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A Porch by the Sea #1
Just One Kiss
Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0BS4DBXZ1
Emma Gold, a high-powered advertising exec from Los Angeles, is used to being in control of her life. She squashed her dreams of being an artist in order to get ahead, and she turned a blind eye to who her husband really was.
But now, with everything falling apart, she realizes there might be more to life.
When Emma is beckoned to visit her aunt, a funny and feisty elderly woman who smokes cigars, drives race cars and owns a massive, crumbling house in a beautiful, quaint seaside town, Emma thinks she is just coming for a weekend. Little does she know her life is about to change.
With her sister living nearby and her aunt needing to move out, Emma wonders if maybe the idea is not so crazy. And when she meets the local antiques dealer, she even has to wonder if there might just be a second chance at love awaiting her.
But Emma is new to renovation, to running a B&B, to dealing with a local zoning board—and to dealing with a distant, hostile relative who wants the house for himself and who will do anything he can to stop her. In a series of laugh-out-loud events, Emma learns that, sometimes, we have to let go of control.
And, sometimes, a new love—and a new life—might just be waiting around the corner.
Can a weekend become a lifetime?
Emma Gold, a high-powered advertising exec from Los Angeles, is used to being in control of her life. She squashed her dreams of being an artist in order to get ahead, and she turned a blind eye to who her husband really was.
But now, with everything falling apart, she realizes there might be more to life.
When Emma is beckoned to visit her aunt, a funny and feisty elderly woman who smokes cigars, drives race cars and owns a massive, crumbling house in a beautiful, quaint seaside town, Emma thinks she is just coming for a weekend. Little does she know her life is about to change.
With her sister living nearby and her aunt needing to move out, Emma wonders if maybe the idea is not so crazy. And when she meets the local antiques dealer, she even has to wonder if there might just be a second chance at love awaiting her.
But Emma is new to renovation, to running a B&B, to dealing with a local zoning board—and to dealing with a distant, hostile relative who wants the house for himself and who will do anything he can to stop her. In a series of laugh-out-loud events, Emma learns that, sometimes, we have to let go of control.
And, sometimes, a new love—and a new life—might just be waiting around the corner.
Can a weekend become a lifetime?
170 pages, ebook
First published February 7, 2023
891 people are currently reading
479 people want to read
About the author
Sophie Love
99 books323 followersA lifelong fan of the romance genre, Sophie Love is thrilled to release her debut romance series: FOR NOW AND FOREVER (THE INN AT SUNSET HARBOR—BOOK 1). Sophie would love to hear from you, so please visit www.sophieloveauthor.com to email her, to join the mailing list, to receive free ebooks, to hear the latest news, and to stay in touch!
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
February 1, 2024
4⭐
Genre ~ women's fiction
Series ~ A Porch by the Sea #1
Setting ~ California
Publication date ~ February 7, 2023
Est page Count ~ 138 (19 chapters)
Audio length ~ 4 hours 33 minutes
Narrator ~ Samantha Sherratt
POV ~ single 3rd
Featuring ~ character in the mid 30's, fresh start, starting over, no steamage
Emma's had enough of her cheating hub (cliche with this), so she's off to help her Aunt out at a B&B.
The fam and I like to watch Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovations on the telly, so I really enjoyed reading about the renovation process for Emma.
Romance is not on the forefront here as she working through a divorce. I'm glad about this because it's probably not a good idea to jump right into something so soon. As you can probably gather from the title there is one kiss, though. I'm curious to see how it'll pan out with her suspected love interest in the coming books.
Overall, a nice series starter that looks like they need to be read in order as they'll follow Emma's new life by the sea with new friendships and relationships, and of course, more renovations and hiccups along the way.
Narration notes:
A fine job regardless, but may I ask why we have a British narrator for an American based book?
Currently free on Amazon if you fancy it.
