“The best things in life happen not only when you least expect them but when you aren’t looking for them at all.”
After getting dumped by her long-time boyfriend right before their couples weekend in Ireland, aspiring screenwriter Cara decides to take the trip solo. Upon arriving without her luggage, Cara meets Finn; a handsome rideshare driver whom she ends up running into multiple times throughout her trip. On the last day of her trip, which happens to be Leap Day, Cara ends up going to hear Finn’s band play at a bar…where too much alcohol has Cara embracing a certain Irish Tradition. Upon waking up next to Finn with a tinfoil ring on her finger and learning that there is no way to quickly undo their impromptu wedding, newlywed Cara heads home to her demanding job in LA with her husband Finn and his dog in tow. Living with her new husband turns out to be way better than expected and ultimately Cara and Finn decide to postpone their marriage’s inevitable end. After Cara’s connections in the film industry help Finn land the acting role of a lifetime, new information comes to light that has Cara questioning her budding romance with Finn.
Lucky Leap Day is a closed-door new adult romance novel that invokes the stuck together, fake relationships, vacation romance, friends to lovers, and there’s only one bed tropes. This book would be perfect for fans of People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, Kisses and Croissants by Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau, The Summer of Broken Rules by K. L. Walther, and Shipped by Angie Hockman. Lucky Leap Day deals with themes such as change versus tradition, displacement, companionship and loneliness, character, fate versus freewill, facing reality, love and heartbreak, truth and lies, history and culture, and job struggles. I believe that the moral of this story is to take control of your own destiny.
I enjoyed that the beginning of the book was set in Ireland as this was different and adventurous and the plot appeared to be unique, even though there are quite a few stories about fake relationships and accidental Vegas marriages, this accidental Leap Day marriage was unique because it featured people from two different countries who were attracted to each other right from the get-go. The characters were enjoyable and Cara and Finn’s relationship was cute; although, I found it surprising that there wasn’t any on-page spice (other than in Cara’s daydreams). In addition, seeing Finn’s dog Oscar be very much part of the story was sweet and he even has a canine love interest and pursues his own dreams of Hollywood stardom.
In terms of cons and without giving anything away, but in my opinion, I found that the “conflict” towards the end of the novel to be predictable and it would have been a lot more engaging and interesting if the drama was more unexpected. Since I’m not a fan of books that flash back and forth in time, I didn’t like the chapter layout whereby we learn that Cara has married a virtual stranger in the first chapter and then we flash back to discover how Cara and Finn met before (finally) getting to see the fallout of their Leap Day marriage. Furthermore, even though Cara and Finn’s pre-nuptial adventures were short-lived (since we already knew what the outcome would be) the flashbacks at the beginning made it hard for me to get excited about the novel. Similarly, I didn’t understand why the epilogue was told from Finn’s dog Oscar’s perspective; since all the other chapters were told from Cara’s perspective, the change of perspective in the epilogue was a bit jarring. On a final note, I don’t have a big interest in history, so I didn’t enjoy reading the side story about the Irish Rebellion, which mostly took place during Cara’s tour of an Irish jail.
Overall, Lucky Leap Day was a cute and relatively clean romance novel with a happily ever after that would be perfect for fans of travel, adventure, and spontaneity; especially those who fantasise about travelling to Ireland!
Lucky Leap Day is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Lucky Leap Day? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Friends becoming something much more in this hilarious romantic comedy from author Ann Marie Walker. A whirlwind trip to Ireland is supposed to end with a suitcase full of wool sweaters and souvenir pint glasses—not a husband you only just met!
After one-too-many whiskeys, fledgling screenwriter Cara Kennedy takes a page out of someone else’s script when she gets caught up in the Irish tradition of women proposing on Leap Day. She thought she might have dreamt everything, until she wakes the next morning with a hot guy in her bed and a tin foil ring on her finger. Her flight is in four hours, her clothes are all over the room, and she has the most important meeting of her career in exactly two days—and on top of everything else, her husband has a dog who thinks Cara is a perfect surrogate mother, despite the fact that she has never been much of an animal lover…
Deciding to work things out stateside, Finn and her new fur baby accompany her to LA, where Finn spends his days going on auditions and his nights charming his new bride, leaving Cara to wonder whether this is real love, or if Finn is another aspiring actor just after her Hollywood connections? With limited time on his tourist visa, will Finn be able to convince Cara that she’s the right girl for him, or will time run out on their Hollywood ending?
