STARRY-EYED LOVE, my first Helena Hunting, second in Spark House series

STARRY-EYED LOVE
HELENA HUNTING
St. Martin's Griffin Books
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Charming, hilarious, and emotional, Starry-Eyed Love is Helena Hunting at her very best!

Having just broken up with her boyfriend, London Spark is not in the mood to be hit on. Especially not when she’s out celebrating her single status with her sisters. So when a very attractive man pays for their drinks and then slips her his number, she passes it right back to him with a ‘thanks, but no thanks’. As the business administrator for their family’s event hotel, the Spark House, London has more important things to worry about, like bringing in new clientele.

As luck would have it, a multi-million-dollar company calls a few months later asking for a meeting to discuss a potential partnership, and London is eager to prove to her sisters, and herself, that she can land this deal. Just when she thinks she has nailed her presentation, the company’s CEO, Jackson Holt, walks in and inserts himself into the meeting. Not only that, but he also happens to be the same guy she turned down at the bar a few months ago.

As they begin to spend more time together, their working relationship blossoms into something more. It isn’t until their professional entanglements are finally over, that London and Jackson are finally ready to take the next step in their relationship. But between Jackson’s secretive past and London’s struggle with her sisters, London must question where she really stands—not just with Jackson, but with the Spark House, too.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's a very, very different experience to read a straight-people romance than my usual M/M reads. In this case, I think I came in after some character work had already been done in the first Spark House book, When Sparks Fly, on this entry's PoV character. London Spark, to those who might not know her from before, is a rather serious-minded and goal-oriented participant in a family enterprise called Spark House. It is an event hotel-cum-venue, and London has somehow been foisted the job of numbers lady. She's not a natural number-cruncher but she knows about sacrificing for a greater goal and gets her considerable wits marshaled to the task of making the finances run.

I, like all other readers, am meeting Jackson the love interest with London. He lets her know he's interested without being more than ordinarily persistent. She declines; he leaves her possessed of his details and accepts his rejection without drama. So far, so good. When a time has passed and Spark House attracts business interest from a tech-bro investor, one who's made to sound like Elon only hot, absolutely not one soul is surprised it's Jackson the rejected suitor.

We know this drill: what's going to happen, the misunderstandings, the idiotic miscommunications, the resolution of HEA or HFN; so the point of reading this book is *how* not what.

The satisfaction of a superior craftworker's results is this very thing. Now, the M/M romance world will usually have something very sexy pretty early. Not so this book. London's been burned and isn't in a huge hurry to try the waters with a tech bro. She is, once he shows back up as a potential financing source, perfectly happy to work with him. They come to know each other, and the readers each of them, as their work brings out facets of their lives quite naturally and unforcedly. Again to no one's surprise Jackson is a good guy, and he's got a solid head on his shoulders; he comes to like and respect London, he fully engages with her as an equal in business (if one with different skills from his); the result is a slow-burn low-steam character study of two young people whose lives are pressurized by goals instead of ambitions.

Why I enjoyed reading it enough to rate it more than a solid three or possibly three-and-a-half stars of five was London's affectionate but exasperated relationships with older sister Avery and younger sister Harley. They were...warm. They didn't ring swords of wit in battles for prominence, they half-ribbed and three-quarters snarked and generally behaved the way friends do. It worked to give me a sense of their bond that was less intense than the Three Musketeers and more positive than the Three Stooges but still very real.

You can't go wrong with a read that does this kind of work when one accidentally reads book two in a series. I am glad I spent time with the Spark family.