Review: Meet Cute

For December (at least) I’m doing a Rom-Com-a-Thon and reviewing romantic comedies! You can find links to a master list of prior and future reviews at the bottom of this post and scroll down to read my review of Meet Cute!

Meet Cute by Helena Hunting. Published on April 9, 2019 by Forever Books.

Synopsis: On her first day of law school, Kailyn ran – quite literally – into the actor she crushed on as a teenager, ending with him sprawled on top of her. Mortified to discover the Daxton Hughes was also a student in her class, her embarrassment over their meet-cute quickly turned into a friendship she never expected. Of course, she never saw his betrayal coming either…Now, eight years later, Dax is in her office asking for legal advice. Despite her anger, Kailyn can’t help feeling sorry for the devastated man who just became sole guardian to his thirteen-year-old sister. But when her boss gets wind of Kailyn’s new celebrity client, there’s even more at stake than Dax’s custody issues: if she gets Dax to work at their firm, she’ll be promoted to partner.The more time Kailyn spends with Dax and his sister, the more she starts to feel like a family, and the more she realizes the chemistry they had all those years ago is as fresh as ever. But will they be able to forgive the mistakes of the past, or will one betrayal lead to another?

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Since this is my first Rom-Com-a-Thon post, I’ll first define:

What is a Rom Com: (According to me)?

1. To me, a Rom Com is first and foremost, a romance. The primary storyline is of two people meeting (or reconnecting or rediscovering each other) and falling in love. There IS a HEA.
2. Tropes! As I discussed in this post, trope is NOT a bad word. A rom com has tropes we know and love. Meet Cutes, Hate to Love, Friendship to Love, Fauxmances….
3. Some humor. This is where a rom com might differ from an angsty romance or a sweet romance. The humor could range from whimsy to slapstick to snark. NOTE: This does NOT mean a rom com can’t address serious issues, as the book below does. But there needs to be an element of lightness as well.

Review: Meet Cute

Don’t be confused: a book I reviewed a week or so ago, Would Like To Meet, was all about meet cutes, while this book, which is called Meet Cute, starts with one but is about a lot of other stuff.

The first thing I’ll say is that this book is a little more serious than the cover and title suggest. If you want a purely sweet and funny book, be forewarned!

Meet Cute begins as Kailyn is starting law school, and literally runs into her childhood crush, actor Daxton Hughes, on the quad. And then trips over him in class. She’s mortified but they end up being friendly classmates. Until he does something (we’re not sure what) to stab her in the back.

Fast forward around eight or nine years. Both Daxton and Kailyn are practicing lawyers. Daxton gets some shattering news and has a legal issue he needs help with. So he goes to Kailyn, who still hates him for that past betrayal.

As indicated by my purple graphic above, this book definitely had tropes. Love with a celeb can be predictable, with a lot of time spent convincing us the celeb is actually Just a Regular Person. Luckily in Meet Cute, Daxton’s celebrity status was in the past and more of a running joke than a major part of the plot. In fact, Daxton seemed to be based on Dawson from Dawson’s Creek (due to the similarity of the names and the fact that they both have a crying meme.) I do love a good Dawson shout-out, so that was a big plus for me.

The hate to love in this one was a different approach, as the reader doesn’t know what Dawson– I mean Daxton– did to make Kailyn hate her until the very, very end.

This book had alternating POVs, and I really liked Daxton’s POV chapters. As mentioned above, his storyline was a tough one, with some truly heartbreaking stuff. So if you aren’t looking for that, maybe keep this in mind for later.

All in all, I enjoyed this one! If you like rom coms that make you laugh AND cry, definitely check Meet Cute out.

Check out ALL my rom com reviews here on my main Rom-Com-a-thon page!

And if you like Love with a Celebrity Stories, be sure to check out my full list here!