Review of ‘Insult to injury’ by Gun Brooke
3.5 Stars. I don’t think this was one of Brooke’s best, but I still enjoyed it. To be honest, it’s one of those stories where I could see some possible eye rolls, but I personally chose not to take things too seriously so it worked for me. Even with one main character who has a major injury and the other main character who is homeless, this is not really a deep book. It’s more of a fluffy, feel-good, good-things-finally-happen book. I found when I stopped looking for the deeper meaning behind everything, I started to enjoy the book.
This story does stand on its own. However, it is a part of the ‘Coffee Sonata’ universe so there are plenty of secondary characters from Brooke’s other books. I think anyone would enjoy this book more if they at least read Coffee Sonata first. In my opinion, it’s one of Brooke’s best and has some wonderful characters. One of my favorite parts of reading ‘Insult to Injury’ was spending more time with Manon, Mike, and Vivian.
I was happy with both new mains we were introduced to. We don’t see many homeless characters in lesfic so I have to give Brooke some props for that. This is an age-gap romance. I do have to say I thought Romi at 22 felt a little young compared to Gail in her 30’s. It is something that felt a bit off in the beginning, but as I saw Romi attraction to Gail, through Romi’s eyes, it made me feel a little better about the age-gap.
The romance was a little faster moving than I prefer. It’s not insta-love but they did seem to get a little obsessed with each other pretty fast. Again like I mentioned above, the chemistry was also more potent as seen through Romi’s eyes. This book switches POV’s but Romi to me was definitely the heart of the book. The final resolution was a bit corny, but I still had a big smile on my face when the book ended.
Not my favorite book by Brooke and it had its bumps, but I still had fun reading it. I would recommend it to people who like the setting and characters of East Quay in the Coffee Sonata universe. If you are new to Brooke, I would not start here. Coffee Sonata is a great first book to read because not only is it good, but it will give you a good feel of the kind of author Brooke is.
An ARC was given to me for an honest review.
