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My rating: 4 of 5 stars (3.5 rounded up to a 4)
Blame It on the Brontës is a second-chance romance by Annie Sereno. The ebook version is 371 pages. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at eleven hours and is narrated by Katie Schorr. We follow our two main characters characters with dual points-of-view.
Athena Murphy is an English professor who needs to write a book within eight months in order to save her job and receive tenure. She opts to write the biography for an anonymous writer named C.L. Garland, who writes erotic renditions of classic literature. Said mysterious author happens to live in her small midwestern hometown, so Athena decides to go home during her sabbatical to sniff out the elusive scribe. As a bonus, her mother’s friend promises her a part-time job at a local café, where Athena can get all of the hot gossip around town. However, Athena was not aware that the café was recently sold to Thorne Kent, her college ex-boyfriend and the Mr. Rochester to her Jane. They’d already tried to be together twice in the past, but is the third time the charm?
This was mostly a fun read! I really enjoyed getting to know all of the locals in town. For a story about trying to find out the author of a steamy literary fanfiction series, this book was very low on the steam. Their relationship felt a little hot and cold to me at times, and also felt like a cozy home to return to at others. I found the cover of this book to be really cute, though our heroine is described as having olive skin and dark curls (as she has Greek ancestry), but the image on the cover does not really match.
Tropes in this book include: second-chance, return to hometown, queer side characters (gay, lesbian)
Special thanks to Hachette Audio, Forever, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for providing an audio galley of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.
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