Book Review – Close to You by Kristen Proby

I’m diving back into the Fusion series this week with Close to You by Kristen Proby! I loved this installment – having read most of the series now, I am going to venture to say it was my favorite. Something about these two characters did something to my insides. They’re so cute. I adored reading about them and their lives. So anyway, without further ado…

Camille LaRue – Cami, to her friends – has been in love with Landon Palazzo for as long as she can remember. She always thought she hid it well, but everyone knew – including Landon’s sister Mia, who is one of Cami’s best friends and a partner in Seduction, along with Addison (from Listen to Me), Kat, and Riley. Cami even got married after college, but she just… never loved her husband like she’s always loved Landon. She she asked for a divorce in the hopes that he would find someone who DOES love him like Cami loves Landon, and Cami went back to the single life, silently pining over her best friend’s brother from afar. Until all of a sudden, he’s not so far away anymore.

Landon knew that Cami had a crush on him, and he always felt a soft spot for her, but she was one of Mia’s friends, and that felt wrong to him. So he went away, putting endless distance between them, making a career as a Navy fighter pilot for over a decade. But then his plane went down, and after recuperating in Europe, they sent him home to Portland. He decided to join the family construction business and helps renovate part of Seduction. He also decides that he can’t make himself stay away from Cami any longer.

3 Things I Loved

1. The friend group. I mentioned this during the Listen to Me review, but I just love this group of girlfriends. They’re so supportive and real and I want friends like them. I guess I’ll have to settle for reading about them instead.
2. Cami. Goodness, I love Cami in this book. She’s soft-spoken, but she knows what she wants, and she’s not afraid to fight for it. Sometimes that includes fighting Landon, and sometimes it’s more about fighting FOR Landon.
3. Landon. And then there’s Landon. His career, the one he’d been building since high school, is just gone. And sure, he’s upset, but it brings him back to Cami, and he’s the sweetest. He’s not grumpy in the slightest, which is usually my jam in romances, but I loved him nonetheless.

Dislikes/Problematic Content

All white. All straight. I’ll be singing that tune forever, I think. *eye roll* Come on, would it hurt anyone to have two of the friends fall in love with each other, of to have a love interest of color or SOMETHING???

Rating

A reminder of the rating scale:

• Red = DNF, I hated everything
• Orange = Ugh, no thank you
• Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
• Green = This was good! 
• Blue = Oh my gosh, I loved this book!
• Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart and EVERYONE should be reading it!

I really love this book, especially when compared to some other fluffy romances I’ve read. So good. But there are representation problems in this series that I can’t just not comment on. So I’m going to give Close to You a GREEN rating with the caveat that there is very little (if any) diversity in this series, and that’s disappointing.

Has anyone else read the Fusion series? What did you think?

Happy reading!