New Release + Review: Unexpected Love by J.O. Mantel

Title: Unexpected Love

Series: Flammable Hearts Series Book One

Author: J.O Mantel

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Release Date: December 9, 2019

Roses are red, violets are blue. Will you be my valentine, because all I want is … YOU?

Valentine’s Day is a day Hunter Cassidy would prefer didn’t exist. After the tragic death of his wife, he vowed to provide the best life possible for his daughter, Lili, even if that meant being a Dad who didn’t date.

His position as a firefighter for the New York City Fire Department means he is only seen as one of the guys. But as the most romantic day of the year approaches, he finds himself the recipient of several mysterious Valentine’s Day cards.

Too scared of finding love again, his focus must remain on his little girl. But with each new card, Hunter’s interest grows.

Will he have the courage to seek the mysterious Cupid known only as “A Valentine?” Can he open his heart to love once again and find the happily ever after he and his little girl deserve?

Love can be found in strange places … even the unexpected.

Britt’s 🎩🎩🎩 hat review:

I really wanted to love this book. The beginning had me hooked immediately and I was so looking forward to being blown away but things just kind of fell flat for me. There’s definitely the promise of a magnificent story and I will say I did reach the point where I couldn’t stop reading because I needed to know what would happen, but the road was definitely a rocky one.
POV switches between characters happen frequently with no clarity so it was pretty common for me to have to back track to keep up with who was saying/doing what. I typically love dual POV, but when it occurs sometimes every other sentence and in the middle of paragraphs it becomes incredibly difficult to remain clear. The other downside to that is it also frequently pulled me out of the story just when I was getting sucked back in.
Unexpected Love definitely has some twists I did not see coming from the blurb. Not that I didn’t enjoy them, I just wasn’t expecting them (much like the title implies 😉) I really feel like I could have felt more of a connection between the characters had the POV’s been less sporadic, but with as much as I had to keep back tracking on I just couldn’t feel those sparks between them like I really wanted to.