Love, Just In by Natalie Murray

Title: Love, Just In

Author: Natalie Murray

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 3^rd January 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 464

Price: $22.99

Synopsis: In the vein of Emily Henry’s You and Me On Vacation, Love, Just In is a friends-to-lovers romance with just enough spice to heat up the summer.

Sydney TV news reporter Josie Larsen is approaching thirty and coming dangerously close to failing at life. Lost in a vortex of other people’s career milestones, engagement parties and baby showers, Josie is perennially single, abandoned by her globetrotting family, and invisible to her boss – except for the one time he tuned in while she was mid-panic-attack on live TV. As punishment, Josie is shipped off to cover another reporter’s six-month leave at a regional bureau in Newcastle.

But Josie has more waiting for her in Newcastle than yawn-inducing stories about bicycle lane protests. The city is also the domain of Zac Jameson – her best friend since high school. This should be a happy turn of events, but Zac has barely spoken to Josie for the past two years. Not since a tragic event caused him to leave Sydney to try and cope with his grief.

Now thrown back into each other’s lives, Josie and Zac have to navigate their neglected friendship and secret attraction to each other while struggling with their careers and mental health.

Hilarious, sexy and heart-warming, this is the perfect romcom to sit on the shelves alongside Emily Henry, Sally Thorne and Ali Hazelwood.

~*~

As someone who isn’t much of a romance reader, I wasn’t sure what to make of this book, but I was pleasantly surprised that it had a depth to it that I haven’t experienced in many books that are all about the romance. Josie Larsen is a journalist, and she’s being sent to Newcastle and a regional bureau for six months after having a panic attack on live television during a breast cancer breakfast. Josie is aghast, but also adrift – her family is scattered across the globe and everyone around her is doing well, getting engaged, getting married and having children as she works on a floundering career that she has dreamed of for years – something that I think many people in their twenties and thirties, and beyond, as life and the way the milestones happen changes.

Josie has more than a job where she needs to prove herself waiting for her in Newcastle. There’s her best friend Zac, who fled to Newcastle two years ago after a tragedy and hasn’t spoken to Josie much since, despite their lengthy friendship. As Josie reconnects with Zac, explores Newcastle, and faces conflict from people at work, as well as a health scare that sends her into fits of anxiety, unsure of what to do or who to turn to during this time – and the person she needs is right there. Zac.

Josie and Zac’s story is told in alternating chapters – today, and going back into their history as friends from the time they were thirteen until the tragedy that ripped them apart two years ago. I like this take, as it showed how their relationship formed and what being friends meant to them through high school, university, and after university. It had a depth within it that in the past, I have not found in some of the romance novels that I have read, where things happen all too quickly. In Natalie’s book, I liked that she let her characters take time but also made them real. They had real worries and concerns, real flaws, and they were not perfect. It made it real, showed that love and relationships of any kind and life is messy – it’s something you can’t avoid. The messaging about health and health anxiety, and obsessing over things that are unlikely to happen as Josie does throughout the novel showed that everyone struggles with a range of issues or they will deal with worries and concerns in different ways, often based on past experience. For me, this was the most powerful message, as well as creating your own community with your friends, wherever you are and the strength that it can take to do the things that scare you. I was so proud of Josie when she did this.

When it came to Zac and Josie, I absolutely adored them as friends. It was one of my favourite things about this novel – yes, even though it is a romance novel that has the required happily ever after! But that is because I could see either scenario working for Josie and Zac, because having a friend like Zac by your side is just as important as falling in love. And perhaps that is what makes them work so well – they were the definition of friends-to-lovers but written in a way where the love and the friendship were both important, because it was their friendship and history as teenagers that led them to where they needed to be.

The story is light and fun, but it still has depth – a depth that can be appreciated on whatever level works for you or speaks to you as a reader, or it can just be a fun read. For me, it was a bit of everything, and I loved that Josie wasn’t perfect, that she was herself as the flaws in characters are what can make them relatable or enjoyable. This is a book that I think will have something for everyone who reads it, and I hope it finds its readers soon.