Spoilers Ahead:

This book is one that I have literally been dying to read for ages, and I recently got Kindle Unlimited, and I saw that it was included in it. Naturally, I had to put all my other books aside to rea this book, and can I just say how pleased I am that I made that sacrifice. This has quickly become one of my favourite books to read, for many different reasons. 

We follow Avery through the book. She is hoping that her boyfriend, Mason, will propose to her. They’re going out to eat, to celebrate her 30th birthday, and she found a ring in their room a few weeks ago, so she has her hopes up. She’s been waiting for ages. However, now they’re sitting there, her and Mason, and he looks visibly stressed, and he says that he doesn’t want to marry her because he doesn’t find her physically attractive, that their sex life is stale, and there is someone else. He says he never cheated, but there was someone he wanted to try and explore with. He does love her, but doesn’t want to marry her. 

Naturally, she’s very upset, and turns to her friend Palmer, who really isn’t much help, and actively makes everything about herself. She has a business with Mason, and so can’t really escape him. 

She offers to house-sit for her friend Dex, and ends up caring for his fishes, and so goes over there to check out his place. She goes with Palmer, and they go past a guy jogging. Both of them immediately realise how attractive he is, but Avery doesn’t think she stands a chance with him. Little does she know, the jogger is actually neighbours with Dex, and so she will be seeing him a lot more often. 

Finn is his name, and he is obsessed with her from the beginning, when he first sees her driving past. When he goes into Dex’s house one night, intending to use his pool, he finds Avery there, and they get to talking. She finds that she wants his company, and is very attracted to him, but doesn’t believe she will like him. 

When she opens up to him, she decides to propose a deal with him: she will help him grow his business – a boudoir photographer, of all things – and he will teach her how to have good, pleasurable sex, which is something she never got with Mason. She thinks that if she learns how to have sex better, she’ll be ready for a relationship, as she thinks Mason left because she’s bad at sex (in reality, he’s just a fuckwit). 

As a boudoir photographer, and he works to make sure everyone accepts and worships their own body, no matter the type. He does that with Avery, who he’s majorly attracted to. Whilst she helps him to grow his business, he gives her sex lessons, and he tries to teach her how to love herself, because her confidence is lacking. Turns out, she’s a little freak, and he helps her to discover what she likes. He convinces Avery to take a boudoir photo, and she finally finds some confidence in herself. However, Finn is still trying to get over what his ex did to him – he slept around a little bit after she left, because he was so upset by what she did – and Avery thinks she’ll never fit in with his friends, because she’s not ‘pretty’ enough. There’s a divide between them, especially when his friends make comments about her weight, and she particularly thinks it when his dad doesn’t think she’s on his level as well. Eventually, he manages to convince her to love herself, and love them, and I love that for them. 

I also think it’s worth noting that, whilst on Palmer’s phone, Avery finds a string of messages, incriminating her and Mason. For the whole of the four years Avery and Mason were together, he was with Palmer. Avery calls her out on it, and finally doesn’t give in to her whiny attitude, and, essentially, tells her where to stick it. Of course, she is heartbroken, and immediately pulls out of her business with Mason. She then is asked to give him a recommendation, of sorts, and she refuses to say nice things about him, before ignoring him for a while. A perfect end to the book, I’d say! 

So, I would just like to say that this book is very close to my heart. First of all, I adore the name Avery, so I already loved her from the beginning. I very much love the fact she’s a chubbier, curvier person, because it’s hard to get that representation like that in books. Normally, it’s all about skinny girls that think being fat is the worst thing in the world. However, I loved the transformation she went through, not with her body, but with her mentality; she went from being very shy and insecure to confident and quite proud. Plus, I loved that she was able to let her freaky side out, as I think a lot of fat women are often taught that they’re not allowed to enjoy sex as much as thin women, because they should be ashamed of their body. As you can tell, I’m a very big advocate for body positivity, so reading about a chubbier woman is really everything I’ve ever wanted. Especially when a lot of her struggles are something I’ve also gone through, and is, quite possibly, something a lot of other people who have struggled with accepting their bodies can relate to. I really like the inclusivity of the body images, although I wish there were more plus-size characters throughout the book, because that’s sort of the whole problem to begin with. I don’t know though, maybe I’m just being picky. I liked and also disliked the fact that Avery hated her body with a vengeance. It’s interesting, because everything that she was worried or upset about with her body, I have definitely thought about with regards to my own body. However, when you’re outside the situation, me reading it was like “you can tell he loves you, so why are you making things so difficult?” However, it’s not until you’re faced with that situation, being vulnerable with someone, that you realise how hard it actually is. So, although I thought she moaned quite a lot, I also realised that it came from deep-rooted insecurity, and that I could definitely sympathise with. I think it made her more of a realistic, relatable character, and I like that she had flaws, and it made me love her character even more. 

Finn is literally the embodiment of the quintessential perfect fictional boyfriend. I was immediately hooked onto his character, his personality, just everything. I was made to feel very safe around him, even just as the reader, and I loved reading about him. The way he helped Avery to discover her confidence, all the while telling her how beautiful she is – and the compliments actually almost made me sob, because that is exactly what I would love to hear, especially when I was struggling with my body image – and he was just everything I would want in a book boyfriend. He’s actually respectful, and he isn’t TW mentally abusive, like most of the media’s “perfect fictional boyfriends” today, and I just really loved him. I thought he was a cutie-pie, and he knew exactly what to say, all the time, and I loved that for him. I do wish he had a bit more of a flawed side to him, because it very much felt like he was being put on a pedestal, and although he does seem like a very sweet guy, I also thought that he might be a tad unrealistic. Plus, it’s not fair for him to not have flaws – I think it would have given him more depth as a character. 

I absolutely despise Palmer. Even before we find out she cheated, I couldn’t stand her attitude, and just her as a person. She has the personality of a sponge. I think I have a very deep-rooted hatred for her because she reminds me of some people I used to be friends with. Cove did such a good job at creating such a repulsive character, so that’s a target very much achieved. I just wished Avery would have noticed her worth a lot quicker than she did, because Palmer, ideally, needed to be ditched long before she was actually binned. 

One thing I didn’t like was him referring to her as ‘Queen’. Maybe it’s just the name – I’m not a fan of it I can’t lie – but it also felt a little bit forced, so that wasn’t enjoyable. 

I liked the whole plot, and I really liked Finn’s job; you don’t read many books about people in the boudoir profession, so I thought that was a nice, refreshing thing to read about. Also, the sex lessons were very nice, I enjoyed reading about that. There was a lot of spicy scenes in it, and they didn’t seem to be forced, flowed quite naturally, and it was actually nice to have some romantic intimacy for once, instead of just sex-driven couples. Not only that, but the dynamic and relationship between the two was very well executed and thought out, and the whole book had a comedic vibe that I absolutely love to read in my books. Overall, I really liked it, and I would definitely recommend it to others!