#No Filter by Maxine Morrey

Blurb

In an Instagram world, can you find love just by being yourself…

Popular lifestyle blogger, Libby Cartwright, is being boggled by business when help shows up in the shape of gorgeous but shy, Charlie Richmond. Libby’s determined to keep it at ‘just good friends’ – she’s dated someone from ‘Corporate Land’ before and it didn’t end well. As she and Charlie begin spending more time together, Libby is starting to waver – until she discovers something which makes her question if she’s ready for love.

Still reeling, she suffers another blow as her blog is attacked in a national newspaper, for promoting unachievable perfection. Libby knows it’s not true – but the only way to prove that is to strip off the armour she’s been wearing for years.

Is she brave enough to show the world she’s far from perfect? And will Charlie be by her side if she does…

Review

If you like a slow burn romance, then this is the book for you! In fact, the whole story (apart from towards the end) was taken at a slow, rather sedate pace, with not a great deal of emotion from any of the characters, however, when things started to go wrong, the pace and the passion ramped up a good few notches, and the last quarter of the book was its saving grace. It takes a long time to get to the interesting stuff that the blurb uses to hook the reader with.

Still, it's a nice story, and although I felt Libby was a really cold fish at the start and I had difficulty liking her initially, by the time the end came I was really rooting for her.

There was one thing that kept throwing me out of the story though, and that was the tone. There was something about it that made me think it was set in the US (despite the mostly UK spellings). Maybe it was written that way to appeal to readers on both sides of the Atlantic, but it did gave me pause on more than a few occasions early on as I tried to work out whether Brighton was Brighton UK or Brighton Beach, USA.

About the Author Maxine has wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember and wrote her first (very short) book for school when she was ten. As years went by, she continued to write, but 'normal' work often got in the way. She has written articles on a variety of subjects, as well as a local history book on Brighton. However, novels are her first love. In August 2015, she won Harper Collins/Carina UK's 'Write Christmas' competition with her first romantic comedy, 'Winter's Fairytale'. Maxine lives on the south coast of England, and when not wrangling with words loves to read, sew and listen to podcasts. Being a fan of tea and cake means she can (should!) also be found doing something vaguely physical at the gym.