Like all Gerri Hill stand alone romances, I went into The Roundabout with mid-range hopes. Her books are never really stellar but they're almost always enjoyable in a light, easy read with moderately engaging characters who I want to see succeed and be happy.

Unfortunately, this one didn't meet my expectations. The book was shortish but still felt bloated with lots of repeated words and basic information. It could have been tightened up quite a bit to make it move along at a better pace but, as it was, not much really happened until nearly the end of the book.

Definitely not one I'd read again.

The copy I read was a review copy sent by the publisher. ( )

Another Wow. I think that may be one of my first (or at most second or third) Enemies to Lovers trop lesfics. Or maybe I'm just blanking out the others because I definitely liked this one more than others? It's not a trope that I love reading, because I don't read these books to have intense tension like an enemies to lovers book does. If I wanted horrible tension I'd just not read the book and live life. I also wind up hating the characters that I'm supposed to slowly start liking. Oops.

But, in this one, none of that happened (not surprising, it's written by Gerri Hill).

Megan is the one who starts with a problem with Leah. Megan is the co-owner (with her sister) of the Phenix Bar and Grill. Next door Leah moves into the empty storefront and wants to reclaim her store's parking spots back from Megan, who uses one of them for her SUV when she shouldn't.

So, they start quite at odds. But, they're also both getting unwanted attention from the other lesbians and such in town. And so they come up with a plan. A fake relationship plan. Then Leah will not be asked out anymore (as new meat), and Megan will hopefully get a woman named Mary Beth off her case, get her to stop harrassing her.

The Mary Beth (and a little bit the sister Nancy) characters were not my favorite, and by the end I still felt like her character was just --not-- a good person, and that the story line didn't seem to be as funny as it wanted to be in the story.

Still. It was a cool take on the fake relationship trope and the enemies to lovers trope, and it was a short, fun read by one of my favorite authors. ( )

This isn’t my normal type of review – and there’s a spoiler about the storyline, so be warned.

On the one hand this is a lighthearted enjoyable read about slightly older women in a small town searching for love. Its starts with a bunch of single friends and through a series of sometimes funny and sometime poignant happenings we get to the expected happy ever after. It's full of humour and the main relationship is delightful to watch.

As with all Gerri Hill’s books its well written and crafted, well edited. I liked the main characters, particularly Leah who I thought was a particularly gentle and genuine woman. At times I was slightly frustrated by the amount of emphasis on “I am too old to fall in love” or “They cant possibly get together they are too old”.. I don’t know how old Gerri Hill is but at 52 I certainly hope to fall in love again.


However one of the storylines is one older woman bullying another character. This is going to be controversial, and I think many women will be upset and offended. If ‘light hearted’ emotional abuse done as teasing and playing around, but taken too far, will upset you, don’t read it.

It didn’t completely ruin the book for me, but I think the plot could have started with this storyline as a tool to create the situation, then it could have been dealt with much earlier and the moral of the story not allowed the perpetrator to get off with ‘sorry’ and get her own HEA ending.

I normally love Gerri Hill’s books, and it’s great to see a story about older women finding love, just unfortunate in how one storyline has been dealt with. ( )