When Sparks Fly

TW: death of parents

Fans of the friends-to-lovers trope will enjoy this one! It was a very cute read with a happy ending that elicited a few tears from me along the way (tbh it’s not that hard to make me cry but still).

The backdrop of this book is Spark House, an event hotel hosting everything from hobbyhorse competitions to weddings. The Spark sisters, Avery, London, and Harley, run it now, but it was started by their grandparents. After their grandfather died, their parents stepped in to help their grandmother (“Gran”) run the place. When they lost both of their parents in a car accident during their teenage years, Gran took over raising them and running Spark House full-time again. Now the sisters are grown up and running the place on their own with Avery’s best friend, Declan McCormick, as Spark House’s financial advisor.

Avery and Declan met the first weekend of college and have been best friends ever since. They never pursued anything romantic but everyone around them seemed to sense they each had deeper feelings for the other. Following college they moved to the same city and purchased a condo together as friends. Declan’s parents have a toxic relationship that he’s been stuck in the middle of for most of his life, which has seriously impacted his feelings about romantic relationships and being involved in one long-term.

When Avery gets in an accident on her way to an event, Declan feels responsible because he was supposed to go with her but flaked out for a random hookup. Fueled by his guilt Declan tries to make it up to Avery by taking care of her while she recuperates. This changes the dynamics of their relationship and unearths some repressed feelings on both sides, which leads to some sexy (not too graphic) scenes, but conflict ultimately arises.

Without giving too much away, I really enjoyed that the resolution of the conflict between Avery and Declan was more realistic than you typically see in romance novels. Rather than being an automatic fix it was gradual and illustrated the work that it takes to make a relationship last. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, so let me know in the comments how you felt about it!

P.S. The next book in the series is Starry-Eyed Loved, which follows London Spark, and sounds like it will be a workplace romance. Its release date is May 10^th! You can pre-order it here.