Title: French Fancy
Series: The Model Agency: Book Two
Author: Lily Morton
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 396 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: There’s nothing here that will stand out as unique to this author’s fans, which is not at all a slight but an assurance that if you love Morton’s brand, French Fancy will satisfy you and keep you under Pip and Olivier’s spell from start to finish.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Pip Simmonds is the twinkiest twink in London. He’s loud, proud, and packed to the brim with sass. But when he’s laid low by illness, even his hotpants lose their sparkle and his worried boss sends him to the South of France to recuperate in his holiday home.
Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is beautiful, and the periwinkle-blue villa is luxurious, but the real draw for Pip is the villa’s other resident—his boss’s younger brother, Olivier Durand.
Olivier owns a perfume empire and has spent his whole life running from any other form of commitment. He’s worldly, carefree, wild, and the perfect choice for a holiday fling.
Drawn together by proximity, the two men become lovers and friends and then something more. Something special. But will their special bond hold true after summer’s end, when they both must return to their real lives?
Review: There are moments in French Fancy that are like reading a travelogue of the South of France. I had a few bucket-list moments as I followed Pip and Olivier on their adventures, and those moments added to the charm and elegance of their romance.
This is a close proximity story rather than a forced one. There’s nothing standing in the way of Pip leaving when Olivier Durand shows up at his and Jonas’s home, where Pip is convalescing. It is sort of a farced proximityTM situation, though, considering how they met in such a signature Lily Morton way. Or met again, as the case was.
There’s nothing here that will stand out as unique to this author’s fans, which is not at all a slight but an assurance that if you love Morton’s brand, French Fancy will satisfy you and keep you under Pip and Olivier’s spell from start to finish. All the snark, attitude, cheekiness, and abstraction of two men falling in love who don’t get that they’re falling in love until it’s already happened are present and accounted for. In fact, Pip’s penchant for sassiness is as much armor as it is a facet of his personality, and the past hurts he and Olivier have endured are more a deep connection than a conflict. They are committed to the idea that there is no need for emotional entanglements when sex is convenient and free. Until they unexpectedly become protective of each other and the inevitable happens.
French Fancy is a sweet and breezy end-of-summer feel-good read.
You can buy French Fancy here: