cues, sarcasm and jokes. But he certainly cracks a lot of them around Eve.
Oh this man notices everything about her. Including how she hums randomly and brings up stimming. Not directly, because he couldn't do that. But he helps her find a vital part of herself and explain why she is the way she is.
What I love about Jacob is how he puts Eve first, her needs are paramount for him. He's ever so careful about not crossing a line. And he's always ready to apologize. Always.
“He was going to apologize so goddamn hard, and then some more, and then some more, just to really emphasize the point.”
And how much he respects her and thinks the world of her and she sees it.
“You do that a lot, too.” Her glossy lips tipped up into a smile. “The whole ‘respecting me’ bit.”
He's the fiercest soldier in the Eve Brown Defense Squad and I love that for her.
“Apparently, he couldn’t bear to hear Eve Brown criticized. Not even by herself.”
Jacob's fears of rejection stem from how his parents unceremoniously dumped him with his aunt cause he was cramping their nomadic lifestyle. And also because....
“Jacob didn’t like people easily, but once he did like them, it was always too far and too fast. He had to temper himself, had to be careful.”
The sex scenes are cute. I know this is a strange description because they are explicit. But at the same time there is a touch of realism to them, they talk a lot and say the funniest sh*t and that makes it all the more endearing. I enjoyed them and it was a refreshing change again from the usual hot girl and hot guy boning hotly stuff that you normally read.
When the final conflict popped up, I rolled my eyes at first, because I was like - nope. This is just unnecessary drama. Jacob wouldn't do this to the woman he loves. I began badmouthing the author for ruining a character I'd come to love. And then, in a few pages, I realized Hibbert loves Jacob as much as I do. And she knows Jacob better than anyone else (save for Eve). Because the resolution is so freaking cute I can't. I wanted to hug both of them. And then I wanted to say this :
This book was to me all that a good, fluffy romance should be. I was rooting so hard for their HEA because I cared about both of them and I could see how much they cared about each other.
I mean how can you resist an MMC who thinks like this?
“But Jacob couldn’t see a world in which he didn’t try his f*cking hardest for Eve Brown, and if that meant setting himself up for the most brutal rejection of his life, well. He supposed he’d just have to deal with it.”
And how do you resist an FMC who lays her heart on the line like this?
“You are so brave and you are absolutely beautiful and I’m so happy you’re here, and anyone who doesn’t want you as much as you want them is a f*cking donut, Jacob, because you are just the most wantable man on planet Earth.”
I also loved all the ancillary characters: Mont, Alex, Tessa, Aunt Lucy, Gigi, Shivani, and Chloe and Dani and their boyfriends.
I'm absolutely going to be reading Chloe and Dani's stories because they also have inter-racial non-neurotypical leads. So yayy! Wait for those reviews.
ETA: I have since read Chloe's story, and I loved it too (& Red). Yet to read Dani's. I think I like Talia's style of inclusive writing!
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