“I need to sit next to him for three hours, and then I never have to see him again”

Dear diary,

I finished this book within eighteen hours. It was a feel-good comfort book, and it was like the quintessential “the handsome guy sitting next to you on the flight” kind of rom-com.

Annie is the slightly tardy, cheerful, carefree, messy-haired girl with weird color combinations when it comes to clothes. While Liam—his life revolves around spreadsheets and mapped schedules. From their first encounter, Annie has made up her mind that however good-looking he might be, he’s a snob with no manners, and she immediately names him ‘Grumpypants’. Liam’s feelings towards Annie don’t differ—she’s too much and too loud, and she consumes an unhealthy amount of gummies.

An emergency flight leads to an unexpected layover and one tiny hotel room… so naturally, what would you do if you had no choice but to share a room with an extremely handsome but good-looking stranger? Obviously, end up embarrassing yourself! But whatever, right? At least you never ever have to see him again, right? Wrong. When Annie shows up for her new job, she’s stunned to find that the hot stranger is none other than her new boss, Liam… and even worse, she’s stuck sharing an office with him.

But Annie soon discovers Liam isn’t as rude and high-and-mighty as he may seem to be, and his spiky forest scent sure seems to be taking her up. Long work hours and seeing Annie at her most unhinged moments, not to mention her pretty smile and ocean-breeze scent, make Liam feel like living again.

This book makes me wish I ended up next to a ‘Liam’ on the flight, and could experience my own ‘so that happened’ kind of story. I loved how Annie and Liam both had their own hang-ups, problems, and misunderstandings, but as they actually got to know each other, they realized what they had was so much more than platonic hatred.

Sure, the storyline was a bit cliché, but it was charming and special in its own ways.

Do Annie and Liam get their happily ever after, or are the HR rules too strict to be bent? And co-workers can’t get involved?

read-o-meter rating: 4/5

Age rating: 14+

Until next time… dear reader of my book diary:)