Title: To Sir, with Love
Author: Lauren Layne
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: June 29th, 2021
288 pages
4/5 stars
Goodreads Synopsis
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.
Review
Gracie runs her family’s champagne shop in Manhattan, though her main passion in life is art. She’s trying to find a way to build the shop up again after her father passed away, but the store isn’t doing well. Sebastian Andrews is a businessman for the copy that owns Gracie’s lease and has been bugging her to let them buy her out of the lease. At the same time, Gracie was having an online flirtation with a man nicknamed “Sir” who she was developing feelings for – but when Sebastian ends up being nicer than she expected, Gracie might have a choice to make.
The romance in this book went the way I expected it to go, but the plot was a surprise to me. I didn’t expect it to go where it did, but I prefer the way it went than what I expected. I wasn’t a huge fan of the messages back and forth from Lady and Sir. I generally don’t mind the book being broken up by other types on content, but it didn’t feel like the excerpts did anything to advance the plot line. I also generally feel weird about them referring to each other as Lady and Sir, just hits wonky for me – but that’s definitely a personal preference.
This book is a touch shorter than most romances, but it doesn’t feel like it was cut short or missing anything. There was plenty of time for the plot and even bringing in Gracie’s family and giving them character development as well. To Sir, with Love is a sweet story of modern dating and does not feature much steam.
Thank you to Gallery Books and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Happy reading, folks!
Baltimore Bibliophile 