An Optimist’s Guide to Heartbreak by Jennifer Hartmann: Sunshine, Trauma, and One Very Frustrating Mechanic

I cried a lot, I wanted to shake Cal repeatedly, and I couldn’t put it down. Typical.

Synopsis

Dear Diary,

There once was a girl with fireflies in her eyes and music in her soul.

(Remember her… she’s important.)

She’s the reason I panic-bought the little brick house on Maple Street; the one I lived next door to for eight magical years. Now that I’m back digging up floorboards and lost journals, I can’t stop thinking about the two people who grew up here.

You see, that girl was my best friend, and this house was once hers. She also had a big brother who was my everything before circumstance turned us into nothing more than memories.

That’s why I applied for a job at his auto shop—unprepared to discover that my new boss, Cal Bishop, is now gruff, built, and covered in tattoos.

I’m the sun to his overcast sky. The smile to his surly solitude.

A reminder of everything he longs to forget.

But my heart has a secret, and we’re running out of time to fix our torn pages.

Maybe the same girl who used to be the glue still holds the key to putting our pieces back together.

(See? I told you she was important.)

Toodles,
Lucy

Mini review

4.5 stars

I cried a lot with this one. Fair warning.

It’s cute, it’s sweet, and it’s also genuinely frustrating in the best possible way. The whole book skirts around what really happened to Emma, and the truth about Lucy stays just out of reach for far too long. I kept reading faster, willing the author to just tell me already.

And then there’s Cal’s move in the final chapters. I just couldn’t. I won’t say more, but you’ll know it when you get there.

Otherwise, this book has everything a good romance needs. Emma is the definition of a sunshine heroine: someone who has been through real hardship and chose joy over bitterness anyway, which is far harder than it sounds. Cal is her opposite, a grumpy, tattooed mechanic built like a wall, who was hurt badly by life and decided that icing his heart was safer than risking losing someone he loved again. They’re childhood sweethearts, which adds a layer of tenderness and history that I’m always a sucker for.

The setting is wonderfully cozy: an animal shelter with two absolutely unhinged corgis and one very cute kitten, lots of baking and banana bread, singing in bars with a voice that stops the room. And underneath all that warmth, lots and lots of trauma, carefully layered and never glossed over.

Jennifer Hartmann knows exactly what she’s doing. I went straight to book two.

Thanks for reading.