While I enjoyed the writing of this book and thought it was well done, the rep wasn't really it for me. I personally don't enjoy reading books with such negative feeling about fatness. I get that they are real and that many people need to read these, but it's just not it for me. I'm also not a big fan of ex-military heroes. Over all I could see the good in this book and this book is important and will find its audience, but that audience just isn't me.

Oof this one is hard because the plus size representation is actually great but the way sexual assault/rape is treated is actually batshit.

Rose has fled her hometown in Indiana after receiving a winning lottery ticket after her only friend (an elderly man who passed away right after giving Rose the ticket) gifts her a winning lottery ticket for eighty million dollars. She is swarmed in her hometown after claiming the prize and goes off to find a new place to call home. She meets several new friends, a man and even establishes what good she wants to do with the money.

Angus is a grumpy Army veteran, therapist and do-gooder around town. His attraction towards Rose is never treated as a pity or fetish and is just embraced. However, at one point Rose shares the story of how she was date raped and later in the book he’s comparing himself in bed to the man who literally assaulted her and I could not pick my jaw up off the floor at such and appalling thought to put in a book. I literally cannot get over it, this line needs to be taken out because OOF.

2 stars

⭐️ ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This read is a slow-burn, contemporary romance with alternating POVs, featuring the grumpy-sunshine, friends-to-lovers tropes we all love. Curves for Days by Laura Moher takes us to the North Carolina mountains for a feel-good read. This was a story I didn’t know my heart needed. The representation of finding love in your 30’s is really amazing, and extremely relatable.

Meet Rose. She’s our heroine with curves and body insecurities. She’s also just won $80 million in the lottery. She decides to escape to her hometown, and after a snowy mishap involving a Snickers bar, buys a house. This is where she meets Angus. He’s our hero from the snowy mishap with PTSD who is contracted to help our heroine fix-up her purchase. Will these two souls in need of love be able to find what they’re looking for in each other?

This book is for readers who yearn for small town romance, and a read that is both sweet yet swoony and leaves you will all the good feels. It transported me back to small town mountain life and was entertaining and heartwarming. It really reminded me of my own love story in a way, and really hits that representation note for me.

I finished Curves for Days a few weeks ago and wanted to sit with the book to think about it. I honestly requested the book initially because of the plus size main character. Rose, a single woman with not much social life to speak of, becomes very wealthy by a stroke of luck from a deceased neighbor. This novel explores relationships, starting over, finding yourself and discovering what you really want out of life. If you are looking for a light hearted book, this might not be the best choice for you. There are some difficult things that occur to Rose throughout her life and she must come to terms with them in order to move forward in her life.

Thank you so much to Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Great start, but then unfortunately it fell off a bit

I came across Laura Moher's “Curves for Days” by chance while looking for new reading material. Since I love love stories with curvy heroines and this one is set in a small town, of course I had to read the story.

I really liked the beginning of Rose and Angus' story! The meet cute alone was funny. Then Angus also has that whole broody attitude about him - a real Grumphy! And I absolutely love that.

Rose won $80 million in the lottery and her entire life changed. About a constantly bullied high school dropout who spent her years waiting tables and caring for her ailing mother. She now starts looking for a new home and ends up in the small town of Getaway.

I really like Rose. She has such a big heart and is funny and cheeky. For me she is an absolute role model and if she wasn't a fictional character I would love to be her friend.

Angus must have been through a lot as an ex-military man. In his job as a psychiatrist, he wants to help veterans recover from the consequences. I think Agnus is really a wonderful person, but my taste took a 380 degree turn after meeting Rose. His grumpy aura is gone and he's no longer so verbal. But what really bothered me is the constant comments or thoughts on Rose's finances and how he relates to it.

I love the residents of Getaway. The small town has a special mix of residents and somehow the place has something special.
For me the beginning of the story was almost perfect. For me, the last 40% dragged on incredibly slowly and at the same time events happened in between that happened too quickly for me.

