Look Up, Handsome by Jack Strange

Author: Jack Strange

Pages: 405

Publisher: One More Chapter

Publication date: September 26, 2024

Intro

Hay-On-Wye is on the verge of losing its only queer bookshop, and the owner, Quinn, has no idea what he's going to do. 

This close to Christmas, Quinn can't believe that he's being evicted by his own stepfather, and it feels like he'll need a miracle to make it through to the new year with his shop still in his possession.

Quinn had no idea that help would come in the form of Noah, a handsome and famous novelist who just so happens to be visiting his hometown for the holidays. Quinn will take all the help that Noah is willing to give, and he wouldn't complain if he happened to fall in love along the way.

Thoughts

I really thought that I would love this cozy, Hallmark feeling, read. The story had potential, but too many things missed the mark for me. Most notably, I didn't feel any chemistry between Noah and Quinn. Obviously for a romance centered story, this is bad news. I feel like they had a few awkward and dry conversations, and started to call that falling in love. I didn't even really buy that they would have had chemistry as friends. I was constantly waiting to feel a connection growing between the two of them in a way that would be at all noteworthy, but I finished the book without feeling any kind of spark that would have made me actually care about the relationship.

Another thing that was tough for me was that the plot felt very repetitive at times. Quinn would panic about losing his shop, plan an event to raise community awareness, and then wait for Noah to show up, either at the event or at Quinn's apartment after. 

I feel like a lot of the repetitiveness was hard to get through because the author tended to do a lot of telling instead of showing. This also felt like it diluted the chance of a good Hermione/ghostwriting subplot, which I would have loved to go deeper into.

Overall, this one missed the mark for me because I didn't feel connected to any of the characters. It had good potential, but ultimately fell short of execution.