In Take Me Home, Keighley answers an ad offering a fake date for Thanksgiving, hoping to annoy her Conservative aunt. Thus she meets Brooke: a confident, outgoing, snarky tattoo artist to whom Keighley is immediately attracted. What starts as a single fake date escalates to enjoying one another’s company, caring for a hurt puppy, and intimacy—both physical and emotional.
I decided to give myself something of a new experience this month and try reading a romance. It’s a genre I have consistently avoided, in part due to a perceived prevalence of toxic tropes, in part because I struggle to feel engaged with the low-stakes question of whether two people will continue to date one another.
Take Me Home is a novella, with story beats hit so quickly they’re almost perfunctory. For someone not overly engaged with this sort of narrative, that was perfect. Yet, I think romance fans might enjoy this as well. Yes, the story moves quickly, but Keighley and Brooke are distinct characters with genuine chemistry and nice banter. The two bond over some casual things like dogs, and some deeper things, like their beliefs. I believed their interest in one another came from a real place.
Overall, this is an enjoyable, quick romance between two characters with genuine chemistry, with a cute puppy thrown in. Romance fans may want more—but as it’s part of a series, they’ll know where to go next. It didn’t make a convert out of me, but I found the read pleasant all the same.