“Curves for Days” by Laura Moher gets 3 out of 5 stars from me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

This was a first time read for me by this author and it definitely won't be my last. The story was well-written and captured my attention from the start and kept my interest all the way through. The story was fast-paced with a charming small town feel and characters I enjoyed getting to know. Rose and Angus were two people who both were in need of love and both have pasts that haunt them. Angus is the grumpy to Rose's sunshine, but they complemented each other well. This was a heartwarming story that gave me all the feels and it had such a positive message with a simply heart-melting romance. The author did a really nice job of bringing the story and characters to life. I really became invested in the characters and their story. Such a charming story! I'm looking forward to reading more books by this author in the future.
I received a complimentary copy from Netgalley and am voluntarily leaving my review.

I did not finish this one, it was not for me, I couldn't relate to the characters, and just did not care for the story.

My reading took a backseat to other things in life in the months leading up to pub date for this book and I was not able to read and review. I still haven’t fully caught up on my backlist, but I hope to get to this book in the future and I look forward to reading it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher and my sincere apologies. Life is like that sometimes.

I will always read a book with a plus sized protagonist and Rosie is an amazing character. I really enjoyed seeing her discover how to really live life. She’s a fun character who is smart, sexy, and a lovely person. The small town setting was perfect and there are so many great characters to add to the story, even the judgey old lady. Also, Rosie’s house sounded so damn cute. I feel like they didn’t talk enough about Angus’ saviour complex after the 3rd act conflict. I also hated that he decided she couldn’t be trusted because of an assumption he made. It made me like him a bit less and why I dropped half a star. There are a couple of sex scenes but it’s more about how Rosie feels discovering her sexual side. They were beautifully done and I loved the sexy plus size representation.

4.5 Stars rounded up to 5

A pleasant, body-positive romance novel with a sweet heroine and a sexy male lead. I liked how they came to work together on the house, and the reflective nature of the narration.

Pros: The lottery aspect of this story is really unique. I can’t recall ever having read a book, romance or not, with that angle. Rose herself is a delightful character, and her issues felt realistic. I loved the characters that populated Galway and while I am normally not a fan of small town romances, this one worked for me because the story isn’t overly sweet.

Cons: Angus’s savior complex is annoying and I wish more was done to show him working on his issues. And while I appreciate that Angus called out Rose’s sexual assault for what it was, I wanted Rose to realize the trauma that had happened to her.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I will be looking for other books by this author. Being a curvy girl myself, I related to this book well. I would definitely recommend this book.

First of all, I had the hardest time putting this down while it was the current read in my Kindle. I read a chapter. Then another. Then another. Before I knew it, I was 60% of the way through this and it was definitely past my bedtime.

Angus and Rose’s relationship was a slow burn. They did not like one another at first. Then they became great friends…then something far more. It was told over months of time, two people with hard pasts learning to open up and trust someone else to the best of what they could. The heat was mostly great, but it was the absolute care of compassion that they developed that really made this book what it was.

I love thick girl contemporary. It’s a recent love of mine and I find it super entertaining and understandable, as I’ve been those characters. Thickness hasn’t always had its day, but it’s coming into its own as society loosens its grip on women’s soft bodies. It is a major turn on to read a book that explores us beyond just what we look like and our acceptance of ourselves, and this had that in spades. Rose experienced so much in her time that wasn’t necessarily driven by her size, but by someone using it against her after they had violated her. It explored that deep distrust when someone has been left alone and hurt like this character was. To be able to escape and find family in a place so far away from where you’ve spent your life is something incredibly special, and I love that arc for Rose.
Angus accepting his own worth and allowing someone to give him care was also fantastic. To see him come alive throughout the story as Rose gives him a soft place to explore his feelings again and allow himself to love not only someone else but also the person inside was beautiful. For them to grow like this together?

I really enjoyed this novel. I won’t lie, it was a little slow in some parts and I had to read ahead just to get to the conflict –I know, a cardinal sin! I loved how it was handled. It was a very realistic scenario between two people, and the resolution was very sweet, exciting, and left me feeling light hearted and gooey (it’s a romance…if that’s a spoiler, you’re probably new to the genre).

