The narration was absolutely faultless but unfortunately I will not be finishing the book as I am not enjoying the story (just not to my personal taste) and found the sexual aspects uncomfortable to listen to. Thank you so much for the ALC. I’m sorry not to finish it. DNF.

This is an entertaining, fast-paced, light and easy read even though the book deals with some darker topics (loss of a parent, cancer, infertility). 

The book follows the story of Penny, a woman in her 30s managing her own little café in London, who has to move away for a year for family reasons. She is usually unlucky in love but manages to find herself in the middle of a love square.

I liked all the characters but I must say the love interests were my least favourite of all! I love the special relationship between Penny and her sister as well as with her uncle. I'm glad there was LGBT representation but I'd have loved to see more of them and have their characters a bit more developed.

I enjoyed reading this book but it didn't really seem to be a "love square" to me, rather one lover after the other and the square was only at the end of the book. It was pretty obvious who Penny would end up with according to the description of the three love interests and I thought her struggles to choose weren't very believable. The ending was okay although it was wrapped up a bit quickly and I thought Penny was quick to forgive some things that had been said. 

All in all, I recommend this book as a light summer read.

Thank you to the publisher who provided me with an audiobook via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the authors first book, Our Stop and so I was excited to read The Love Square. I adored the main character Penny and following her journey as she tries to find out what she really wants. The author did a great job of balancing the humorous and witty parts of this book with the emotional parts, which really tug at the heart strings! This was a beautifully written, very entertaining, fast paced read and I really enjoyed listening to every moment of the audio book, the narrator did a great job of bringing this story to life!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a free audio copy of The Love Square in exchange for an honest review.

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams is the story of Penelope Hermione Bridge aka Penny. She is a chef in her early 30s and is single. She survived breast cancer in her 20s which has made her incapable to carry a child because of early menopause.  She doesn’t have much luck when it comes to dating until pastry chef Francesco, comes in her life she starts dating him.  Things went well for the next 3 weeks.

Francesco and Penny were torn apart by circumstances. An unfortunate event in her life made her move to Derbyshire from London to look after her uncle’s restaurant. At Derbyshire, she meets not one, but two men who also want to date her. Thomas is from the music industry, while Priyesh is a wine merchant.

Now penny is stuck not in a love triangle but in a love square.

I did flip back and forth between the audio and the book so I can safely recommend both versions, basically you cannot go wrong here! Carrie Hope Fletcher has done justice to the narration. 

I liked the book there's less comedy, but more emotion. I adore the bond Penny shares with her sister. I like the character of Penny, seeing so much in life still, she is optimistic and hopeful for life. It is a sweet and  heart-warming read that packs an emotional punch.

Read this because I really enjoyed her other book 'Our Stop', but unfortunately this one wasn't for me. I liked the first half, but it lost me in the second have. It just didn't click with me. Also felt like the nonbinary rep was forced and it rubbed me the wrong way.

I listened to this on audio and the narrator did a really good job.

I really enjoyed this book, and Carrie Hope Fletcher was a fantastic narrator who really did the story justice. Her performance was so soothing to listen to, the perfect accompaniment to unwind to before bed.

The Love square is a really fun read. The main character is Penny, a chef with a prestigious café in London, lucky in food but very unlucky in love. Just as she feels all hope is lost and that she must somehow be repulsive to men, Francesco turns up and turns everything on its head. Although it takes quite a while for the “Love Square” to become evident, there is plenty of romance as well as surprises. It’s not just about romance either, Penny is a cancer survivor whose great longing for children led her to harvest and fertilise her eggs before undergoing treatment. 

Ultimately it’s a book about finding your way, and deciding what’s important to you. If you can’t have it all, what will you sacrifice?

Brilliantly narrated by Carrie Hope Fletcher, definitely recommend listening to this!

I listened to the audio book of The Love Square read by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who had a nice rhythm to her voice.
Penny has three suitors to choose from...I know who I'd choose!!
We follow her as she dips her toe back into the dating game after a life changing experience. 
She has a lot of fun finding out who she wants to be with and how she gets there!

This was a fun easy listen with a gaggle of likeable characters.
This story took me a while to get interested in but then I found it quite enjoyable.

The Love Square - listened to on audio:

I enjoyed this tale of Penny’s extensive and complicated love life! While she tries to work out what she wants from life there are a few hiccups on the way. I was listening wondering just who it was she was going to end up with. 

