Lesbian Book Review of ‘Create a life to love’ by Erin Zak

This one was a bit hard to rate, parts of it I enjoyed, others not so much. It was much better than Zak’s debut book but not as good as ‘Breaking Down Her Walls’ in my opinion. I thought the premise was interesting and I like that this was a new idea that we have not really seen done before. With so many lesbian romances out there that is not easy to do. I just felt a few things didn’t come together all the way.

This book is told in first person, in the POV of three main characters; two adults and one teenager. I actually didn’t mind the multiple POV’s, I thought that Zak did a great job of giving all of the characters their own unique voice. Because of the different POV’s this book almost felt part young adult romance and part adult romance. Again, I actually liked that as both romances were sweet. The problem I had was there did not seem to be enough dialogue for my personal tastes. There was a lot of inner reflections and inner conflict, that I felt got repetitive after a while. I wanted the characters just to talk more and further the story that way.

I do have to give a slight trigger warning since one of the main characters is in an abusive marriage. There is some abuse “on screen” so to say, but most of it is talking/thinking about what happened in the past. I do have to say I didn’t think Zak handled this part of the book as well as the rest. Not to give anything away but how this storyline resolved had me scratching my head. It just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the book.

As I mentioned already, I thought both romances were sweet, but I almost found myself more invested in the YA one than the adult. There was nothing really wrong with the main romance, I just got tired of the “I’m straight so I can’t be attracted to a woman” line over and over. I felt like fine than the character should just move on, but since this is a romance, that can’t happen. And because of that, I felt this part of the story dragged a bit.

There were a few other things that bothered me, that almost felt like inconsistencies or aspects about the characters I found hard to grasp. One of the mains is known as a hopeless romantic, but she also states that she is almost always an asshole to the women she dates. It felt like these two things didn’t really match. Also, the “straight” character was very put off that the lesbian character was interested in her, and made a little flirty move… then shortly after she starts questioning in her mind if the lesbian character could possibly like her. Well yes, she likes you, and you know that because you were just angry when she tried to show you that she likes you. Little things like this just caused me to question some of Zak’s choices.

Besides the book dragging in a few places, for the most part, this was a pretty enjoyable book. This sure had some bumpity bumps but it was nice to see a different romantic premise than the norm. I can’t really put my personal recommendation on this one, but I definitely would not tell anyone to stay away. This book is in the middle and I think it will work for some people.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.