Great start!
Alice seemed a fun chum, but by the next chapter I realised we could never be friends….. and I’m actually quite like Harper, two hours before your take off is very reasonable (actually cutting it a bit fine,) for an international flight. Alice is too flighty for me, and not in a good way. The title “The romance lovers book club” sounds like a light, frothy comforting read is within. One thing I’ve realised as a reader of many sapphic romances is they can also be serious and informing. Walking in other peoples shoes on other peoples lands is a great opportunity for self development. The good books, of which there are many, entertain and inform. I am only 20% in but I am loving this book. It is as light and frothy as the title suggests but it also has depth and human connection that I find in the romance novels I love….. so again living up to the title.
Tension is added by a love rival, and one we are not supposed to like, I certainly didn’t.
Well, there has been a little bit of obligatory shouting at the mains, but the writer is deliciously cruel in the way this is panning out. It is quite tense, and I hope there is comeuppance a-plenty! (Not Spoiler, there is!) I was entertained, I was informed!
4.7 rounded up!

This is a case of a book existing in both the "it's not you, it's me" and "it's not me, it's you" spaces at the same time. For the former, every character acts in a way that makes me deeply anxious right from the start, to the point that it made it really hard for me to connect to them or the romance or the story because my fight-or-flight responses were in full throttle and it never really got a break from that. Alice sent my nerves into overdrive the most, but Chelsea and Harper both have their moments, particularly once Laney and Oliver come into the picture. It becomes less about the second-chance romance and coming back together than the misunderstandings that come up.

Which is where it gets into the "it's not me, it's you" space. For a second-chance romance, there is a whole lot going on that mostly serves to be either unnecessary drama or drive misunderstanding. I feel like the romance would have been better served by Laney being less of a bitch and more of what Harper "should want" based on the romance novels she loves, and realizing that being with Chelsea is what she really wants. The way it is now feels more like Chelsea and Harper would have gotten together basically immediately without Laney, which feels less like a second-chance romance and more just general drama. The Alice and Oliver subplot also feels unnecessary, other than a way to get Alice's loud personality out of the way until it's needed for plot reasons. It takes a lot away from Chelsea and Harper relearning each other and their potential.