Tinsel by Devney Perry

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Title: Tinsel
Author: Devney Perry
Series: Lark Cove #4
Published by: Indie
Release Date: February 19, 2019
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 386
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2022 COYER Spring, Lenoreo's 2022 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's Can You Read a Series June 2022
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:

Blurb:

Sofia Kendrick has always cherished her tiara. As the youngest daughter of a wealthy New York family, she’s lived the life of an American princess. But after two scandalous divorces and a breakup smear her name across the society rags, the shine from her crown has dulled. People call her superficial, even gaudy.

She’s nothing more than tinsel.

Desperate for escape and starving for peace, Sofia heads to Montana for a holiday weekend with her brother. But she doesn’t get the relaxing vacation she planned. Instead, she’s put to work in a bar alongside Dakota Magee—a man who does not want her help. A man who is set on teaching her a few lessons about real life and hard work. But Sofia has a couple of life lessons of her own to teach. Like how to fall in love.

My Review:

4.5 stars — Well colour me surprised!!  I never would have guessed that Sofia’s book would challenge Willa/Jackson’s for top spot!  And I genuinely don’t know if I could pick, I enjoyed them both for so many reasons.

I really love the idea of taking a character that romance readers have been taught to dislike, and giving her dimension and a background, and not excusing her behavior necessarily, but giving it context.  Sofia was that character for me.  I knew there was more to her, but I guess I didn’t realize how much she was hurting, and how much she’d been taught to play a role.  It worked for me.  I don’t know if it will work for everyone, but it wholeheartedly worked for me.  Ms. Perry did just enough to still make her believable as the Sofia we met in book 1, but to show how the years had started some changes in her…and then to present her with a situation that inspired more and more growth and change.  And shoot, I love me a sensitive heart, and that was definitely Sofia.  I loved watching her soak up the attention and belief that first Thea, then Dakota, and then a few others showed in her.  She deserved the opportunity to become the person she was meant to be.

Dakota’s story was super interesting to me.  I’ve been more hesitant about BIPOC stories written by white authors…which doesn’t mean they can’t, or shouldn’t, but I’m always cringing waiting for stereotypes.  And while I have zero authority over how authentic the story was, this white reader felt like it at least past the believability test, for whatever that’s worth.  I guess it felt like the author had taken the time to talk with Blackfeet people, and so it was more nuanced than I was expecting.

He had a whole host of things to struggle through, from his own male pride, to his estrangement from his family, to trying to find a path that made him happy while making his family proud.  And while I did struggle a bit with his family’s black and white view, I really felt like the author took the time to try to help the reader see that it was a complicated situation.  I appreciated that it wasn’t resolved easily, but that you could feel things moving forward by the end.

I LOVED Dakota and Sofia together, even if I was frustrated with them for behaving very similarly to Thea and Logan in book 1 — not willing to spot the compromises.  Maybe I was just impatient.  But I really felt their connection, I felt their caring…and damn, there was some good steam in this one.  I think I appreciated that while they may have struggled finding that path together, deep inside their hearts always knew the right thing…and you could feel it, especially in their immediate reactions to certain situations.

I really appreciated how different the couples all seemed to be in this series — some I connected with more than others, and I suspect every reader will gravitate towards different ones.  But all the stories were so easy to gobble up.  I will definitely be checking out more books by Ms. Perry in the future.

COYER Community: I buddy read this book with Brandee, and she gave it 4.5 stars as well (her review).  I loved hearing her insight about how well Ms. Perry wrote a love story where the couple actually spends a lot of time apart.