Adult Book Series Reviews Romance Standalones

Review | Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Spoiler Free Review

Rating: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…πŸŒŸ / 5 stars.
Author: Talia Hibbert.
Length: 400 pages.
Trigger Warnings: N/A.

The Brown Sisters #3

β€œIt sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces and blaming yourself when your hands bleed.” 

*Amazon Affiliate Link*

In Act Your Age, Eve Brown the flightiest Brown sister crashes into the life of an uptight B&B owner and has him falling hardβ€”literally.

Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrongβ€”so she’s given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It’s time for Eve to grow up and prove herselfβ€”even though she’s not entirely sure how…

Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner’s on a mission to dominate the hospitality industryβ€”and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her carβ€”supposedly by accident. Yeah, right.

Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Before long, she’s infiltrated his work, his kitchenβ€”and his spare bedroom. Jacob hates everything about it. Or rather, he should. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else. Like Eve, the heat between them is impossible to ignoreβ€”and it’s melting Jacob’s frosty exterior.

Guys. I love Talia Hibbert. I’m letting you all know that, officially, I love her. She is one of my favorite authors ever and you can expect lots of reviews from her books to come your way soon. I will probably binge read them and ignore all my other responsibilities!

WOW.

I am speechless. I don’t remember the last time I finished a book and immediately sat down to write a review for it.

β€œYou won’t get your head out of your ass? Aren’t you concerned about potential suffocation?”

Act Your Age, Eve Brown is the most wonderful and perfect adulthood coming-of-age story. I am astonished by it — the characters, and the beautiful writing style. I can’t stop gushing about it

First of all, it is amazing how Talia Hibbert creates characters. They all have very distinctive personalities that are consistent throughout the entire book, which I think is something extremely rare in romance novels. It’s hard to have a good character arc while keeping them true to themselves, and oftentimes authors end up having the same generic, empowered main character. However, Talia Hibbert does not have them change when they grow, instead they learn to love themselves.

On that note, Eve and Jacob are so fun!!! The first entire half of the book I was laughing out loud. All their conversations were very entertaining and felt real. Their enemies-to-worst-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic was refreshing, considering it didn’t only provide hilarious situations, but also showed that we shouldn’t judge and have prejudices towards people we don’t actually know.

Second, the plot wasn’t out of this world, for most of the book consisted of many conversations between the characters, meaning it was very much character focused. But, if you ask me, characters build plot, and reading about their journeys and how they built their relationship is a huge part of it. Besides, it was so well written that I wish we had gotten even more! It didn’t lack anything and the heavy dialogue was more than enough to keep me engaged.

β€œYou’re not just my sunshine; you’re the sun.” 

Third, it’s tricky to get the final conflict to be original in this genre. There’s very little you can do in romance to have one last important moment in the plot, unless you’re writing an action-packed or dramatic novel. Because this is more humor and contemporary, the conflict was a miscommunication… Which I usually don’t like. I hate when characters don’t communicate the entire message, and it annoys me no matter how it happens. Yet, from a semi-objective perspective, in this book it was well done and solved pretty quickly. It happened at the very end and it was barely relevant, which was what I enjoyed the most about it. However, I know many readers prefer conflicts that have higher stakes, and for them to signify some kind of turning point, so think about that while reading this.

Lastly, the representation and diversity was off-the charts, but that is no surprise from this author. Talia Hibbert prides herself in writing books about diverse characters, and this one did not disappoint. I don’t really want to say everything that it included (because some of those are spoilers) but I loved that those elements didn’t drive the plot. Of course, they were important and part of each character’s identity, but that was that. For instance, I criticize that usually when a character is plus-sized, the book is centered around that. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it sometimes sends the message that their lives are led by these ‘conditions’. Due to this, I really appreciate Talia Hibbert’s style.

Overall, this was absolutely amazing. If you haven’t read any of these books, stop right now and go pick them up. They’re all wonderful and Act Your Age, Eve Brown will most definitely be one of my favorite books of the year.

Setting: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜….8 / 5 stars.
Plot: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…πŸŒŸ / 5 stars.
Characters: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…πŸŒŸ / 5 stars.
Writing: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…πŸŒŸ / 5 stars.
Pacing: β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…πŸŒŸ / 5 stars.
Steaminess: πŸ”₯πŸ”₯πŸ”₯πŸ”₯πŸ”₯

My main rating is not an average from my breakdown, but an estimate of my personal enjoyment.