My Very '90s Romance: A Novel

Holly is going through her third or fourth ‘disastrous flatmate’ situation when she calls university friend Josh and moves into the ‘box room’ in his flat, with their third university ‘friend’ Kate and an almost invisible Addison. Josh is a lovely character with a touch more ‘metro’ to his sexual and plenty of ‘mixed messages’ that conflict in translation as his friends are trying to figure out his sexual orientation. Long without a partner, he’s got a habit of truly unworthy crushes, and his current crush is no better. Kate is a workaholic stockbroker with a temper and attitude that scares those it doesn’t alienate. She and Holly just don’t get on – but those reasons we’ll came to later. Addison is a freelance programmer with all of the clichés, although he’s gorgeous if wholly agoraphobic, star wars obsessed and more than a bit socially awkward. Lastly (or most prominently) is Holly – faffing about as a florist as she bemoans her life, her challenges, and obsesses over her inability to grow up, get over her parents’ divorce when she was twelve, and take some actual responsibility for her own life and choices. Instead she is wholly inappropriate to those who don’t deserve it, rarely exhibits any actions that aren’t selfishly motivated, and is completely unable to take any responsibility for any of her actions, particularly when things go wrong. This is accompanied by what feels like a tween’s stream of consciousness emotional vomit as she clings onto the immaturity with the tenacity of a sock from the dryer. And this was a SHOCK – as even the ‘dislikable’ characters that Colgan creates usually have some modicum of likability – Holly didn’t. Fortunately there was Josh (adorable) and Finn (also adorable) to give the story some warmth. Aside from the immaturity, the Holly train was just a disaster – from inappropriate acts to a lack of any sort of drive or ambition, as she’s pushing thirty – it was just disappointing. But there were Finn and his friendship / gentleness, Kate’s disastrous track record with men and her bringing the ‘broker boys’ to heel, Josh and his sudden ‘dateability’ with a back up singer and a male nurse all in a flash - I had some struggles with this one, particularly with Holly who wasn’t particularly likable and didn’t actually try to remedy anything that wasn’t (and hadn’t) worked for her for ages, but held my interest mostly because of Josh and the late inclusion of Finn, as their stories and characters were more realistic and plausible, and felt more like someone Colgan would create. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

this is a rerun of Talking to Addison