Book Review: The Co-Op

When I read Tarah DeWitt’s Funny Feelings earlier this year I loved it so much that I knew I needed to read her backlist. My first book from her already published books list was The Co-Op and I loved it.

The novel follows LaRynn Lavigne and Deacon Leeds and is a second chance romance. LaRynn used to spend every summer at her grandmother’s in Santa Cruz, California. One summer when she was a teenager, she went to visit and met Deacon. Her grandmother’s home used to be a single family home but was divided up long ago into a co-op and divided up into a multi-family home. Her grandmother became good friends and fell in love with her neighbor, who happened to be Deacon’s grandmother. When the two married, LaRynn and Deacon affectionately called them “the grands”.

When LaRynn and Deacon first met as teens they didn’t get along that well, but over time they started to become interested in one another and by their late teens started sneaking around together. Then, due to family issues with LaRynn’s parents and coming from different worlds – LaRynn’s family was wealthy and Deacon’s wasn’t – things didn’t work out they both wished they could. Fast forward to years later and the grands have passed away and left the house to LaRynn and Deacon. But the house they both love has seen better days and whether they want to keep it or sell it it needs to be fixed up. Deacon is a contractor and can do most of the work himself, but he’s already sunk a lot of money into maintaining the house in the years LaRynn has been away. The only way they can afford to fix the rest of the house is if LaRynn gets access to her trust. And the only way she can get access to her trust is if she gets married….

Can Deacon and LaRynn move past their past heartbreak and hurt feelings in order to get along long enough to fix up the house? Can they be married for money purposes only without rekindling their old feelings for one another?

I loved this book and Deacon and LaRynn. I loved seeing them work together on this house that means so much to the both of them. It was interesting to see how they reexamine things from their past through the eyes of being adults now and how things they thought or felt as teenagers look different years later. Or feel the same in some cases.

Overall, I loved the book. Not quite as much as Funny Feelings, but I still loved it. And the epilogues is one of those that I have reread because it just makes me so happy!

Read this if you want a spicy romance with the second chance romance and forced proximity tropes.

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