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Thank you Netgalley and HQ Digital for the advance copy of The Last First Date by Hayley Quinn.
One date. One missed chance. One mission to find love. Can Helen Pines find her last first date?
At 31-years-old, Helen Pines is far from where she thought she would be. Whilst her ex-boyfriend is now engaged, Helen’s still eating ready meals for one, wistfully dreaming of her last first date.
Determined to give online dating a go, she matches with drop-dead-gorgeous Brody, and they hit it off immediately.
One date later, Helen’s heart is still singing. Brody’s everything she’s looking for in a man – sexy, charismatic, and the perfect gentleman. But then she receives an error message on the app… all her contacts have been deleted.
With nothing but Brody’s name and job title to go on, Helen is determined to track him down.
But despite the initial chemistry, Helen realizes she knows surprisingly little about her mystery man… Was it really love-at-first like, or will she find a new love along the way?
The Last First Date was a fun book in concept. I loved the idea of Helen trying to find her love after the dating app error. But The Last First Date did not live up to the concept.
Helen Pines’ character was childish. At gasp over age 30, she wanted to find love, but she was so childish in the way she went about it. She basically stalks Brody to try to find him after the app failed. I may have put that aside if during their date I felt a connection between the two of them. But there was very little conversation, and I could not understand why Helen felt she found her true love. Helen also was childish because she couldn’t say the word drugs or sex (she had to whisper them).
The supporting cast was also lacking. We saw Helen’s friends through mostly text exchanges, and I couldn’t figure out why these girls were friends. As I mentioned before Brody was a terrible character, but we didn’t really learn anything about him. The one highlight of the book was Helen’s grandma. I enjoyed her character and wanted more for her.
The book was also very slow. The plot twist did not happen until 60/70% of the way and when it did, I didn’t see the romance blossom. I also felt the ending was strange.
Overall, I was not a fan of this book. I felt the characters needed more development and the story needed cleaned up.
Have you read The Last First Date? Get your copy for a May 20th release.
The Spinny Bookworm Mama 