The narration was excellent.

There are a few rude bits and choice language so don’t listen to it out loud in the garden or around children as I discovered!

Overall an enjoyable, light listen.

Sorry, I found this so boring I couldn’t listen past 18%. I’m not going to share this review anywhere, but just wanted to let you know. Thanks

This audiobook was honest and realistic in terms of real life relationships. I loved the characters Penny and her sister Clementine. I also liked that she had more than one love interest. How the men in her life perceived this different and it annoyed me that one of the characters (male) had a go at her. She didn’t owe him anything. I think the author portrayed this well. Why is it ok that men can be non-monogamous but women can’t? I only wish I had managed to read this in paperback because I think I would have drawn my own conclusions about the characters rather than via the narrator. E.g. their accents and social class.

Penny is single and has frozen her eggs for a later date. She is thinking the time might be now when she meets Francesco. Things are going well, but Penny gets a call and must go to her uncle who has had a heart attack.
Penny learns she will need to run her uncle's pub while he recovers. She wants to ask Francesco to go with her but is afraid. Working at the pub Penny meets two more men that she dates. Now she is in a love square. Which man will she choose in the end?? A light romance with some fun times too.

Thanks you to netgalley and HarperCollins Audio UK for the arc

I'm not usually one for love triangles, let alone a love square so I didn't have my hopes up too high. It's a lighter read when you're not in the mood for anything dark but it also touches on some important topics such as death, losing parents, cancer, infertility etc. Penny wasn't very likable unfortunately. I did admire how strong she was given that she's a business owner and had went through some hardships. What ruined it for me was that she kept talking about how independent she was yet she complained about being single and how one would love her or be with her for far too long and it got on my nerves.. Then she just got a little bit more annoying as the love interests were introduced. This has some potential and definitely would have been better if Penny was different. I also do think this dragged on a bit too long, it should've been shorter rather than 400 pages or in this case, the audiobook. The narrator did a good job though and was easy to listen to.

Thanks very much to the publisher and to netgalley for the arc!

Thank you Netgalley and Harper Collins for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. 

The Love Square is about a 30 something woman in London, who has three men to pick from. 

This wasn't it for me. There was no chemistry between Penny and two of the men, and I guess I knew who she would pick from the beginning. 

The book had good diverse rep in the side/background characters.

Penny Bridge is no longer focusing on her love life, she has a cafe she loves and a family she would do anything for... Then she meets Francesco, and all that flies out of the window.

However life throws a curveball and she has to relocate to Darbyshire to run her uncle’s restaurant, leaving Francesco behind. Here she meets two other men, each very different, and with Francesco in the mix suddenly Penny finds herself in the middle of a massive dilemma.

I love that Penny had flaws, and wasn’t a perfect character. She was well rounded, she had her selfish bitchy moments, but don’t we all? I also love the inclusion of LGBTQI characters, which I felt were not just plopped into the book as a statement, they just were who they were.

The narration by Carrie Hope Fletcher was excellent.

**listened to the audio book**

This was a highly anticipated book for me, as I read William's previous novel 'OUR STOP' and it was one of my favourite reads of last year. 

I really enjoyed this book (not quite as much as I enjoyed Our Stop) as it felt incredibly epic! It spanned a decent amount of time, and I felt that I really got to know the books central character of Penny. I loved Penny! I could relate to her so much - despite not going through half the stuff she has. I could easily spend more time with Penny over more books - I really hope Laura Jane Williams does write more about Penny!

This book felt incredibly real, and despite being fiction I felt like it could easily have been an autobiography. I loved the fact that Penny had different relationships within the book, and I loved how she changed (just ever so slightly) with each different guy she was dating. It made me think about my own love life in that sense. I love what Penny got from each of the men, and how that helped her in coming out of herself and becoming a more confident person.

For me, it was completely obvious who Penny's true 'soulmate' would end up being - and although this was incredibly romantic, I would have liked it if the other blokes she dated would also be in the running ever so slightly. Just so it was more of a 'mystery' of who she would pick in the end. But maybe that's just me, as I'm a fan of a good mystery/thriller as well as a romance haha

The audiobook is read by Carrie Hope Fletcher, and she does a great job. I think that it's not just down to William's writing, but Fletcher's narration why I enjoyed the book so much. (and completely fell in love with Penny.)

