The Magnolia Chronicles by Kate Canterbary

The full name of this altogether yummy read is The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in modern dating. It’s the latest novel from Kate Canterbary, and as always she delivers and then some.

As the title suggests, the story is about Magnolia and her, sometimes unfortunate but always hilarious, attempts at meeting The One. With a notoriously bad track record with men, Magnolia is about to give up when her mother makes her promise to give dating a real shot for one full year.

And as Magnolia tries to navigate the pitfalls of online dating, she stumbles across, not one but two, drool-worthy guys that both seem to be potential Mr. Rights. It’s the grumpy, tattooed firefighter Ben and, Rob, the built investment banker.

But how is Magnolia suppose to choose between them? Can she really trust her own judgement when it previously failed her so spectacularly? And is it possible to fall for two men at the same time?

This is a stand alone novel and anyone can read it and enjoy it. It’s funny and engaging. But to really and fully appreciate it, I believe you first should have read Kate’s 8 book series about The Walshes where Magnolia originally appears.

As always, Kate’s writing is the perfect combination of fun, wit and sexy romance. From the very first page, she manages to captivate you with her priceless descriptions of awful dates and cringe-worthy, but oh so relatable, hook-up app interactions. Kate has this amazing ability to create fictional worlds that you simply don’t want to leave, but this unfortunately also means that the book ends before you want it to.

If you haven’t discovered Kate Canterbary’s writing yet, you’re missing out. Simple as that.

The one thing about The Magnolia Chronicles that differ from her earlier work, is that there are way fewer and less explicit nooky. So that makes Magnolia tip more towards a romantic read than a steamy one. I figure that there may be a cultural explanation to that. Kate Canterbary is an American writer and the story is set in Boston. Even though I would have liked Magnolia to try both of the guys on for size (!), it may be that dating two men might work, but shagging them as well might be considered too slutty by American standards? Either way, as the story is written, the sexy-times are way less descriptive than in her previous books and there is no out-right banging going on, which is a shame. Just FYI.