Book Review: When We're Thirty by Casey Dembowski

Title: When We're Thirty
Author: Casey Dembowski
Genre: Contemporary; Romance
Publication Date: April 27, 2021
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing

Two friends. One pact. The performance of their lives.

Hannah Abbott is stuck in a dead-end relationship and at a job she loves but that barely pays the bills. The four walls of her tiny New York City apartment have never seemed so small. She’s barely toasted her thirtieth birthday when her old college friend Will knocks on her door with an unexpected proposal.

Will Thorne never forgot the marriage pact he made with Hannah, but he also never imagined he’d be the one to initiate it. One ex-fiancée and an almost-career-ending mistake later, however, he finds himself outside Hannah’s door, on bended knee, to collect on their graduation-night pinky promise.

With both of their futures at stake, Hannah and Will take a leap of faith.

Now, all they have to do is convince their friends and family that they’re madly in love. As long as they follow the list of rules they’ve drafted, everything should go smoothly. Except Will has never been good with rules, and Hannah can’t stop overthinking the sleeping arrangements. Turning thirty has never been so promising.

 

Rating

*A Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this. This is my honest and unbiased review*

Hello Fellow Readers,

I went into this book expecting a slew of fake dating tropes and hi-jinx, but it became very apparent early on that this was not going to be the case. Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed by this as fake dating is my favorite romance trope but for Will and Hannah it was known pretty much from the start that they wanted each other. 

This doesn't mean that they didn't have their fair share of hurdles like; scheming fathers, disapproving mothers, ex-fiances, and a brother betrayal. So, they already had their fair share of things going on. The one thing I can definitely say I did not like was the conflict, which could have been avoided had they just communicated with each other from the beginning. To me it seemed a bit ridiculous that it went on for so long. 

Overall, a pretty solid romance