My Rating: 4.5/5 Stars 

My Thoughts:

Falon Ballard’s Lease on Love is yet another book that I saw so much hype for & stayed away from, but when I finally picked it up, I kicked myself for not picking it up sooner because it was THAT good!! I’d see a few of my most trusted book recommendation sources pick it up – I first saw it from Mackenzie of Bad Bitch Book Club and another recommendation finally made me pick it up. I picked up Lease on Love one afternoon after work & had it finished by the time I went to bed!

Lease on Love is an opposites-attract contemporary romance set in Brooklyn. Having just been fired from her job, Sadie is desperate to find a cheaper apartment while she job hunts. After a drunken decision, she meets Jack through a roommate marching app and upon their first meeting,  Jack offers Sadie to move into his gorgeous Park Slope brownstone for super cheap. Sadie is an open book and shares her plans to run her floral arrangement side hustle and more importantly, share her best friends Gemma, Harley, & Nick, with Jack. On the other hand,  Jack is very closed off and really does not share too much about his life, partly due to the grief he’s felt since losing both of his parents years ago. 

There was something about Lease on Love that grabbed me from the get-go. The writing style was super easy to fall into & I loved how the action starts right from the beginning, as Sadie gets let go from her job when she really thought she’d be a getting a well-deserved promotion. I loved how her meet-cute with Jack was straight to the point, in the sense of the two immediately having chemistry for one another (without wanting to admit it) and they go right into living together. Jack and Sadie’s chemistry was so solid throughout the book.I do admit that I liked exploring the extravagance of Jack’s life and getting to learn more about his backstory – he is such a humble character, but even I wanted to know how he could afford a brownstone in NYC, constantly order in, and never work!

 I thought it was also super refreshing that they really took their relationship slow, as Sadie is handling so many life & career changes as she decides to run her own florist business & Jack wanting to process himself and his grief before jumping into a relationship. Sadie’s floral business was really interesting to learn about (the closest I’ve seen to this kind of premise is Kasie West’s YA contemporary, Maybe This Time) & I loved seeing her business grow. I also loved the roles of Sadie’s best friends, Gemma, Nick, & Harley. They become family to both Sadie & Jack, and they are so present that they definitely were more main characters than side characters. I like the way her own story ends, but I would love some kind of spinoff involving Gemma! 

There were a few things I didn’t totally love about Lease on Love. For example, I know part of the story is Sadie dealing with the (verbal) abuse she grew up with as a kid (trying to avoid spoilers), but the repetition of a**hole of herself and also her & her best friends calling each other that all the time was annoying & repetitive. It is something that is mentioned later in the story, but all the characters’ drinking did seem a little excessive, and Sadie just seemed to blame it on the fact that they were all just millennials (another fact that was repeated again & again in the novel when it came to making mistakes or taking risks?). 

Overall, Lease on Love was such a strong opposites-attract romance for its unique premise and amazing characters. I’m so looking forward to what Falon Ballard does next! 

Have you read Lease on Love? What did you think? What have you been reading lately? Share in the comments!