Book Review: Living Your Best Life by Maxine Morrey

I am happy to be welcoming Maxine Morrey back to Novel Kicks with the blog tour for her latest novel, Living Your Best Life. 

Some days Bee feels invisible. Most days Bee does not feel as if she is ‘living her best life’.

Sure she has a loyal group of friends, a job she’s good at, and a small London flat to call home, but a lot of the time, Bee feels as if no one actually ‘sees’ her.  

Her best friend, the unfeasibly handsome and successful Luca Donato does not have that problem. People are practically falling over themselves whenever they see Luca, but one thing the two friends do have in common, is they haven’t yet found the ‘One’.  When their friend Tia challenges them to change all that through online dating, Luca and Bee set about the task with very different levels of enthusiasm.

The saying goes that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, and it’s not long before Bee is ready to admit defeat. But with Luca inundated with potential love interests, Bee is determined not to give up. Surely her perfect partner is out there somewhere… 

*****

Bee has spent most of her life feeling invisible and not worthy despite the efforts of her friends to tell her otherwise – especially her best friend, Luca who, up until now has never given any indication that he wants to settle down.

When a mutual friend challenges them to change their love lives through online dating, Bee reluctantly agrees. Luca thinks you can find love through apps, Bee not so much.

Having previously read Things are Looking Up, I was excited to be invited onto the blog tour for Maxine’s latest novel, Living Your Best Life.

I adored Bee from the first page. Bee felt so real to me, so relatable. She’s complicated and shadowed by her upbringing and lack of self esteem. I think many readers will unfortunately know how that feels. I think we’ve all also had those moments at work where we’ve felt under-appreciated but never wanting to rock the boat.

Hmm, Luca. What a lovely character. Like Bee, he’s stubborn, a little complicated and gets in his own way but he’s sweet and endearing.

I actually want to be part of this friendship group. They sound like a riot.

It didn’t take me long to fall heart first into this book and into the lives of its characters. Maxine Morrey is great at making you feel like you’re catching up with friends and getting a big hug (even though there were some frustrating moments where I was almost screaming at the page. Haha.)

As usual, I don’t want to say too much more as I don’t want to spoil it.

Living Your Best Life had me up until 3am. I laughed, cried and cheered along with these wonderful group of people. It’s a charming novel full of love, friendship and humour and really champions taking a chance on life and love and most importantly, having belief in yourself. I feel that this is such an important message, especially now.

(Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources and Boldwood for the advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.) 

About Maxine Morrey –

Maxine Morrey is a bestselling romantic comedy author with eight books to her name including Winter’s Fairytale and the top ten hit The Christmas Project.

She lives in West Sussex. Her first novel for Boldwood, #No Filter, was published in November 2019. Her latest novel, Living Your Best Life was published by Boldwood Books on 8th March 2022.

Say hello to Maxine via Facebook and Instagram. Click here to sign up to Maxine’s newsletter.

Click to buy Living Your Best Life on Amazon UK and Waterstones.

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.