Review: Our Stop by Laura Jane Williams

Opening sentence: “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

I don’t tend to read many unashamedly romantic books, ones that have a love story at the centre of their story, but after enjoying one or two great ones recently – including this very book – I’m starting to wonder why I don’t. I mean, I think you definitely have to be in the right mood for one (although you could argue that about all genres, really) but it just so happens that a sunny weekend spent in my garden was just the setting for a super-easy-to-read book about hope and love.

As you can see from the above picture (and the title’s a little giveaway too TBH), the cover of this proof has a travel theme. As someone who dedicated the title of her blog to the fact she travels (and reads) on London transport a lot, this appealed to me. As someone who also loves the Rush Hour Crush section in the Metro newspaper, Our Stop appealed to me even more. You see, the plot is a simple but effective one; a tale of crossed-wires and missed opportunities between Nadia and Daniel that all starts when Daniel sees Nadia on the tube and decides an advert in the Missed Connections section of the paper would be the best way to get her attention. To be fair, it worked, (‘Nadia and Emma were obsessed with Missed Connections’) she did realise he was talking to her and it sparked her interest. But will they ever meet and how will they really feel about each other? Readers of the daily newspaper in the story who are following Nadia and Daniel’s romance give it its own hashtag #OurStop, nicely aligning the plot with its IRL marketing campaign; first time I’ve seen it done so directly. Bravo.

As lead characters, I really found myself rooting for Daniel and Nadia, they have just enough back story to make them feel real and are both very likeable. Daniel is recently bereaved and struggling with that while trying to balance his work / life situation and Nadia works in artificial intelligence for a company called RAINFOREST (yep, love it) and has two close friends, Emma and Gaby who are important to her. Another massive bonus throughout are the great pop-culture one liners (‘Nadia headed for the bar with the confidence of Blue Ivy’) and the cutting advice on the kind of guys to run a mile from (‘the guy turned out to be an axe-wielding serial killer who lived with his mother and had voted LEAVE’ or ‘there is no man to be trusted less than one who has feminist in his Twitter bio’) that all made me chuckle on the train.

Sort of serendipitously, as I was reading Our Stop, I was listening to The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary on audiobook, I didn’t quite realise both plots would be about love blossoming in an unconventional, crossed-wires way, but really enjoyed being in a little love bubble when I was walking and listening or sitting down to read.

A thoroughly charming read, Our Stop has enough witty lines and cheekiness to keep it fresh and a lovely, heartwarming story at its core that keeps you hooked, all while putting a smile on your face. If you’re looking for a great contemporary romance book this summer, you’ve found it!

/ I was kindly sent this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

/ Published by Avon 8th August 2019

/ 360 pages

/ Rating: 4/5