BETTER THAN PEOPLE by Roan Parrish
BETTER THAN PEOPLE is a beautiful book that delivers all the cozy, soft romance one could wish for but doesn't skimp on steam 🔥. It was exactly the comfort read I needed.
What really stood out for me was its compassionate world view. I find romance is at its best when it takes an expansive view of happily ever after, and this book does exactly that. It acknowledges that hard things happen all the time--family loss, professional setback, injury, mental health challenges--but affirms the happily ever afters in the even if.
Neither Jack nor Simon fit societal notions of the "perfect" partner. They're each off-putting in their way and both have reasons to isolate themselves. Jack is nursing wounds emotional and physical, having first been betrayed by his longtime creative partner and then breaking his leg trying to rescue his skittish dog. Simon suffers from anxiety so intense he's often unable to speak, leaving others to assume he's willfully ignoring them. Aside from his grandmother, who's wonderfully loving and delightfully irreverent, he's never found people who accept him as he is.
For both, it's with animals that they're most comfortably themselves, and it's the shared love for Jack's pack of adorable and quirky critters (each an irrististible character in their own right) that brings Jack and Simon together. In seeing the caring and acceptance each brings to the animals, Jack and Simon begin to trust they'll do the same with each other. The result is a relationship built on emotionally genuine moments that prioritize honesty and connection over idealized imaginings of what should be.
At a time when more of us than ever are struggling with anxiety, isolation and loss, it's a warm hug of a book that points to the deeply resonant truth that there's love and joy to be found even if life's challenges aren't magically waved away.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫 /A-
CWs: severe anxiety, selective mutism, depression, discussion of past parental death
Disclosure: Review copy provided by the publisher.
