Lana Parker writes for an online magazine in L.A. It was her childhood dream to be a writer in L.A. It’s just that she never thought she’d spend years writing about relationships. A serial monogamist, Lana has been in relationship after relationship, until this night, where her boyfriend of four years has asked her out to the expensive restaurant he took her on their first date. Lana thinks the night will end with a diamond ring and champagne. Instead, it ends with a dangerous amount of alcohol, ice cream, and crying on her best friend’s shoulder after Evan ends the relationship.
Lana doesn’t even have a chance to recover from her hangover the next morning when she has to head into her office for a meeting. She’s usually fine to work from home or in one of her favorite coffeeshops, but her boss Natasha has called an in-person meeting for the staff, and Lana has only minutes before she needs to be on her way to the office of Always Take Fountain.
The meeting doesn’t go quite as expected, as everyone wants to congratulate Lana on getting engaged. When she tells them what happened, they are supportive and compassionate. But Natasha has to get things back on track for the meeting, so she suggests that Lana use this breakup in her popular column. She had been in a relationship for almost the entire time she’d been writing it. Now she had a chance to explore being single. And then she dropped the bomb.
The magazine had been acquired, by the L.A. Chronicle. They were wanting to add more lifestyle pieces to their repertoire. And they were wanting the magazine to start by hosting a reporter who had been traveling and writing news stories. He’s new to L.A., finally wanting to settle down in one place and put down roots. And as soon as he walks in the room, Lana knows him by his voice. It’s Seth Carson, her first boyfriend. And then she throws up.
When she recovers, Natasha sets out the assignments they’ve come up with. Lana will be writing about being single, and Seth, a serial dater, will be writing about getting ready for a long-term relationship. They will each come up with 10 tasks the other will need to do and write about, and at the end, the readers will vote on who wins. The winner gets their own column in the Chronicle, where they can write whatever they want. Pop culture fanatic Lana can finally write the column she’s always wanted to, about the books and movies she loves. She is determined to win.
When Lana and Seth trade lists, she finds out that she has to go on a blind date, try speed dating, go to therapy, kiss a stranger, take a vacation by herself, and learn to be okay with being alone, among other tasks. The tasks Lana came up with for Seth include buying furniture and linens, updating his wardrobe, getting a pet, keeping a plant alive, going on a date with someone three times, and deleting Tinder and any booty-call phone numbers from his phone. Each week. they both take on a task and then write an article. Then the readers take over.
But as Lana works through the tasks, including getting back into therapy and trying a kickboxing class that’s possibly even more therapeutic than the talking, she does take the time to ask herself some big questions about the choices she’s made in relationships and why she’s made them. But she also can’t deny that being around Seth has awakened a lot of feelings she thought she had left behind long ago. There is the anger, that he’s shown up in L.A. out of nowhere and is trying to take her dream job. But there is more too. She can’t help but feel sparks. At one point, Seth had felt like home. And now Lana has to figure out how to get past those feelings, so she can be okay on her own, win over readers with her vulnerability, and get that job.
But it will take everything she has to win the fight against her ex, against her previous relationship patterns, and even against her own heart.
Just My Type is the the latest rom com from Falon Ballard, the author of Lease on Love. Inventive and clever, this story looks at toxic dating choices from just about every angle, from those who jump into relationships too quickly and those who don’t jump to relationships at all and those who try out speed dating a couple of decades after its prime out of desperation. It’s funny and smart and sweet and pitch perfect.
I absolutely loved Just My Type. I liked these characters a lot, and though the writing competition had some artificial artifice to it, I found it forgivable because it was just so much fun. My main complaint is that I wanted more of Duke. He stole his scenes. Otherwise, it was exactly what I was looking for in a romantic comedy, and I will keep laughing about some of the things from this book for many weeks to come.
Egalleys for Just My Type were provided by G.P. Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley, with many thanks.
