Book of the Day

From the review

You spend the first chapters of this one waiting for the catch, because a job interview that lasts a month, on an island, against a competitor who also wants to sleep with you a little, is obviously a setup. Emily Henry knows you know that, and she takes her time letting Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson circle each other anyway, trading barbs over breakfast, trying to out-charm a ninety-something who has spent decades making sure nobody gets the full picture of her. The push and pull between them reads less like combat and more like two people who recognize something dangerous in each other and keep leaning toward it regardless. What makes the rivals-to-lovers frame work here is that the job itself is the real obstacle, not a flimsy excuse for proximity. Alice and Hayden are barred by contract from comparing notes, so they're both assembling the same woman from different fragments, and neither can be sure the other isn't hearing the better version. That professional jealousy curdles into something more personal fast, and Henry lets the attraction build through argument and reluctant respect rather than a string of meet-cute coincidences. The heat is moderate and slow to arrive, which suits a book more interested in tension than payoff for its own sake, but when it lands, it lands on the strength of two people who've actually been talking to each other, not just performing chemistry at each other.