I definitely recommend to anyone wanting a cozy romance where the plot doesn’t get too heavy and you like slow burn enemies to friends to something more romance.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for this honest review.

This book was SO incredibly good. Rose and Angus feel very real and I was so invested in their love story working out (it was weirdly stressful, since I knew going in this would have to have a happy ending!). Looking forward to more from Laura Moher.

I enjoyed this love story between Rose and Angus. It was a fun, quick read that dealt with some really hard topics, so please mind the content warnings, especially around PTSD in military veterans.

Things that worked for me:
• grumpy/sunshine
• strangers to antagonists to lovers
• genuine conflict that was completely understandable from both perspectives
• Rose’s newfound friends in town
• the small town setting
• home renovations

Things that didn’t work for me:
• Angus’s hugeness was over-described. He’s a very tall, broad, large, imposing dude. We didn't need to hear that quite so often!
• Some of the times Rose was trying to help people by giving away money felt a little icky to me.
• It was very white and heteronormative, so I wish it had been more diverse.

I would recommend this for someone who wants a mostly light, straight, romance set in a lovely small town with lots of great friends and neighbors. I look forward to seeing more of the town and neighbors in future books.

Please note, this book includes of a lot of difficult things, including PTSD and suicide in military veterans, an only child caring for a terminally ill parent, poverty, bullying, severe fat-shaming. They all seemed to be handled well, from my perspective. Big caveat that I do not have experience in any of these specific situations, so I could be completely wrong on that.

“Curves for Days” is a plus size romance novel that is so much more than a simple love story. Everyone has baggage; secrets, a past, things that haunt them and our main characters Rose and Angus are no different. But will the complexities of their secrets, past and insecurities be too much to keep them together?

I absolutely loved this book so much. I am thankful for the ARC from NetGalley and I even bought my own physical copy. I smiled so much throughout this book, laughed and cried. As a plus size woman it was amazing to read a romance novel where a character like me could be loved, just as she is.
The content warnings are on the authors website but she covers so many tough but much needed to be addressed topics elegantly and they are ones that many can relate to. Such an empowering and awareness bringing book, wrapped up in a curvy romance novel. Highly recommend!

Rose is down on her luck loner until she wins 80 million dollars and everyone wants something from her. She decides to move to a new town and hide her fortune to try to make it. Angus is a gruff, former military contractor in town who doesn't say much, but the newest homeowner, Rose, finds her way under his skin.

This book had so many tropes that checked all the boxes for me: slowburn romance, plus-sized character, alternating POV, small-town setting, and grumpy sunshine.

There were some heavier topics in this, but the great character writing allowed some playful and spicy moments to outweigh them.

I really enjoyed this story and found myself rooting for the MC's to get together. I also loved all the added characters from around smalltown Galway, who all were intertwined. I'm looking forward to Moher's next book and hope to learn more about what's going on with July.

I love a grumpy bearded hero and a determined-for-self heroine. The pent-up energy and mutual misunderstandings are so delicious as they are in Curves for Days. Rose is looking to start over and Angus honestly doesn't know what to do with her or himself. The foolishness! I love it.

Where this romance looses me, is the trajectory. The plot beats are formulaic but slow. As a die hard romance fiend, I love me a formula and some tropes, but this moved too slow for me without enough side plot or characters to fill up the space.

I received an ARC of this book for an honest review. It was sweet, the pacing is slow and the reason the characters *almost* don't have their HEA felt a bit contrived to me given that the main male character is a therapist. Not a lot of self reflection going on with him. I did like the body positivity and how the main female character develops more confidence as the book progresses.

Curves for Days is a cute friends to lovers, grump vs sunshine read. I liked that it included plus sized and PTSD rep in it and that there is some spice. The characters are very likeable and the book gives off lots of cozy and comfort vibes, especially due to the small town setting.