Please feel free to comment or share.

See more of Shelley's Contemporary Romance & Fiction

After perusing my Kindle for my next read, I did have a couple of prerequisites that I was looking for: the setting had to be in the U.K., and I wanted to read a romance. Well, The Wake-Up Call met my criteria, but even better than that, it was everything that I was hoping that it would be.

Izzy and Lucas were front desk employees at a lovely old hotel in a rural community. They both enjoyed their jobs, but they didn’t particularly enjoy working together. They would bicker, compete, and try to one-up each other. It hadn’t always been that way, though. Something happened at the Christmas party the year before that changed their amicable relationship, but I won’t get into that.

The hotel has been hit with some tough financial times, it is literally falling apart, but the owners and the staff all have hope that it can be saved somehow. When Izzy returns a lost wedding ring to a former guest, their good deed paid off in the form of a reward for the hotel. It may have been a drop in the bucket of all of the money that was going to be needed, but it sparked an idea that the other four rings in the lost and found could also reap a few rewards.

The Wake-Up Call has a great cast of characters. It’s the characters that really make for a good story. Between the guests who were regulars at Forest Manor Hotel during the holiday season and the staff of the hotel, there was always something entertaining going on. Izzy was a wonderful character. She was bubbly, unique, and well-loved at the hotel by the guests and most of the staff. Lucas was not the bubbly employee that Izzy was, but he was good at his job, and he took it seriously. For both Izzy and Lucas, there was more to them than what they portrayed at work. They each had a backstory that added depth to them.

The Wake-Up Call was a wonderful enemies-to-lovers workplace romance that had the perfect amount of push and pull that I enjoy. I felt the characters’ chemistry and their romantic tension, but nothing happened overnight. Beth O’Leary took her time and made these characters wait it out, exposing their vulnerabilities and letting their guards down.

Sometimes you just pick up the right book at the right time, and The Wake-Up Call was such a book for me. With a lovely setting, interesting characters, and a heartwarming story and romance set around the holidays, it was just what this reader was in the mood for.

*4.5 Stars
 

    2 Book Lovers Reviews