Connect with me ➡ Blog ~ Facebook ~ Twitter
Genre ~ women's fiction
Series ~ A Porch by the Sea #1
Setting ~ California
Publication date ~ February 7, 2023
Est page Count ~ 138 (19 chapters)
Audio length ~ 4 hours 33 minutes
Narrator ~ Samantha Sherratt
POV ~ single 3rd
Featuring ~ character in the mid 30's, fresh start, starting over, no steamage
Emma's had enough of her cheating hub (cliche with this), so she's off to help her Aunt out at a B&B.
The fam and I like to watch Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovations on the telly, so I really enjoyed reading about the renovation process for Emma.
Romance is not on the forefront here as she working through a divorce. I'm glad about this because it's probably not a good idea to jump right into something so soon. As you can probably gather from the title there is one kiss, though. I'm curious to see how it'll pan out with her suspected love interest in the coming books.
Overall, a nice series starter that looks like they need to be read in order as they'll follow Emma's new life by the sea with new friendships and relationships, and of course, more renovations and hiccups along the way.
Narration notes:
A fine job regardless, but may I ask why we have a British narrator for an American based book?
Currently free on Amazon if you fancy it.
Connect with me ➡ Blog ~ Facebook ~ Twitter
May 1, 2024
TW// cheating, mentions of divorce, mentions of death (including fathers)
Thank goodness I got this book for free off of the iBooks store because I would be pissed at myself if I had paid money for this book.
First of all, the description for this book is very misleading. The romance is barely in the book despite the description making that seem like it will be a big part of the story. The characters never date, they share one brief kiss, they only hang out with each other a couple times, and on top of that there’s absolutely no chemistry between the supposed lovers. The description also says that the main character will be “dealing with a distant, hostile relative who wants the house for himself and who will do anything he can to stop her.” That’s not really the case for this book. The relative only shows up during the last 5% or so percent of the book. A more accurate description of this book is: Emma just lost both her husband and best friend after learning about their cheating. Trying to look for a new start, Emma returns to her childhood town and with encouragement from her aunt, she decides to work on turning her aunt’s old house into a B&B.
The cheating parts of this book were really hard to read. There should’ve been clear trigger warnings at the start of the book to address the cheating as I think this book will be triggering to a lot of people. Not only does Emma discover she’s being cheated on, but she also gets heavily victim blamed and has lots of relatives tell her “I told you so.” It was really upsetting for me to read those parts of the book and unfortunately the cheating parts of the book take up at least one third of the story if not more.
Whenever the book wasn’t focusing on the cheating, the story was incredibly boring. I was fighting to stay awake while reading this book. The author’s writing style is very bland, the plot is very lackluster, and the characters are all uninteresting. Maybe if this book had spent more time developing the romance, it would’ve been a more entertaining book, but the book is currently just a massive snooze fest.
The ending was really unsatisying for me. None of the conflicts are resolved, the romance is barely starting, and the book somehow didn’t feel complete. Even books that are part of a series need to add least feel somewhat complete, but that feeling of completeness is lacking from this book. Also, this book ended with a “romantic moment” but the mood was completely ruined by the author inserting a random childish sentence that doesn’t fit the character’s personality. Emma turns down the man who just kissed her by saying “I might like-like you in the future, but I can’t like-like you right now.” That’s the type of language that a tween uses and it was so out of character for professional Emma to say that.
There’s a lot more that I could say about this book as I very clearly hated it, but I wanted to end with a random observation I made reading the author’s bio at the end. Sophie Love was called a “#1 best-selling author,” so I was curious if she’d written anything else I might recognize. Unsurprisingly she didn’t, but I noticed that her author bio was just a list of all the series she wrote and she used the phrase “which includes” five times in her short bio. I think it says a lot about her writing if she can’t even write a decent two page author bio to include at the end of the book.
I probably won’t be reading any more of this author’s works in the future. I read this book in less than four hours, but I still feel like I wasted my time reading this story and I won’t be looking back on this book fondly.
Thank goodness I got this book for free off of the iBooks store because I would be pissed at myself if I had paid money for this book.
