Arc Review: Just Another Love Song by Kerry Winfrey

Title: Just Another Love Song
Author: Kerry Winfrey
Genre: Adult Contemporary / Romance
Publication Date: August 2nd, 2022
Publisher: Berkley
Rating: ⭐⭐

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for a complimentary earc to review! All opinions are my own.

“Two high school sweethearts get a second chance at their perfect ending in this charming new romance by Kerry Winfrey, author of Very Sincerely Yours.

Once upon a time, Sandy Macintosh thought she would have her happily ever after with her high school sweetheart, Hank Tillman. Sandy wanted to be an artist, Hank was the only boy in town who seemed destined for bigger things, and they both had dreams to escape town together. But when Sandy’s plans fell through, she stayed in their small town in Ohio while Hank went off to Boston to follow his dreams to be a musician, with the promise to stay together. Only that plan fell through, too.

Fifteen years later, Sandy runs a successful greenhouse while helping her parents with their bed and breakfast. Everything is perfect…until Hank rolls back into town, now a famous alt-country singer with a son in tow. She’s happy with the life she’s built by herself, but seeing Hank makes her think about what might have been. There aren’t enough cliché love songs in the world to convince Sandy to give Hank another chance, but when the two of them get thrown together to help organize the town’s annual street fair, she wonders if there could be a new beginning for them or if what they had is just a tired old song of the past.” (Goodreads)

I was looking forward to this one as I very much enjoy country music and haven’t read many books where it is included. The blurb also sounded quite sweet with the second-chance romance and I couldn’t say no to that. Although there were some aspects I did enjoy about this book, it was all bogged down with the way the story is told and I just couldn’t feel anything for the characters or the plot.

The book is told from a dual timeline all being told by Sandy. She happens to run into her ex-boyfriend from high school and she still can’t help but feel some way towards him after so many years apart. I’m not going to lie, her name made me think of the movie Grease, especially because her friend does hair haha. I did think that her reactions to life, staying in the same place your whole life, was valid and can’t definitely understand why she envies those who has move on.

The second timeline mostly deals with interactions between her and Hank. It’s basically scenes that help draw a picture of what their relationship started as to the present timeline. Although I would usually like something like this, it just didn’t work for me. I felt it was more telling than showing and it never gave me a connection to their relationship. Sure, their were sweet moments, but not enough to convince me that their relationship was the bees knees. I think that the dual timeline kind of took away from the present and I would have liked them talking about what happened in the past to have been in the present. Also, Hank just felt too perfect. Not my thing.

I was here for all of the classic country songs though!

Overall, this was okay but not what I expected from the blurb and I just wasn’t feeling the dual timeline.

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