Book Review: A Risk Worth Taking

My 2nd read from my Christmas TBR is done and the first novella of the bunch (and there are a lot of novellas on the list!). A Risk Worth Taking by Jessica Joyce was so good – not that I would expect anything less from her since she has quickly become one of my favorite authors.

The novella follows Claire Ashford and Connor Stella. The two meet one night during the holidays when Claire is bartending at Connor’s work party. The two hit it off. Claire is really interested in Connor, but she has been a very cautious person all her life – her nickname is “Claireful” and she is literally moving the next day to San Francisco for a new job. With a little push from a friend, she decides to throw caution to the wind and spend the night with Connor. The two have the best time together and are both privately sad that Claire will be leaving the state the next day. But when a snow storm blows in overnight, Claire’s flight is canceled which means she’ll be staying for a few extra days. And since she has nowhere to live for the next few days, Connor enthusiastically says she can stay with him. Will they fall for each other in those few days? Can they have a future together when Claire is moving?

This was such a fast read, even for a novella, and I loved it. It’s so much more than a story about a one-night stand. They had amazing chemistry and it went beyond a physical attraction – they truly clicked and started falling for each other. It was a really beautiful love story and a lesson in taking a chance. There’s a line in the novella that Claire’s brother says to her about how people often worry about big changes in life and think that not making a change is safer, but we don’t often think about the cost of inaction. “What are you missing out on if you don’t take the job or move across the country?”

Novellas don’t often make it into my favorite reads because they’re too short for me to become really invested in the characters and story, but I was completely invested in Claire and Connor!

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