The perfect ending to the Midnight in Manhattan series
Okay, let’s be clear from the beginning: this book not only stole my heart, it also stole my breath. Which is exactly what I look for in books. God, the longing. The pining. Feelings, people, so many feelings. Also, collarbones. Hot.
If you’ve read the first book in the Midnight in Manhattan series, Don’t Cry for Me, you already know Lauren Booker. If you haven’t, close this page and go get the book, you’re about to be spoiled. She’ll Steal Your Heart is set a year after Lauren disappeared. She’s finally coming back to Manhattan to make things right. But first, she’ll allow herself one carefree weekend, meeting online friends IRL for the first time, binging the new season of the show that brought them together, In Her Defense, starring Piper Sheridan from Come Away With Me (book 3). One of these friends is a bit older than the rest of the group, a bit less of a fangirl. Mia Solano, whose marriage ended after eighteen years, also quit her job as a lawyer after a burnout and is now the owner of a cat café.
Lauren and Mia are so lovely, so perfect for each other that my heart is all soft and warm and every corny feeling you can think of. She’ll Steal Your Heart is the perfect book to conclude the Midnight in Manhattan series, with references to all the previous ones and more.
On a personal note, just like Piper’s panic attacks in Come Away with Me felt very real to me, I can relate all too well to Mia’s post-burnout anxiety. “What if I fall back into old habits?” is a question I ask my therapist (and my wife) at least once a month. It’s been seven years and I still miss the adrenaline of the job I loved but felt was killing me. So yeah, I understand Mia’s fears and know how important it is to know you have unconditional support from the woman you love when faced with hard choices.
As for Lauren, despite all the hardship she has had to endure, she’s not bitter, not blasé, she has hope in the future and in humanity and it could be too much but it simply works. She and Mia are two women looking for a second chance at life, not so much at love, even though they’ll get that as well, but at fulfilling who they know they can be. It’s inspiring, it’s exciting, it brought me so much joy because even though I know it’s fiction, Lacey writes it in a way that is also very relatable.
On top of cameos by characters from previous books, there are a few new secondary characters, some of which I wouldn’t mind reading more about, and, as always in Rachel Lacey’s books, cats that will, too, steal your heart. Lots of cats, including a very shy one I would have loved to meet for real. Thanks to all these cats, I didn’t have to think long about what I wanted on the graphic for this review. Ginny is always trying to help and this time, she got to stay. Which made both of us happy.
If there weren’t so many promising books being released all the time, I’d probably would have reread this one right away. I’ll just have to wait a few months for the audiobook to come out and give me an excuse to enjoy this story and the characters for a bit longer.
