Georgie All Along by Kate Clayborn
2023 Frenzied Bibliophile Challenge Category: Book of the Month
Rating: 5/5 stars
Will you like this book? You might if you like:
Small town love stories
Forearms and rescue dogs
Life long friendships
Messy heroines and stoic heroes
Milkshakes
I was so excited for Kate Clayborn’s newest romance, I loved her writing since I picked up her first book, Beginner’s Luck (if you haven’t read that series, check it out). I totally geeked out at Love Lettering, where the heroine is a custom journal designer, be still my calligraphy-loving Virgo heart. So I was thrilled that Georgie All the Way was a Book of the Month selection.
Georgie is a P.A. in L.A., working for a Nora Ephron-esque screenwriter, who all of a sudden decides to chuck the Hollywood lifestyle and go live on her ranch in New Mexico. Georgie finds herself at a bit of a loss when her job ends and decides to head home, temporarily, to help her best friend, Bel, as she prepares to have her first baby. When she arrives back in town, Georgie feels like she has reverted back to her high school self, not quite together, always a little bit of a disappointment. When she realizes that she has left her wallet in the car, the grumpy, handsome dude behind her buys the milkshakes she has picked up for her best friend. When Georgie is at Bel’s house, they come across the friendfic that they created in high school about all the things they were going to do and none of which they did. Georgie decides while she tries to figure out what to do with her life, if she does some of the stuff in the friendfic, maybe it will help her fill in the “blankness' ' that she is feeling.
And of course, it turns out that our grumpy dude, Levi Fanning, is also her accidental roommate: her parents forgot to tell Georgie that Levi would be staying at the house while they were away and now all of a sudden they are thrown together. And because it is romance, Levi, handsome, stoic Levi, offers to help Georgie complete her friendfic list.
I loved this book, it has all the elements of a novel that make me happy: friendship, grumpy hero, adorable dog, a heroine struggling to find herself, and a waterfront locale. The trend to make characters in romances more well-rounded, more realistic is a trend I am here for; our hero is struggling, our heroine is struggling, but the relationship isn’t going to magically fix all of their issues, they are going to have find peace in themselves but having the support of each other will help.
Clayborn gives us a heroine that has felt that her job defines her but now that that job is done, now that she is forced to slow down, what does she do with the blankness that she feels. I listened to Kate Clayborn doing an interview on the Book of the Month’s podcast and she talks about how in the pandemic, people had to slow down and really look at what they have been doing and how that has impacted how people look at their jobs in relation to their lives.And I think that is something that most people struggle with. In my reading of the book, Georgie realizes that she doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone and that she is wonderful just for being Georgie. So maybe we can all take that bit to heart.
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