Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Description:
“Five romantic couples. Two wildly different wedding planners. One spectacular city.
For the past twenty years, Lib and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn‘t have begun to imagine.
It Had To Be You cleverly unites Lib. Savannah, and couples as diverse and unique as New York City itself in a joyous Love Actually-style braided narrative. The result is a smart, modern love story that truly reflects the age we live in.
Second chances, secret romances, and steamy soul mates are front and center in this sexy, tender, and utterly charming rom-com.”
Review:
This book was a pleasant surprise! I was hooked to the story from the beginning, thanks to the bizarre twist of a newly widowed woman having to run her business with her dead husband’s mistress. *whew, that’s a mouthful!* It Had To Be You makes great use of rotating narrators at just the right times throughout the book. I felt like I seamlessly slipped into each character’s life and I loved it. The writing was funny in the way that intrusive thoughts can sometimes be. It was very relatable, but removed enough for this novel to act as a great escape from the real world.
A couple of drawbacks: I had hoped that there would be more queer and Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) representation in this book as the description states it’s as diverse as NYC. While there were about three characters in the plot who were BIPOC and three who were queer, I was sad to see that every character who was BIPOC was in a relationship with a white person and there were no Black men as main characters. Interracial couples are lovely, but there are more than black-white couples and it would have been nice to even see a BIPOC couple.
It Had To Be You had a lot of characters to keep up with so that spice level is about two out of five. Folks who are fans of romance novels but don’t enjoy sex scenes will find a good balance here.
Representation: Black woman, Latina, questioning sexuality, and coming out.