Review: Anticipation by Rue Harlow

Anticipation by Rue Harlow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Social Butterfly PR and the author, all opinions are my own.

This was a fun romcom and I hope that there are more books in the series surrounding the supporting characters.  I hope we get a resultion on Annabelle and Marcus and the ABC's of Romance.  I liked their back and forth in addition to Lili and Dom's story.  This had good banter between the two main characters Dom and Lili, and I'm a sucker for anything involving baking.  I'm home baker myself and I love coffee, so this story had my attention from the beginning.  

Lili owns the local coffee shop in town, and she has dreams to open a bakery.  She is saving up to open her dream kitchen, but the perfect moment hasn't presented itself yet.  Lili is a planner and a dreamer.  She has tons of goals, but she doesn't go after them because she has a perfect plan and is waiting for it to unfold before she makes the next move achieve them.  Her two best friends keep encouraging her to take the leap and live in the moment instead of waiting for the perfect moment to arrive.   Dom is or was a pro-football player.  He's had massive success but a scandal has brought his football to an end and now he isn't sure what to do now that football is off the table.  While he figures out his next steps, he's back in his hometown helping his grandmother open a bakery across the street from Lili's coffee shop.  You can imagine how that goes down.  

Lili has always had a crush on Dom.  To prover her feelings for him she even became the high school mascot so she could be at his football games.  Again she had a whole plan to reveal her feeling to him after a big game.  Everyone knows that plans often never work out quite how you expect, and Lili's big plans involving Dom have never worked out.  She has a picture of what he's like in her head, and much to her detriment, never actually tries to get to know the real him once he is back in her life.  She lets her insecurities and preconceived notions take the lead in every situation instead of asking him questions and telling him what she wants.  After a miserable experience on a local baking completion that they easily could have won, Lili finally decides that she is ready to take her life into her own hands instead of waiting for life to materialize for her.  

This had some great comedic moments and I really enjoyed the banter between Lili and Dom.  While they had some communication issues to work through, they eventually figured it out.  The side characters played great supporting roles in the story and I hope there are more books set in Mountain View.

It took me a long time to warm up to Lili.  She's super sweet when she's in her coffee shop and loves her customers, but when she's with Dom she's not very nice to him.  Given that she spends quite a bit of time with him, she has several meltdowns.  She's very insecure despite her friends and Dom telling her that she's amazing and she can accomplish whatever she wants.  I did really like that no one forced her to take the scary next step to achieve her goals, she did have to get to that place on her own when she was ready.  

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