GOUDA FRIENDS by Cathy Yardley is out now! Check out the gorgeous friends-to-lovers romcom and grab your copy today!
Title: Gouda Friends
Author: Cathay Yardley
Genre: RomCom
Two high school BFFs reunite and endeavor to fix each other’s lives in this geeky romance from the author of Love, Comment, Subscribe.
Tam Doan dumped her boyfriend after he threw away her gourmet cheese. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that, but the point is, he had it coming. Newly single and unemployed, Tam calls up her best friend from high school and utters the emergency code word—goldfish. Next thing she knows, she’s on a plane back home.
Josh O’Malley was a troubled, unconfident teenager. Now he’s the successful owner of a multimillion-dollar ghost kitchen. Tam, his high school BFF and fellow member of the Nerd Herd friend group, was instrumental in building his self-esteem. When she calls him out of the blue, he jumps at the chance to return the favor.
Josh and Tam immediately get to work fixing her life—but again, it’s complicated. Their close friendship was always a lifeline between them; a blooming romance might confuse things. Still, at least one thing is for certain: their chemistry is un-brie-lievable.
Review:
Content warning: There. Are. So. Many. Cheese. Puns. In. This. Book!
Seriously. I’d love to see what Cathy Yardley‘s browser history looked like for this one. Tam really loves cheese. Be prepared 😉
Tam and Josh’s story is a friends-to-lovers one–one of my favorite tropes!–and it’s so good. I love that they’re both such good friends (since elementary school!) and know each other so well that it’s not even the traditional “we’re going to ruin our friendship” worries that end up tearing them apart, it’s that they each know exactly what mistakes were made in the other’s previous relationships and they’re determined that they won’t be repeated here. Josh especially had a front row seat to all the sacrifices Tam had made for previous boyfriends, and was determined that this time it would be different–even if he had to make himself miserable in the meantime, it would be worth it for Tam.
Gah! So freaking sweet…and it leads to an absolutely beautiful grand gesture (from both of them, there’s shades of The Gift of the Magi here, just not quite so definitively sacrificial in the end) and epilogue that still has me smiling. And hungry, for some reason 😉
Gouda Friends is the second book in Ms Yardley’s Ponto Beach Reunion series, but it absolutely could be read as a standalone. I’m willing to bet you’ll fall in love with this group of friends too, though, and will likely binge book 1 ( Love, Comment, Subscribe ) in plenty of time to be waiting for book 3 along with me.
Dare we hope it will be Emily and Vingh’s? 😉
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book
About the Author:
Cathy Yardley is an award-winning author of romance, chick lit, and urban fantasy, who has sold over 1.2 million copies of books for publishers like St. Martin’s, Avon, and Harlequin. She writes fun, geeky, and diverse characters who believe that underdogs can make good and sometimes being a little wrong is just right. She likes writing about quirky, crazy adventures, because she’s had plenty of her own: she had her own army in the Society of Creative Anachronism; she’s spent a New Year’s on a 3-day solitary vision quest in the Mojave Desert; she had VIP access to the Viper Room in Los Angeles. Now, she spends her time writing in the wilds of East Seattle, trying to prevent her son from learning the truth of any of said adventures, and riding herd on her two dogs (and one husband.)
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