First of all, the description for this book is very misleading. The romance is barely in the book despite the description making that seem like it will be a big part of the story. The characters never date, they share one brief kiss, they only hang out with each other a couple times, and on top of that there’s absolutely no chemistry between the supposed lovers. The description also says that the main character will be “dealing with a distant, hostile relative who wants the house for himself and who will do anything he can to stop her.” That’s not really the case for this book. The relative only shows up during the last 5% or so percent of the book. A more accurate description of this book is: Emma just lost both her husband and best friend after learning about their cheating. Trying to look for a new start, Emma returns to her childhood town and with encouragement from her aunt, she decides to work on turning her aunt’s old house into a B&B.
The cheating parts of this book were really hard to read. There should’ve been clear trigger warnings at the start of the book to address the cheating as I think this book will be triggering to a lot of people. Not only does Emma discover she’s being cheated on, but she also gets heavily victim blamed and has lots of relatives tell her “I told you so.” It was really upsetting for me to read those parts of the book and unfortunately the cheating parts of the book take up at least one third of the story if not more.
Whenever the book wasn’t focusing on the cheating, the story was incredibly boring. I was fighting to stay awake while reading this book. The author’s writing style is very bland, the plot is very lackluster, and the characters are all uninteresting. Maybe if this book had spent more time developing the romance, it would’ve been a more entertaining book, but the book is currently just a massive snooze fest.
The ending was really unsatisying for me. None of the conflicts are resolved, the romance is barely starting, and the book somehow didn’t feel complete. Even books that are part of a series need to add least feel somewhat complete, but that feeling of completeness is lacking from this book. Also, this book ended with a “romantic moment” but the mood was completely ruined by the author inserting a random childish sentence that doesn’t fit the character’s personality. Emma turns down the man who just kissed her by saying “I might like-like you in the future, but I can’t like-like you right now.” That’s the type of language that a tween uses and it was so out of character for professional Emma to say that.
There’s a lot more that I could say about this book as I very clearly hated it, but I wanted to end with a random observation I made reading the author’s bio at the end. Sophie Love was called a “#1 best-selling author,” so I was curious if she’d written anything else I might recognize. Unsurprisingly she didn’t, but I noticed that her author bio was just a list of all the series she wrote and she used the phrase “which includes” five times in her short bio. I think it says a lot about her writing if she can’t even write a decent two page author bio to include at the end of the book.
I probably won’t be reading any more of this author’s works in the future. I read this book in less than four hours, but I still feel like I wasted my time reading this story and I won’t be looking back on this book fondly.
August 30, 2023
Short with a pretty good story line. Only 3 stars because you have to continue with another book and I hate books that are like that.
August 29, 2023
I really only finished it because it was such a short book. But it was not intriguing and didn’t draw me in. The only interesting part was that the narrator was British and so all the accents were cool that she did. It might be better in the following books but not worth investing in in my opinion.
June 19, 2023
DNF at 22%.
May 2, 2024
Romance, starting over and new beginnings.
June 10, 2023
An uplifting and refreshing story. It was a pleasure to read a book where I did not have to skip most of it because there were we no detailed sex ;iusted.
June 13, 2023
Loved this Book!
What a great Book 📕. I did enjoy reading it. What a dirt bag her husband
Was!! I can’t wait to read book # 2.
So I can see what happens!
What a great Book 📕. I did enjoy reading it. What a dirt bag her husband
Was!! I can’t wait to read book # 2.
So I can see what happens!
August 8, 2023
I enjoyed this. it is a quick read, with a lot of interesting characters. TBC later
August 25, 2023
Loved this book!! Such a cute read! I connected with Emma and loved the twists and turns of the plot!
September 21, 2023
Anticlimactic.
April 10, 2024
I feel like it jumped around and didn’t have a smooth plot. I did the audio and the voices didn’t seem to fit right. Overall it was okay, but I felt like it lacked a lot.
