Love at First Fight is another random Kindle Unlimited read that I honestly picked up because of the cover. Can you blame me? It's gorgeous, and absolutely caught my attention.
Molly is a schoolteacher from New York who went in on a holiday house share in the Hamptons with her boyfriend and his friends. Except then her boyfriend dumped her. An hour before his plane left to move to Singapore.
Molly decides to go ahead with the house share anyway in an effort to enjoy herself in light of the breakup, and all is well and good—except for one minor problem. Her ex's best friend Smith has the room next to hers—with a shared bathroom!—and Smith hates Molly. He hates her with a passion, and everyone knows it.
Except maybe that passion is a little misplaced.
Smith's been in love with Molly since the moment he met her, and decided that the best way to deal with this was by acting like he hated her, rather than admit he was into his best friend's girlfriend.
What follows is a sweet summer romance with a lot of miscommunication, a lot of heat, and a lot of laughter. The chemistry between Molly and Smith is undeniable, and in their good moments, I did really enjoy them as a couple. They're clearly well-matched and I appreciated that Molly gave Smith a reality check about the disparities between their lives. But they are really, really bad at talking to each other instead of making assumptions, and sometimes it got a little grating.
There were also a number of conversations that take place off-screen that I would have liked to see play out, because I think they would have added more emotional weight to the narrative. It also would have helped with the pacing, which felt rushed in places—in particular, the final conflict felt too easily resolved. Honestly, it felt as though certain conversations had been cut in edits and recapped later instead, and I think they should have been kept in.
Ultimately though, that didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the novel. I finished it in one sitting, which should tell you something! Aarons also uses the supporting characters really well to inject life into the story; it's a complicated web of friendships and romantic entanglements, but they're all pretty well developed and the shenanigans they get up to are incredibly entertaining.
Final verdict: Entertaining summer romance with just the right amount of heat, though the pacing issues are frustrating. 🍯🍯🍯🍯/5 honeypots!