Thank you NetGalley and She Writes Press for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Angie never thought she’d be here – her husband’s funeral. She’s not sure how they ended up here – he was perfectly healthy before this. Now she’s trying to figure out how she’ll even afford all this. At least her niece is catering the event to help kick off her new business and the people from the Chicago building authority where her husband worked are being so kind. But something isn’t quite right – she’s being told she can’t have his pension, her husband’s partner is causing all sorts of trouble, and Angie isn’t sure who she should trust anymore. Will Angie sort it out or will this be the end of her life as she knew it?
After releasing a series of murder mysteries and a memoir, Amy S. Peele is giving readers her first romance novel that is the perfect lighthearted read for baseball lovers and Chicago natives. Pulling on her mystery writing experience, Last Bite is a story with a whodunit theme and a small-town romance feel. With a long list of famous Chicago landmarks, eateries, and natives namedropped throughout, this novel is really a love story to the city the author loves so much.
I give Last Bite 3 out of 5 stars. One of my biggest complaints about this is the disconnect between the blurb and the book. The publisher’s blurb makes it sound like the novel will center around the start-up catering company, but we don’t really see much of that until over halfway through the book. My second complaint with this book is the amount of name dropping. Between the restaurants and the celebrities, it felt self-serving. Parts of the narrative did feel very realistic given what I know of Chicago politics and patronage systems – the mobsters, the government corruption, the blackmail. However, the romance felt unrealistic – I can’t see a woman falling for a guy she’d just seen having relations with someone in a bathroom a few days before. I always judge how well a romance novel is written by how much I’d want to put myself in the woman’s shoes – I did not want to be in Angie’s shoes in this relationship at all.
If you’re looking for a lighthearted romance read, this might be a great book for you. And if you’re a Chicago native homesick and looking for a connection to the city, this would be a great option for you. I would caution readers against this book if they are sensitive to gun or physical violence. But if you liked The Wild Card by Carolyn Brown or The Odds of You by Kate Dramis, you’ll like this book, too!
Last Bite will release on February 24th. Preorder yours today on our Bookshop.org page!
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What I’m Reading
- Current print book: How to be Okay When Nothing is Okay, Jenny Lawson
- Current audio book: Atalanta, Jennifer Saint
- Book I’m most looking forward to: Revenge Prey, John Sandford
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