Review of ‘Enticed by Love’ by Lynn Lawler

This was an interesting book. There were parts I liked and other parts that didn’t really work for me. While I had some issues for sure, I always wanted to keep reading. I was more willing to forgive certain things because the book kept my attention right through to the end. So while I will be talking about some of the problems I had, I do have to give Lawler credit for writing a story that was entertaining.

This is a major lesbian age-gap romance with some paranormal elements. The age-gap is up there with one of the biggest I have read ever at 40+ years. I had a little trouble finding the exact ages but I think it was 65 for our main character and 22? -she was in college- for the potential love interest. I’m always open for age-gaps in lesfic, it doesn’t matter to me since love is love, but that is a big one to accept. What helped a little was that the younger character seemed more in her thirties and the older more like forties. However, because of that, I don’t know if I completely believed the older character was 65.

There is a maturity and intelligence that comes with age from living through so much and acquiring so much knowledge that I had trouble seeing the main character like that. I love diversity in books and that includes age. I want more books with older characters so that in 30 years I‘ll have characters to relate to, I just don’t know if I believed it here.

I do have to say I didn’t love the writing style. It was a bit choppy and mechanical at times. She did this, she did that, and I didn’t always need to know that she did all that. That smooth flow I was looking for wasn’t really there. Luckily, I did think the second half felt smoother, either that or I just got more used to the writing. I also didn’t care for how far away the physic distance to the character was. I felt like I was watching the character go through life. I like it better when you are right up close in the character’s head so you actually feel what they are going through. A character is bullied in this story and I felt bad for them, but had I been more connected to the character, I might have teared up or even cried.

What I did enjoy was most of the paranormal aspects. This book takes place in the ’70s and the main character is physic so she gives readings and holds monthly séances to communicate with passed loved ones. Not only that, but there are a few little mysteries that are going on, while they are not super exciting, they were neat and enough to keep me turning the pages and never being bored. The character was very special in her paranormal “powers” and it helped to give her some depth. Unfortunately, towards the end, her powers felt pretty common and not so special which was a real bummer that caused a few eye rolls on my side. I wish the author would have kept things the way they started out.

The romance is sweet. This book has two romances, one in flashbacks and the other in the present. I didn’t care for the flashback romance. I get why the author did that, it absolutely made sense to the story, it’s just a personal preference of me not being big on flashbacks. The sex scenes in the book are what I would call lightly explicit. Sometimes they were fade-to-black, other times they were more explicit but never really lengthy.

I have to be clear that I had some big issues with this book. I did not even go into all of my issues in this review. But, and it is a pretty big but, I could not stop reading this. I read this in one sitting and there was always some sort of family drama, or mystery, or ghost, something that just always held my attention. This book provided me with entertainment tonight that helped to keep my anxiety at bay. 3 stars.

A copy was given to me for an honest review.