Book Review: Love and Other Mistakes by Jessica Kate

About the Book

Book: Love and Other Mistakes

Author: Jessica Kate

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Release date: July 31, 2019

There’s a fine line between love and hate . . . And for the last seven years, Natalie Groves has hated Jeremy Walters.

Natalie Groves was meant for great things. But soon after her fiancé left, Natalie’s father was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly her grand plans evaporated . . . and God felt very far away.

Fast-forward seven years, and an internship presents Natalie a chance at her destiny—but she needs a job to work around it. And the only offer available is worse than a life sentence. Her ex Jeremy, now back in town, is desperate for help with his infant son and troubled teenage niece, Lili. And Natalie may be just the one to help Jeremy . . . provided they don’t kill each other in the process.

When Jeremy and Natalie join forces, sparks fly. But will either of them get burned along the way?

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My Thoughts

Love and Other Mistakes by Jessica Kate is a dynamic debut novel. This Australian author brings a fun and interesting twist to Christian fiction with Australian characters living in the United States. Sometimes I found myself reading this book and I would forget about the Australian influences, only to be jarred out of the story by unfamiliar words. While this did take me out of the story for a bit, overall, I found the Australian elements really interesting. Ms. Kate excels at dialogue between characters in difficult situations. This novel is real and deals with really difficult topics. While it is hopeful, I would not characterize it as rom-com or sassy. Rather, I think it is a well-crafted contemporary novel. This novel could easily be classified as a young adult novel, especially with the ages of the main characters and the themes of the novel. It is inspirational, but I think it would have benefited from more Christian elements to counteract the heavy themes. The novel's ending felt a bit too easy of a resolution, again because of the heavy topics.  I hope these are further dealt with in a subsequent novel, because there is definitely enough unresolved issues for another great novel. While this novel is not exactly what I expected, I would recommend it to readers of young adult fiction and contemporary fiction. I received a digital copy of this novel from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

About the Author

Australian author Jessica Kate writes inspirational romances with wit, sass, and grit. Jessica is a screenwriting groupie, cohost of the StoryNerds vlog and podcasts, and her favorite place to be—apart from Mum and Dad’s back deck—is a theme park. She has traveled North America and Australia, and samples her favorite pasta wherever she goes—but the best (so far) is still the place around the corner from her corporate day job as a training developer. She loves watching sitcoms with her housemates and being a leader in a new church plant.

Jessica Kate brings rom-com fans a reminder that love has its own timing in her breakout novel, Love and Other Mistakes. Kate is best known in the book world as the cohost of StoryNerds, a vlog and podcast about all things books and pop culture, recorded from her home city of Toowoomba, Australia. Now, she’s carving her own place in the Christian fiction arena and helping to fill the rom-com genre gap with a novel full wit, sass, and grit.

More from Jessica

A romance that makes me laugh and snort my strawberry milkshake across the keyboard when I sneak in chapter at work – that’s just the best. My loftiest career aspiration is to create that experience for someone else. There can never be enough of those books in the universe, especially novels that include deep faith and emotion, as well. I adore love-hate romantic comedies like The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, and I spend my days dreaming up plotlines that force characters who hate each other to work together as a team. But, Natalie’s journey came from a real place for me—that feeling you’re missing out on your purpose and you don’t know how to fix it.

Read an excerpt at https://jessicakatewriting.com/books/love-and-other-mistakes/