Next To You – Hannah Bonam-Young

My obsession with Hannah Bonam-Young’s romances continues with the next book in her Next series, Next To You – kindly sent to me for review by HQ Books/Harlequin Australia.

The story follows Lane, one of the side characters from the previous Next novel (Next Of Kin), just a few years later. Lane is 27 years old, perpetually single and adrift in a sea of couples, going nowhere fast in her self-propelled marketing career. At a New Years Eve party, she impulsively kisses friend-of-a-friend Matt – but their simmering attraction never quite boils over. Instead, they become friends.

Fifteen months later, Lane makes another impulsive decision: to purchase a big yellow school bus, in the hopes of renovating it into a home on wheels. Matt is a mechanic with room for her to park her new purchase and the know-how to make her dream a reality. You can see where this is going…

Next To You has a premise much more grounded in reality than Next Of Kin (though, admittedly, impulsively purchasing a bus and getting your sexy mechanic friend to help you renovate it is still a bit beyond reality, it’s just the right level of romance-book-ridiculousness). Matt, the love interest, is just a bit too perfect – if a male main character in a romance book can even be such a thing. Bonam-Young clearly knows just how hard to push the bounds of realism for the reader.

What I appreciated most – and what I see all-too-rarely in these world-based romance book series – is that Bonam-Young didn’t forget about Warren and Chloe, the protagonists from the previous novel. She kept them, their backstories and their ‘happy ending’, alive throughout Next To You.

With a caveat for trigger warnings (anxiety, grief, and PTSD), I’d happily recommend Next To You to anyone looking for a spicy read with a hot mess heroine.

Read Next To You on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)