On camera. Up close. In denial--but not for much longer...

After a relationship gone bad, Lucy Finch is leaving everything behind. Her old home, her old job, her old insecurities. Even Sebastián Castillo, her protective but intensely private friend of almost twenty years. Before she moves halfway across the country, though, she has one last request for Seb: She wants him to help her choose a tiny house on cable television. And maybe during the filming process, she can discover once and for all whether his feelings for her are more than platonic...
Sebastián would rather do anything than appear on HATV. But Lucy needs him, and he can't say no. Not when she's about to leave, taking his heart with her. Hiding how he feels with a television crew watching their every move will prove difficult, though--especially when that crew is doing their sneaky best to transform two longtime friends into a couple.
Tiny spaces. Hidden emotions. The heat generated by decades of desire and denial. A week spent on camera might just turn Lucy and Seb's relationship from family-friendly to viewer discretion advised...

My Review:

This is the follow-up to last week’s Desire and the Deep Blue Sea. I’ll admit that that first book didn’t work all that well for me, so I was hesitant about this second one. OTOH, I generally like this author’s work so I set aside my misgivings and dove right in.

While both stories are set in stories wrapped around a fledgling cable TV network and their stable of reality shows – hence that Love Unscripted series title – this second story worked a whole lot better for this reader than the first one did.

And that’s all down to the romantic trope that powers this story. The previous story was an enemies-to-lovers story that just didn’t deal with the way that only one of the enemies even recognized that they were enemies. He was just that clueless.

This time around we have a friends-to-lovers story that begins exactly where it should, with the ride or die nearly two decades-long friendship between Lucy Finch and Sebastián Castillo. They were both outcasts in high school, and they bonded together over being on the outside together. It’s a bond that hasn’t wavered in nearly 20 years, not even when they both temporarily left Marysburg for their respective colleges.

Now, Lucy is about to leave Marysburg again – and this time it’s likely for good. Her last relationship didn’t just  end, it ended after her ex pretty much cratered her confidence for nearly a decade. She’s WAY better off without him, but she’s having a hard time dealing with the memories AND the negging voice in her head that’s definitely his.

But she can’t leave without making one last try at getting the infamously taciturn Sebastián to open up about his feelings. Specifically, his feelings for her. If friendship is all he has to give, then that’s all she’ll ever ask for. But she has to KNOW before she leaves.

She also needs a home that she can carry away with her on her new job as a traveling representative for Massage Mania. She’s looking for a tiny house she can move with her as she travels. The cable TV network that sponsored Callie’s Caribbean vacation ALSO has a who about tiny house shopping. Lucy’s friend Allie is a real-estate agent looking for a leg up in a cutthroat real estate market. Lucy herself is hoping for one more chance to discover what Sebastian really feels, and sees her unscripted tiny house hunt to spend some quality time with her bestie AND get a clue about her next move – or theirs.

Either it’s the opportunity of a lifetime – or it’s a chance to burn the bridge on the most important, supportive AND frustrating relationship in her entire life. But one way or another, when the show is over, she’ll know whether her relationship with Sebastián is forever – or for never.

Escape Rating A-: This worked for me. I went into this one hopeful, and this time, that hope was fulfilled. It was also terrific in audio, and the narrator Joy Nash did a great job with all the voices.  As she did in that first book but I was just too bummed about the story to give her the shoutout she deserved. So this one goes double.

(The book is available now. The audio will be released on April 7 so if you want the audio you’ll need a bit of patience. But if this is what you’re in the mood for – and I was – it’s worth the wait.)

As I said before – and I’ll say again later this week in another review – friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite romance tropes because the tension is real and relatable. Lifelong friendships are precious whether they have the possibility of turning romantic or not. There’s nothing in this world as supportive and sustaining as having someone in your corner who knows you from the inside out and loves you anyway – even when you drive each other crazy.

But the tension in turning a friendship into romance is real and the stakes are always high. Because if it doesn’t work you’ve lost something equally precious that you know you’ll never get back. So it’s easy to feel for Lucy edging up to taking the risk of telling Sebastián how she really feels.

At the same time, it’s just as easy to understand Sebastián’s unwillingness to take that risk. He has family who do love him and vice versa, but Lucy is the only person he’s let into his core. She’s literally the sunshine in his life and he’s afraid to even take a chance on losing it. The only way he’d EVER risk himself that way is that the risk of losing her because he’s told her how he really feels is now equal to the risk that he’ll lose her because she’s leaving and not coming back.

His only way to win is to leap and hope that the net of Lucy’s love will appear. But he’s spent so much time pretending not to feel much of anything at all that he’s frozen in place until not just the bitter end but a little bit past it.

That Sebastián’s frozen emotional landscape is the result of being the recipient of some epic high school bullying is just another facet of tragedy in this story. Bullying inflicts terrible trauma on the recipients. It leaves lifelong scars and it does not make the sufferers stronger – it makes them brittle. (This is a huge soapbox for me and I felt for Sebastián a lot because of it. I sincerely hope your mileage varies on this part.)

As heavy as some of Sebastián’s inner thoughts and feelings are, the wild array of tiny houses that Lucy is shown and her laughably honest rejections of them add a delightful bit of lightness to a story that does need a bit more sunshine. (The school bus converted to a tiny house decorated in used chewing gum and magic marker dick drawings was a masterpiece of snicker-worthy giggles. Because REALLY…)

In the end – and honestly through all of the terrible tiny house showings – this romance was a lot of fun, did a great job getting Lucy and Sebastián from friends to lovers and wrapped up their story in a big, beautiful, happy ever after glow that felt delightfully earned.

And it left me hoping that we’ll get to see more of HATV and its hardworking interns Cowan and Irene, in Cover Me, a new book tantalizingly teased after the end of this one. But whichever of the author’s ongoing series Cover Me turns out to be a part of, I can’t wait to read it!