Book Review- Flirting Lessons

(Spoiler warning! I do discuss some plot points of the book in our discussions!)

Our club met up in December to go over our romance choice of Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory. Now, we preface our reviews that none of us our overly into contemporary romance books, but actually all three of us enjoyed this one! (Great pick, Quin!)

The book begins with our protagonist, Avery, fresh out of a relationship with a long term boyfriend, ready to explore more of her bisexuality. She meets Taylor, a well known flirt, at an event through a mutual friend. They get to talking and Avery admits she has no idea how to flirt, something Taylor is more than adept at. Taylor offers lessons in flirting with women and their relationship ensues. Neither want to admit that it is more than friendship as their lessons unfold.

Avery gets introduced into the queer community, finding friendship and purpose outside of her relationship with Taylor. She becomes involved in a gardening group. One of our members drew an allegory between the growth of the garden and the growth of Avery as a person in her own rights as the book developed, which was a beautiful take! Taylor addresses her insecurities with her friends about being a different life stage than them and how they view her flitting between relationships. Two of us, being parents ourselves, loved this aspect because we loved how it addressed being happy with where you are, but still missing some other things in life and how that is okay. Our other member got to see it from the other perspective (that of Taylor's) since a lot of her friends are at the parenting/marriage stage while she is coming into herself. It let us have a frank, honest discussion with each other about the beautiful duality of being happy with where your life is and feeling a sense of longing for some of the things that you don't get to do. And all of that can coexist together and be okay.

What we loved about the book was that it was a fresh take on relationships. We got both sides of the relationship and the characters inner thoughts. They both had their own insecurities and had to work on themselves and relationships with friends, not just each other. We also like that Taylor never pushed Avery to do anything she wasn't comfortable with. There was healthy communication throughout from both sides. Though there was the standard third-act conflict from a miscommunication, they made it work in the end by actually addressing the lack of communication and expectations. There were so many fun events in the books as well, causing us to discuss trying new things (like the axe-throwing and salsa dancing!).

The author, Jasmine Guillory, is a black woman and her main characters are portrayed as being black as well without any of the racial stereotypes. We were surprised to find that she is known for heterosexual romances and this was her first foray into queer romance. She had nuances to the community that we hadn't expected. We hope to see more in queer romance from her in the future.

Things that could have been worked on, none of us particularly liked the epilogue. We felt that it wasn't true to the characters and was just a 'wrap-up' for finality. Besides that, not much else was mentioned! All in all, it was an excellent foray into romance. Bravo, Jasmine, for making three non-romance readers enjoy it!