- Sep 5, 2023

ARC Review: Hey Jude, by Hannah Brixton

⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5: Diverse, affirming debut, with big lumberjack (LumberJude?) vibes.

📕 Hey Jude

✍️ Hannah Brixton

Tropes:

👩‍❤️‍👨 Forced proximity

The MCs:

♀️ Olena MacMillan. 27. Landscape designer. Undiagnosed ADHD. Trauma/abuse survivor. Smarter and stronger than she thinks.

♂️ Jude Sharpe. 30. Owner of Sharpe Blades landscaping company. Total cinnamon roll.

Setting:

📍Lennox Valley, WA

⏰Present

Yay!

❤️ Neurodiverse FMC with mental health challenges who saves herself, thank you very much.

❤️ Diverse side characters (race/ethnicity, LGBT+).

❤️ MMC who’s supportive, respectful of boundaries, and emotionally healthy.

❤️ Everyone needs friends like Olena’s!! 😍

❤️ Loving, mutually-giving, respectful spice.

Hmm…

🤔A few overlong spice and exposition passages had me skipping ahead.

🤔I’m AuDHD with C-PTSD, depression, & anxiety. Yet even I was scratching my head at the depth of Olena’s paralysis around boundary-setting and communication. Still worth sticking around to watch her growth arc.

🤔The first chapter almost lost me. I can 100% relate to Olena’s disdain for the snobbery in much of the art scene. But I got the impression Olena’s disdain extends to the art, itself. Her inability or unwillingness to use her imagination here was hard for me, personally, to relate to.

Spice:

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ out of 5: Five or more open door sex scenes, but the love story is still the main focus of the plot. Sex acts, body parts, and/or fluids and movement are described in explicit, graphic detail and with the prolific use of swear words.

Pairs well with:

📕One Touch, by Lena Hendrix. For the HGTV vibes.

🍷Sauvignon Blanc (any vintage) by Peju Winery. Don’t worry, Olena – no ghoul mouth. 😉

Content advisories:

⚠️Abuse in a PREVIOUS relationship, with ongoing stalking and threats from that party.

⚠️Alcohol addiction

⚠️PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks

⚠️Undiagnosed ADHD

⚠️Parental loss

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Thank you, Hannah Brixton, for my copy of Hey Jude, in exchange for my honest review! 🙏❤️

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