*4.5 Stars!*

How does Cara Bastone do it? Every new release of hers is somehow better than the previous one. I'm in complete awe of her writing abilities and for selfish reasons, I hope she never stops writing romance. Flirting with Forever is a heartwarming and tropey book about wrong first impressions, finding love in your 30s, and the various forms of family. The book opens up with Mary, our protagonist, showing up on a blind date with the son of one of her regular customers. Only this date takes a sour n...

With this, I can now conclude Bastone is not the author for me. It's unfortunate because she has a lot to offer. She knows how to craft a gorgeous sentence and her characters are richly drawn. There was such great chemistry and pining between Mary and John. The bulk of the conflict comes down to miscommunication and their respective insecurities and that made my heart ache in the best way. And yet the good did not weigh out the bad. It was death by a 1000 paper cuts. If she had tighter editing o...

Probably my favorite slow-burn romance of all time, probably going to be in my top 5 reads of the year. I adored this book.

god i absolutely adore cara bastonethe way her characters are just REVERENT for each other. this one dragged a little for me at the end but mary and john were simply so perfect anyway i don’t care

Cara Bastone has a rare ability to create fully realized characters without relying on a one-page bio sheet. That’s the highest compliment I can give to an author. A few subplots surrounding the secondary characters didn’t work for me, but the central ship was spectacular. That end scene at Mary’s family home in Connecticut was one of the most satisfying scenes I’ve ever read. Also: WTF at the Ruth erasure on the cover! My precious, friendly fictional kitty. Stop putting dogs on covers when the

Imagine meeting this handsome guy on a blind date set up by his mom which is a dear friend of yours, only to have him ruin it by flat out telling you he expected someone younger!? What. An. Ass!Flirting With Forever is slow burn romance between a sunshine heroine and a grumpy hero that grabbed me from page one.This opposites attract romance steadily and organically morphed into an engaging friends to lovers story. Cara Bastone built a tension so high-strung between Mary and John, antagonizing bo...

I was not confident that John Modesto-Whitford would be able to redeem himself after starting his blind date with Mary Trace by saying "I was expecting someone younger" but wow does Bastone make me a believer in this meet-disaster friends-to-lovers romance.Mary Trace loves to flirt, loves love, but is also super tired of her mother sending her articles about aging and infertility, tired of being worried she's seen as old. She doesn't feel old. But then her six-years younger blind date, a "good b...

This is a perfect example of how a terrible first impression can be undone by kindness, generosity and honest apology. Having loved the first in this series (it made my top ten list of 2020) and enjoyed the second, I knew that I would be in for a treat reading this one. The author does a great job of making you dislike the main character John from the get-go with his bluntness on his and Mary's first/blind date (set up by John's mother who is one of Mary's friends and vendors in her flower shop)...

This one is my favorite of the series. And that says a lot about how talented the author is because I straight up HATED John for what he said to Mary on their blind date and I had no idea how Bastone was going to redeem him enough to be the male lead. Well, she not only redeemed John, she showed how selfless and kind he truly is under his grumpy and scowl faced exterior and how he does so much good in the world in order to spare other people pain or hurt (that scene when he pulled Mary onto the

He was a good kisser. John Modesto-Whitford: scowler, sayer of rude things, sweet, kindhearted, kisser of the lights out. I love Cara Bastone. She writes the best angst and sexual tension in relationships. I don't normally love reverse age gaps but this worked so well for me. While the age difference was an issue, it was more of a miscommunication and coming into her self journey for Mary. Mary is one of my favorite characters. She is PURE sunshine and joy. She loves her friends and people so

Blah.It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t that good either. A lot of telling not showing. Too much interiority and little external action. A lot of ruminating. I liked the moment real communication actually happened. And I always like seeing Brooklyn done well in books. But other than that, just okay.I’ll just add that I was surprised John turned out to be the hero after that first encounter. I had to go look at the book description again. That was turned around well enough by the end. And I was aggrava...

Honestly I kind of can’t believe that a mere month ago, I’d never read a Cara Bastone book?? After just ~shotgunning~ her backlist in about three days at the beginning of April, I think Cara has cemented herself as one of my favorite contemporary authors— I find her prose really beautiful, her characters ~deeply~ compelling, and the stories she tells feel really magical despite their contemporary settingFlirting With Forever was just so swoony🥰 With all of her friends happily pared off, Mary is

Reading a book about a 37 year old woman who is pressured by her mother to get married and knocked up before she shrivels up and dies sure hits different when you’re a single woman who is turning 37 in two weeks 😬.Anyway I did super enjoy this, I love a romance hero who is grumpy on the outside but has a big bleeding heart on the inside, and I love second chance/friends to lovers. I’ll be interested to see what Bastone writes next, because this series was so unique in how the stories are structu...

It's the last book of a really great series. I found that the book had a voice of its own among the series. Cara Bastone is very talented. Just by her writing style, we recognize the differences between her characters.We met Mary in book one and two. John is a new character. He didn't make a good first impression, but with Mary's help, he grew on me. Via, Seb, Matty, Crabby, Tyler, Fin and Kylie are back but we are also introduced to John's family, his co-workers and his friends and they are jus...