A Brush with Love

Rating: 3.5, mildly spicy (2 out of 3)
A Brush With Love is a contemporary romance about two dental students, one in his first year, and the other waiting for her residency placement.

I listened to this as an audiobook. I think the narrators, especially Emily Lawrence did an amazing job!

Overall the book has great trauma rep, a cute slow-burn relationship, authentic characters and a unique setting (dental students). I couldn't root for the main relationship, but I'm still glad I read this for its representation of anxiety and grief. Would recommend for romance lovers who can root for cute but imbalanced relationships and won't be overly triggered by the overwhelming anxiety the MC goes through.

First off, what I loved about this book:
- I really liked that especially the female MC (Harper) was such a successful, and driven character. She knows what she wants, and she goes after it. And I really liked that the male MC (Dan) gave her the space to do so. He loved her more because of how good she is at what she does, and he was proud of her for being so kickass.

- If I ignored all the red flags of their relationship, they were quite cute together. The way they just couldn't help but fall in love, had to fight against it but still ended up

- I thought both of the characters had strong and unique back stories that explained how they became who they are. Especially Harper's driving factor was so realistically built up, it's almost tragic, seeing how everything that happened to her pushed her to be such a perfectionist, especially as you see her drive herself to the ground trying to achieve her goals. This is where I thought this book would have made a pretty good women's fiction. If the focus was more on these two characters and their struggles and their healing, rather than the romance, this would have been a very strong read for me, especially because of the next point.

- I really appreciated the incredible anxiety rep. The book covers grief, panic attacks, therapy, with great authenticity. While I do have general anxiety, it is nowhere near the levels Harper struggles with, so I will leave it to others to say if it was realistic or not.

- I especially liked the focus on therapy, and differing stages of being ready for therapy. And that it's not something that just fixes you outright, but that it helps.

- I really liked Harper's friend group. I thought they also had some missteps, and I found it unrealistic that they didn't already know what Harper was going through, but overall they were there for her, they loved her, and they helped her come out of the hole she dug herself into. They also added a good amount of the comic relief, which was needed!

Note:
- It was plain difficult, at times excruciating, to read through the anxiety attacks Harper was having. This was emphasized even more because of how good the narration was. I felt the walls squeezing her in, even though they didn't need to. I wanted to shake Harper to make her listen to those around her. To her professors, friends, Dan, anyone. I don't have anxiety to her level, so I can't personally say if it was realistic, but regardless, reading through those areas felt like a heavy weight on me. This did impact my enjoyment of the book, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Though it might be quite triggering for some.

Now onto what I liked less:
- My biggest problem, was the relationship. Dan is such a pushover throughout, and worse, Harper treats him so incredibly badly, that I just did not want them to end up together. I wanted Dan to find someone who could actually be good to him. And for Harper to have someone in her life who would stand up to her bullshit more so that she could see when she's being an unreasonable partner. Someone who gives you no pushback and just goes along with whatever you want is not a good partner, and they don't make good relationships. (minor spoiler: Harper viciously mocking Dan's trauma is just not acceptable in my book, and him still bringing up being together after that is a great example of how he is throughout)

- Dan is also not a great partner to be clear. At the beginning he had a bunch of red flags for me, like showing up where Harper is going, forcefully paying for her groceries (what?!), overly protective as far as getting physical with someone (WTF) that would be not okay if Harper wasn't interested in him. But then Harper was so terrible to him later on that most of these got eclipsed.

- I also found the main premise for the conflict in their relationship unrealistic. Harper is not a loner before Dan comes in, she has friends, she (albeit rarely) goes out, she has responsibilities like her cat. And she's able to balance all of these with school. But somehow, when Dan comes into her life, she completely loses herself in the relationship, even forgetting what week it is. I just did not like this implication that you have to lose yourself in a relationship. It would be one thing if she thought it was going to happen, but then once the relationship started, she realized that she can balance things. That would have been a way better and more realistic message then what ends up happening. And like I said above, how she treats Dan when she thinks he's impacting her success is absolutely unacceptable.

- Smaller issues: insta-love, the characters who are 26 acting like they're 20, the way the Dan's narrator did Harper's voice