September 12, 2024
This was the audiobook that I actually listened and was so excited to about but Its sad to say it didnt hit the same at all :/ Im not into cheating tropes too which made it worse for me. This could have been better honestly. (free on spotify btw)
May 5, 2024
This was so boring. Everything that can go wrong does, but it really doesn't matter. It all gets fixed quickly. No romance. She keeps turning the guy down even though she wants him.
February 24, 2025
Good
I enjoyed this book and the characters in this book are how they had to overcome the past with laughter
I enjoyed this book and the characters in this book are how they had to overcome the past with laughter
March 30, 2024
Good book if you’re trying to get out of a slump or need a quick palate cleanser from another genre. It’s a hallmark movie we’ve seen every Christmas since we were kids but it’s well written.
November 23, 2023
JUST ONE KISS is a standalone read with a happy ending, sort of. There is an ending to that part of a much larger story. Questions left unanswered that will probably be answered in future books. What was considered funny I didn't really think was humor at all. Being ripped off for $90,000 by a fake contractor, a husband cheating, etc. Just not funny to me but maybe to some. Emma discovers her husband is cheating with her best friend of over 10 years. She has had a weird relationship with her hubby for the whole time but she keeps letting him come back time and time again. She was more or less his arm candy but then he ran around. He owns a gym. Emma decides to leave her Los Angeles home, job, etc. and return to the house her aunt owns along the coast in northern California. There she gets an even bigger surprise. The second of many in her future. Hudson owns the Antique shop in her small seaside town. He seems to be very knowledgeable regarding antiques and things that are old. It appears he comes from money tied to the east coast. He seems to be rather shy but he is definitely attracted to Emma.
February 17, 2024
i did finish this audiobook in one sitting. It is strange to have English accents and not American accents as my understanding is that this story is not set in England. So it was kind of weird to have the English accent.
Also, the part where she gave the handyman her bank access??? what is that? why would anyone do that? so the handyman took her money and ran? well, that is because she was stupid.
On top of that, how does she leave her investment in a joint account and not think her cheating husband isn't going to move the money out? what a moron.
well, another one I thought of is she dumped all that booze. why not take it and see if she can sell them instead? if her husband bought those it would be something that worth lots. I would haul them with me and those really nice watches and go sell them somewhere. all that waste that she did. it don't really make sense to me if she is against of buying flowers then she should be against destroying watches and unicorn bottles.
just saying...
Also, the part where she gave the handyman her bank access??? what is that? why would anyone do that? so the handyman took her money and ran? well, that is because she was stupid.
On top of that, how does she leave her investment in a joint account and not think her cheating husband isn't going to move the money out? what a moron.
well, another one I thought of is she dumped all that booze. why not take it and see if she can sell them instead? if her husband bought those it would be something that worth lots. I would haul them with me and those really nice watches and go sell them somewhere. all that waste that she did. it don't really make sense to me if she is against of buying flowers then she should be against destroying watches and unicorn bottles.
just saying...
December 4, 2023
DNF @ 75%.
SLOW BURN to the extent of not even being warm anymore. Uninspired. Boring. Dry.
At 75% the protagonist has only met the love- interest 2x, once to do a coffee- spill- meet- cute straight out of the lifetime movie network, and once to establish that he likes antiques and that she has found some trashy cheap costume- jewelry. No sizzle whatsoever. Not even a hint of chemistry. I don't need romance to be steamy, but I do need it to seem interesting. I bet if I finished the novel I would get just what the title promises... JUST- ONE- KISS... and probably not even a good one.
I'd rather hear about the protagonist's quirky-dressing aunt than our heroine. Honestly I just read 3/4 of it and she's so boring that I don't even remember her name.
If you like character building or sparks of chemistry... skip this one.
SLOW BURN to the extent of not even being warm anymore. Uninspired. Boring. Dry.
