Summer of Love Week 1: To Sir, With Love by Lauren Layne

Summer of Love started Monday! I am so excited to be reading all the contemporary romance this summer. It’s one of my guilty pleasures for sure 😉 Be sure to check out the other posts from this week (links below). Tomorrow we will be on Celebrity Readers for our first Zombie Friday, discussing the first couple of episodes of Rachel Higginson’s Love and Decay, which I’m personally loving!

• 6/21: Stephanie reviewed When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon on Once Upon a Chapter
• 6/22: Lenore reviewed I Do, I Don’t series by Lauren Layne on Celebrity Readers

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I received this book via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of this review.

To Sir, With Love by Lauren Layne
Published by Gallery Books on 2021-06-29
Length: 288 pages
Reviewing eARC from Netgalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: #NGEW2021, 2021 New Release Challenge, 2021 Summer of Love, COYER 2021

Love Is Blind meets You’ve Got Mail in this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy following two thirty-somethings who meet on a blind dating app—only to realize that their online chemistry is nothing compared to their offline rivalry.

Perpetually cheerful and eager to please, Gracie Cooper strives to make the best out of every situation. So when her father dies just months after a lung cancer diagnosis, she sets aside her dreams of pursuing her passion for art to take over his Midtown Manhattan champagne shop. She soon finds out that the store’s profit margins are being squeezed perilously tight, and complicating matters further, a giant corporation headed by the impossibly handsome, but irritatingly arrogant Sebastian Andrews is proposing a buyout. But Gracie can’t bear the thought of throwing away her father’s dream like she did her own.

Overwhelmed and not wanting to admit to her friends or family that she’s having second thoughts about the shop, Gracie seeks advice and solace from someone she’s never met—the faceless “Sir”, with whom she connected on a blind dating app where matches get to know each other through messages and common interests before exchanging real names or photos.

But although Gracie finds herself slowly falling for Sir online, she has no idea she’s already met him in real life…and they can’t stand each other.

As I sit down to write my review, it’s been roughly an hour since I finished this book, and y’all I still have a stupid grin on my face 😀 To Sir, With Love by Lauren Layne is a delight from start to finish. As a girl who grew up on Nora Ephron and books, I can say with 100% confidence that anyone who enjoys romantic comedies and over-the-top fluffy romance will enjoy this one. Following the story of Gracie Cooper as she navigates dating in her thirties while also trying to keep her dad’s business afloat, To Sir, With Love is a guaranteed happily ever after with fully fleshed out characters and a romance to root for.

Gracie is a fun, quirky main character. A middle child, she has always been the peace maker of her family. Giving up her own dream of becoming an artist, Gracie took over her parent’s champagne store after her father’s death. While she doesn’t regret the decision to keep her family’s store open, she isn’t exactly happy with the hand life dealt her. She lives in her daydreams, dreaming of life as a full time artist with a musician husband who rocks a dad bod (no I’m not joking, she really fantasizes about the dad bod). She believes in fairy tale endings and desperately searches for her own prince charming, and she believes she may have found him.

“Sir” is a man that Gracie met through an online dating app where there are no pictures allowed and no names shared. He is honest with her upfront, telling her that a friend signed him up for the app as a joke and that he is in a relationship. However the two strike up a friendship of sorts, sending notes back and forth through the app. Without the pressure of dating, it is easy for the two to get to know one another. The banter and back and forth is great! Each chapter starts with “Sir” and “Lady’s,” who is Gracie, correspondence, and I could see how Gracie thought she found her prince.

Then enters Sebastian Andrews 🙂 Gracie’s first encounter with Sebastian made me giggle, perfect little meet-cute. Then the tide turns. Sebastian, it turns out, is the landlord of her store and has been trying to buy out her lease so that his company can turn the building into something else. He’s the guy we should hate. Gracie even wants to hate him, but finds she can’t. It probably has something to do with his Tiffany blue eyes. Anyways, Sebastian is the complete opposite of Gracie. He’s quiet, comes off as gruff at times, and can be standoffish in his suit and tie. Yet his persistence and quiet support quickly endeared him to me. 

Overall I absolutely love To Sir, With Love. Gracie, Sir, and Sebastian are wonderful characters on their own, but Layne created an entire cast of characters that I could write an entire review on by themselves. Lily, Alec, Caleb, May, Keva, and Robyn are wonderful side characters, fully fleshed out and important to the story. I want Lily as an older sister and Caleb as my younger brother please 🙂 This was my first time reading Lauren Layne, and I can promise it won’t be my last. I’m already scoping out her backlist to see what I want to read next. If you are a fan of romantic comedies or looking for a fluffy romantic read, I highly recommend you add To Sir, With Love to your short list.

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