Miranda Dickinson - All My Love

Sometimes love can be staring you in the face . . . and you don’t even know it
By day, Archie works tirelessly as assistant to the editor of a local newspaper.
By night, Esther works after hours cleaning the rows of office desks with the help of her trusty sidekick, Fred the trolley.
Their paths never would have crossed, until one discarded Post-it note unexpectedly brings them together.
Because they share one thing in common . . . they’re both secretly in love with someone else.
And they might just be the two people who can help each other find the courage to confess their feelings and write the perfect love letter.
But what if they’re falling for the wrong person?

Comment: When I got interested in this book, I wasn't certain if I really wanted to read it or not, but a topic in one of the challenges I'm doing convinced me. I have also had some busy times at work and at home, thus why a longer silence than usual, and I'm afraid this book wasn't always as addictive as I wanted, which made reading it longer than my usual.

In this story we meet Esther, she is now working nights at a business building, cleaning the offices. She was laid off and is very glad to be working, even if it's considered less by some. She is also feeling down because the man she is in love with married someone else. One day she finds the beginning of a love letter while cleaning a desk and boldly added a reply to it, so the owner could feel hopeful in trying to conquer the woman of his dreams, since she could not.

Archie is a supposed reporter but actually isn't doing as much as he thought. Finding the reply to a letter he believed to be in the dust bin makes him feel like trying and he replies too. Things quickly change for the better then Archie and Esther unexpectedly meet and their friendship blossoms. Both say they are in love with someone else, but could it be their friendship is only the start of something better?

The premise for this book caught my eye and I admit I have not paid enough attention, for I thought this would be a story mostly about the exchange of notes until the main characters met, and it didn't end up being so. There is, indeed, exchange of notes at first but the main characters meet rather soon after the start of the novel and my expectation of a more epistolary-like novel wasn't to be. 

The story is quite basic, actually. Esther is down on her luck and loves a man who married someone else. Archie is a man without the confidence to go after what he wants, and he secretly loves a co worker who doesn't seem to feel the same way. He thinks that by writing a letter she might start seeing differently and this is how, randomly, he and Esther exchange notes. I liked the idea of Esther, a night cleaner, being able to both be in the sphere of the office world and at the same time seeing it from the outside. But these moments weren't to continue and I confess I missed it when Esther and Archie met.

I expected the dynamics between them to go one way, for them to slowly but surely fall in love, and while this isn't anything a reader would not foresee, it did take a lot longer than what I imagined. If the plot in between had been more engaging, perhaps I might have liked the book more, but the truth is that, to me, the plot choices weren't interesting. I did like that Esther met Archie's family and friends and she started learning to play banjo (if I got that right), but since they were both still so determined to love someone else, the story lost some focus and romance possibilities.

As one can imagine, with this setting, part of the conflict is that Esther and Archie must deal with their dreams and failed expectations by being with the person they wanted at first. This happens due to some plot situations that, honestly, felt a little contrived and not that realistic, and by this point I already knew I would not consider this a great read, but was still curious to see how the author would develop things so that they could be together in the end.

Any romance reader would guess, of course, that the person they both idealized wasn't as perfect as the idea in the pedestal and I found the tactic of placing them in relationships with others to be annoying, actually. I would have preferred that the author would use a different method so that Esther and Archie could discover they liked one another. I also think that this element, along with the little things we learned about their personalities and lives would have made for a strong story and even better character development. Since this wasn't so, I'll have to say that there were moments in which I felt the characters were a bit juvenile, a bit inconsistent, too focused on secondary things and not on what they were doing.

It also seemed as if the story took too long to go from how things were set up at first to how it ended. In between, despite so many pages, I will say that I didn't end the book convinced Esther and Archie were the best couple they could, considering the obstacles they faced. I didn't feel their chemistry and longing as, I assume, the author might have intended. I mean, I liked it that there was an HEA, but I wasn't incredibly amazed by it. 

I will also say something else. to me this would have been a stronger story if, for instance, the focus had been more on Esther because she was the character I was more interested in, mainly because of her work as a cleaner (not as explored as it could) and the circumstances of her life (she lives with her sister until she has money for her own house) and I believe if this had been more oriented towards woman's fiction, with Esther as main character and, perhaps, Archie on the horizon as potential boyfriend, this might have worked better. 

All in all, this wasn't totally bad, but there were many dull moments, many weak situations badly developed, and the HEA was not fully convincing. There are positive elements, but I don't think those would be the ones I'll remember the most when thinking of this novel.

Grade: 6/10