Title: The Wake-up Call

Author: Beth O’Leary

Publisher: Berkley 2023

Genre: Romance

Pages: 356

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

Spice Rating: 3

It’s the busiest season of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the hotel’s front desk, they have no choice but to put their differences aside and see it through.

The hotel won't stay afloat beyond Christmas without some sort of miracle. But when Izzy returns a guest’s lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management that this might be the way to fix everything. With four rings still sitting in the lost & found, the race is on for Izzy and Lucas to save their beloved hotel—and their jobs.

As their bitter rivalry turns into something much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas begin to wonder if there's more at stake here than the hotel's future. Can the two of them make it through the season with their hearts intact?

I have enjoyed Beth O’Leary’s previous romance books for their realistic characters with a focus on communication. I definitely had to grab this one as soon as it was released. This one is much more rom-com than romance with lots of romance tropes thrown in. We get the quintessential miscommunication trope, the forced proximity trope, and the potential new relationship threatening the inevitable romance trope. They are all mashed up in there in not an annoying way but probably an ultimately forgettable way. I just don’t think that this book will be on my end-of-year’s best list. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the journey of Lucas and Izzy.

Next up on the TBR pile: