With Love, from Cold World | Alicia Thompson
"she updated her goodreads page religiously, not to leave reviews but just to ensure that she had some kind of record of every book she’d ever read."
Asa is the heart and soul of 'Cold World' theme park. He is everyone's favorite, except for Lauren's, the bookkeeper to the business. She finds him aloof and unserious, a polar opposite to her list-keeping, taking-everything-seriously self.
'Cold World' is a struggling winter attraction in Florida, an cold place
in a hot state. But an icy area with a snow globe and an ice rink also has hot
drinks and a cozy atmosphere that melts your heart. It’s just
like Lauren and Asa. Lauren is aloof, introverted, and seen as an ice queen.
Asa is relaxed, bright, and gets along with everyone. But nothing is like it
seems. There’s so much under the surface.
When their boss asks them to work on a project to save Cold
World, Lauren realizes she got it all wrong. Everything about Asa is warm, from
his jokes to his ever-present smiles to the tattoos she can’t stop wondering
about. Maybe it’s time to get out of her shell and let Asa show her what it's
like to let it go.
Lauren has a crush on another man at the beginning of the
book, but the author didn’t fail in the typical cliché of making her oblivious
to her feelings towards Asa in order to use that as the third act problem. But she
was never oblivious about how she felt when Asa was close, how good he smelled,
how much she wanted to follow his tattoos as they disappeared behind the
t-shirt.
This romance was sweet and adorable and at times
hard-hitting. Both main characters have internalized trauma from their past
holding them back from aspects of their life. I fell in love with Lauren, who
kept her distance because she believed people would leave her eventually, and I
adored the easy-going sweet Asa, who had been thrown out of the house at
eighteen like he was a piece of garbage. But despite their differences, their
chemistry and connection was amazing.
In the end, this was okay. I much prefer her previous book “Love
in the Time of Serial Killers” and this one wasn’t as fast paced. It dragged on
sometimes, and I struggled to connect to the protagonists for a while there. I’m
not an expert, but there also seems to be an issue with Asa’s bisexuality being
only sort of a “quirk” on paper, not properly explored. And the relationship
with his estranged, horrible, parents may not have been handled in the best way
by the author.
Nonetheless, I did like this, and am looking forward for
more titles by Alicia Thompson.
0 comments