At 75% the protagonist has only met the love- interest 2x, once to do a coffee- spill- meet- cute straight out of the lifetime movie network, and once to establish that he likes antiques and that she has found some trashy cheap costume- jewelry. No sizzle whatsoever. Not even a hint of chemistry. I don't need romance to be steamy, but I do need it to seem interesting. I bet if I finished the novel I would get just what the title promises... JUST- ONE- KISS... and probably not even a good one.
I'd rather hear about the protagonist's quirky-dressing aunt than our heroine. Honestly I just read 3/4 of it and she's so boring that I don't even remember her name.
If you like character building or sparks of chemistry... skip this one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 27, 2024
One star for being short. This book just completely fell flat for me. The characters were flat and unbelievable and the plot simplistic and boring. Most notably: this house just starts completely collapsing when she takes over? A developer who just happens to show up at the same time? A bunch of strangers who come and work for her for free? Emma is gifted a historical property and somehow manages to turn this into a huge financial loss? This woman lived and worked in Los Angeles but is completely naive about financial matters? And then, to make matters worse, the audiobook reader was WAY too fast and had a British accent. Every character was given a different UK accent. It was so odd…
November 16, 2023
I started this one out as an audio book, and found the narrator helped create a very quaint setting. Although I was glad the the main character figured out the cheating with her husband, she seemed far to naive to be a 25 year old top executive from LA. All of the bad things that happened were preventable if she had thought anything through. I'm not invested in her story enough that I will continue with this (frustrating) series.
June 29, 2023
Emma Gold finds out her husband has been having an affair. On top of that she quits her job and moves from Los Angeles to the northern California coast where her aunt owns a crumbling B&B. Her aunt is moving to a retirement community. She wants Emma to take over the B&B. Can she make a go of it? An enjoyable read. Highly recommended.
November 22, 2023
It is a huge pet peeve of mine to have a narrator with an accent that doesn’t fit the setting. This was a story about a girl born and raised in California and narrated by a Brit. I have nothing against Brits unless they are narrating a small town American story.
The story was a little slow. Not rushing in to read the next in the series.
The story was a little slow. Not rushing in to read the next in the series.
March 10, 2024
A silly romcom. It's just missing some thing to make it funny and charming. For a very smart businesswoman, she isn't that bright. Lots of loose ends which I'm sure will all tied together with each installment of the series but it's left you unfulfilled.
June 18, 2023
A new beginning
This is a good story of a young woman making a new life for herself after finding out her husband is cheating on her with het best friend. A sad beginning but funnier as it went on. A good read.
This is a good story of a young woman making a new life for herself after finding out her husband is cheating on her with het best friend. A sad beginning but funnier as it went on. A good read.
September 28, 2023
The story for me was more about Emma's return to Haven than actual romance. It's a beautiful story, but I expected a bit more. Possibly because the story continues in the rest of the series. The end was also a bit abrupt. Let's see what book 2 is like.
September 27, 2023
1.5 stars
I wasn't really drawn in by this story. Nothing special sadly but easy to read. Felt really unfinished and uncompelling - I know it's a series but I have no interest in continuing on to book 2 after reading this.
I wasn't really drawn in by this story. Nothing special sadly but easy to read. Felt really unfinished and uncompelling - I know it's a series but I have no interest in continuing on to book 2 after reading this.
October 2, 2023
To be continued
Liked everything about this. The writing, the characters and the plot. I did not like that I have to read another book to finish the story and is there another book after that?
Liked everything about this. The writing, the characters and the plot. I did not like that I have to read another book to finish the story and is there another book after that?
November 14, 2023
Cute little romance novel by the sea set in California. I listened to this one on audio and was not sure why it was read with a British accent except maybe connect to author and/or publisher. Otherwise everything was fine for this cozy coastal romance. Enjoyable and light.
November 17, 2023
This was fine. It was a quick and an easy read. The storyline was decent. The characters were fine. But it was very short and left a lot to be desired by the end. I don’t mind a series that deeply connects, but this felt unfinished. Another novel giving screen play vibes.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews