Leave it to the March Sisters by Annie Sereno is a contemporary romance loosely based on Amy and Laurie from Little Women (3/5 stars)

Leave it to the March Sisters by Annie Sereno is a contemporary romance loosely based on Amy and Laurie from Little Women. We alternate between the point-of-view of both main characters.

Amy Marsden’s career in education is on an upward trajectory, currently a professor and chair of the department. She also goes through boyfriends like a box of tissues. After a recent break-up, she signs a one-year lease to rent a floor of a house while the landlord is out of town. And oops, the owner of the house is the boy next door she’s been in love with most of her life.

This doesn’t seem to be a named series, but we see some of the characters from Sereno’s debut novel, Blame it on the Brontës in this installment. You can definitely read it as a stand-alone, but if you want more context about how Athena and Thorne get together, you’ll want to read that one first.

In general, I really enjoyed the characters in this book, especially the side characters. I loved Amy and her pragmatism.

What fell a bit flat to me was the plot. The pacing of this book felt kind of weird to me. Some things come to a head and resolve way quickly than they should; the ending is very rushed. This may be a bit because the characters acted at least ten years younger than they were supposed to be. Amy is 34 and Theo is slightly older to her. I also wasn’t entirely sold on their chemistry–their one main sex scene felt pretty awkward to me.

Tropes in this book include: slow burn, forced proximity, friends to enemies to friends to lovers

CW: abusive relationships, toxic relationships, children of divorce

I received a copy of this book to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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