Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel (Rome, Kentucky)

What a delight to take another romantic trip to Rome, Kentucky.Practice Makes Perfect is Annie and Will's story and it is so sweet, but it's layeredwith depth of emotion. This story is about self-discovery, authenticity, and acceptance.It subtly illustrates that Romance genera books have much more substance to offer the reader than just romance or spice. Speaking of spice, it's low on the spice scale, but you'll still get swept up the connection between Annie & Will.I took off one star only in comparison to When In Rome, which is a more richly developed story overall since it sets the foundation for the series.

This was a really great book!! It is part of a series, but you don’t need to start from the beginning to understand what’s happening. I do recommend starting from the beginning though.

STARSATTENTION! I think this is where *cute* enters the chat! We have a 5 Star Read!!Practice Makes Perfect is the second book in the When In Rome series by Sarah Adams. I read the paperback with a few chapters listened to on audio (so I could get the full experience)! I loved it both ways!Will and Annie are the cutest opposites attract couple in the entire state of Kentucky. This love story was witty, engaging, and downright tender. I loved Annie’s transformation. Watching her take charge of her own future was powerful and encouraging!In this house, we sure do love a man who can communicate. It’s so refreshing to read a male main character who doesn’t want his woman to change and who recognizes his own issues and works to improve. Will was one of my top male characters of the year!Pick this one up if you love a small town, tattooed man, breaking away from family pressures, working through issues, and finding yourself vibes.SPICEThis is a closed door romance, but let me tell you what… it does not lack in butterflies and tension! I swear my tummy was doing little flips at 50 pages in.The romance is written so incredibly well, and when things do finally heat up, the fade to black gives us just enough for the imagination to run wild. I can’t say I’ve ever loved a closed door… until this one!HAPPY ENDINGWe get the cutest, most unexpected twist towards the end. Will and Annie give each other everything they need! I loved the ending and can’t wait to see more of this darling couple in book 3!FINAL THOUGHTSI loved this book so much that I included it in my Top 5 of 2024! I read 100 books, so that is really saying something!The When In Rome series is an absolute delight. I can’t wait to continue it with Beg, Borrow, or Steal!

If you're looking for a cute small town romance with little to no spice this is the book for you. It's a great little book with some really relatable characters and if you've ever lived in a small town, it is captured perfectly here witha plethora of secondary characters.The FMC Annie is fun and not as quirky as the author would have you believe but she is higjly relatable as an introvert myself. I felt like a majority of the book is from her POV and that's great but I felt that a lot of great romantic moments were missed because of this. I really wanted to know what Will's genuine reaction was to Annie's pirate romance books. Or even have Will read his favorite parts to Annie. Maybe he is caught reading the romances by Martha, the incredibly nosy yet insightful innkeeper/parental figure.We could have even had the characters visiting Annie's grandmother together to add more emotional depth to the book. So many lost moments to make this book go from average to great.Now to my rating a 3-star rating. It is not necessarily bad its just not something that amazed me. I gave it a 3 mainly because our MMC is a bodyguard but does little to no bodyguarding during a majority of the book. There are no real threats to Amelia and his jobs only purpose was just to give him something to seem like he's doing when he's not pining after Annie. I felt like this made his character kind of bland even though there is plenty of emotional growth on his side of things.As a side note we also never get introduced to the rest of Amelia's security team, which doesn't make sense because it would have helped with developing Will's whole notion of being stuck in a small town and itching to get out. He basically never has any conversations about this other than his initial annoyance at the assignment. I mean who is guarding Amelia when Will is everywhere Annie looks? It is also implied that Will would be her top personal protection agent but he never consults with the rest of the team to coordinate her security in public places like at the farmers market where there would be a ton of potential threats?Just a lot of inconsistencies*SPOILERS AHEAD*This did not end up being a 2-star simply because it is a rarity in contemporary romance books nowadays when the characters don't end up married with several children in the epilogue and I really respected the author for that. She kept the characters personalities consistent and did not marry them simply because it is expected. Plus the whole part of Annie's self discovery in the book is that she doesn't have to live up to everyone's vision of who she is/should be.I'm going to try more from this author just to see if she can be more consistent with her characters backgrounds, especially if it's essential to the plot.

This was sooo cute and made me laughter out loud. One star off because I WISH IT WASN'T CLOSED DOOR. I was left blue balled. Which is fiiiine I guess. I just would've preferred it not to be.Otherwise I absolutely loved these two and it was everything I wanted. Except for the no smut part.