I found this book incredibly funny too - a lot of 'chic-lit' or 'women's fiction' tends to try and add humour, but it never really comes off too well for me. The Love Square however, was hilarious! Again, that could be down to the delivery of Carrie Hope Fletcher's narration.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and am so so pleased I listened to it as an audiobook as the narration really added to the 'realness'. 
I cannot wait to see what Laura Jane William's does next!

I liked Penny and how she overcame the cancer diagnosis she received in her 20s. It's something no one wants to go through, but she seems to have dealt with the news really well. 

This was my first experience with Carrie Hope Fletcher as a narrator, and she brought the characters to life beautifully.

I felt Penny's suitors were not super fleshed out. We know a lot more of Francesco, but that's mainly because he's present since the first third of the book. I don't know who my favourite of the three men was, and I'm not sure I love who Penny ended up with.

I like the "moving home for family" trope a lot and this was done wonderfully here. I also loved the name of the pub, being a huge red panda fan.

There's also quite a lot of LGBT representation in the book, which I loved to see. However, at times it feels a little shoehorned in and underdeveloped.

What a lovely lovely lovely story Laura Jane Williams created here 🥰 I wanted to read “The love square” because it sounded lighthearted and different - we normally get a love triangle, but the geometry was different here 😁 I was certainly not disappointed by it. 
Lighthearted it was, different it was, swoony, funny, happy and cute - tick tick tick tick ✅ It also touched on more serious issues such as infertility, gender, feminism, cancer, mental health - and I must say all the above topics were handled with sensitivity and realism, without making them sound cliche. I LOVED IT ! ♥️
I was lucky enough to be gifted an audiobook version of the book by @netgalley. The audiobook made the whole story even better for me because it’s narrated by the wonderful Carrie Hope Fletcher and her lovely, melodious voice and accent 🥰 her acting skills certainly come across in the narration, making dialogues easy to follow. She just added that little bit extra to an already great read. 
A word of warning if you go for the audio version: 😅😅 I listened to parts of the book in the garden and there were definitely times when I had to lower the volume right down worried that the neighbours will hear the sexy talk in some of the chapters and wonder what exactly I was up to on the swing 🤣
Anyway, to wrap up, definitely a good book which I’d recommend to anyone who needs a little bit of positivity and cheerfulness in their lives ☺️

Really quick and easy to listen to. I've listened to Carrie Hope Fletcher read an audiobook before and enjoyed her narration, so was pleasantly surprised to hear her reading this book. 
I enjoyed the story, although I did find some of the characters' actions a bit irritating at times and I found the ending to be too perfect - especially considering that the MC was a bit undeserving of it at times.

It was a good read though and I would likely pick up more of Laura Jane Williams' books in the future.

The Love Square by Laura Jane Williams
3 Stars
I was given an audiobook on Netgalley for an honest review.
Penny is the classic romantic heroine; she is unlucky in love. Disenfranchised with dating after bad experiences, she has all but given up. Then she meets a guy and sparks fly, but when her Uncle (like a father to her) gets sick and she has to return home to look after the family business, they agree to part as friends. Then she meets another guy, and then another guy. And when the first guy decides to come to her to help, she finds herself in a Love Square.
So … the start of this book was strong. The first third really had the makings of a five-star read. I liked the build up of the first relationship. A lot of effort went into this, it was well developed, I was invested in all characters and excited for the rest. Then the conflict started and it fell apart a bit. The bad side of this was the following two relationships were very underdeveloped, and the third was especially rushed and weak. It made it hard to find any tension in the ‘choice’ the main character must make.
I feel like this was marketed as more of a conflict than it really was. There wasn’t a point where I doubted the direction it would go in and found the conclusion quite problematic. I didn’t want her to end up with any of them. I found all three romantic interests problematic for different reasons. The first I liked and then something that happened really put me off him. There was a little bit of slut shaming going on, which led to a bit of internalised misogyny in the main character. It ruined the final third of the book and really left it as a bitter end.
This had the potential to be a great book, especially considering the surrogacy story line. That felt promising and well handled. If that had been used more, as the main focus rather than a poorly defined love square, this could have been a refreshing rom com.
I wanted to love this as Derbyshire girl myself, there was definitely potential there and will keep a look out for more works from this author.