Mein Leseerlebnis

Der Klappentext des Buches hörte sich spannend und außergewöhnlich an, da habe ich zugegriffen. Meine Erwartungen konnte die Geschichte aber nur zum Teil erfüllen.

Die ersten Kapitel haben mir sehr gut gefallen. Ich fand es spannend Seraphina kennenzulernen und zu erfahren, was in ihrem Leben passiert ist und wie sie mit den Folgen ihres Unfalls umgeht.

Mit dem Auftreten von Milo fingen meine Probleme mit dem Roman an. Beim ersten Aufeinandertreffen von Seraphina und ihm fand ich ihn absolut unausstehlich. Von diesem Eindruck konnte ich mich im Rest des Romans auch nie vollständig erholen.

Darauf aufbauend habe ich hier und da auch mit der Beziehung zwischen den beiden gehadert. Die Erklärung für Milos teils unfreundliche Verhalten anderen gegenüber war für mich übrigens nicht ganz überzeugend. Milo blieb mir bis zum Ende leicht unsympathisch.

Trotz dieser Probleme gab es im Buch immer wieder Passagen, die mir richtig gut gefallen haben und mich vor allem emotional berühren konnten. Mein Leseerlebnis war eine interessante Mischung aus Frust und Freude.

Rückblickend bin ich froh, dem Roman eine Chance gegeben zu haben, auch wenn einiges an Potential (Milo plus zu flache Nebencharaktere) nicht genutzt wurde. 🖤🖤🖤

Für wen?

Wenn euch der Klappentext anspricht, sucht nach einer Leseprobe, die idealerweise Milo enthält. Solltet ihr seinen Charakter interessant finden, könnte der Liebesroman einen Versuch wert sein.

A genuinely lovely book.

There is nothing particularly new here in terms of basic romantic storyline, but there are some great characters (although Milo felt a bit flat to me) and some heartwarming moments.

A very quick, easy read which hits all the right buttons.

This was my first Sophie Penhaligon book and I think it was a good one to start with. Overall the book is a cute romance about Seraphina's growth and recovery after an accident that changed her life completely, as well as Milo's growth. I think the storyline was good, but moved on a little too quickly for me. As a romance book it was a bit predictable, but there were many heartwarming moments that made me fall for Milo too. I did like that it brought to the attention traumatic brain injuries (TBI), but would have been interesting to see it explained a bit more throughly. Overall, I enjoyed reading the growth of both characters and loved all the cute and heartwarming moments between Seraphina and Milo.

📖 𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀: Seraphina suffered a traumatic brain injury, and while that could have derailed her life, she's pushing forward regardless. She's getting back to work as a mathematician, and joins a new company. There she meets Milo Grant, the billionaire CEO who she's completely attracted to.

🌟 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄: I had high hopes here. The story was unique and had some great potential. But it just fell so flat.

The writing was a bit pedestrian, with massive uses of exclamation points and phrases or words repeated over and over again. The characters themselves lacked dimension - there was so much more that could have been done with them. Particularly Milo - I wasn't attached, nor was I attracted to, his character.

𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 2.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐

𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 3/5 🌶🌶🌶

Safety in Numbers is an uplifting, heartwarming romance between Seraphina, a brilliant but reserved mathematical genius suffering from a traumatic brain injury, and Milo, the glowering and gruff CEO mathematician she works for. After a chance encounter in the elevator makes Milo take notice, he then takes her on as his research assistant. Their comfort working with each other allows them to open themselves up to each other, sharing their traumatic pasts and healing each other’s wounds.

If you’re looking for a low angst, romance with a happily-ever-after ending and medium steam, this is the book for you!

When a tragic accident leaves mathematician Seraphina Ellis broken and despairing, she is convinced that she will live out the remainder of her life in lonely solitude. Determined to conceal her disability from her co-workers, she hides away in her desolate cubicle, crossing off the days of her life, unfulfilled and defeated.

A chance meeting with irascible but mesmerizing billionaire scientist and CEO Milo Grant provides her with the job of her dreams, and the chance of escape from cubicle land. But Grant is haunted by his own monsters and is increasingly interested in more than just her mathematical magic.

I like Seraphina a lot. Milo is surprisingly sweet, funny and understanding. Love both characters. I like their chemistry together. This isn't as light as your typical rom-com and has some depth to it. Enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an arc.

Writing this review has been difficult for me. I had such high expectations of this book. I would start off by saying that I have no experience or knowledge in regards to surviving a traumatic brain injury. I will go by whatever the author has mentioned in the book, I am sure she has done her due diligence in this regard.

What did I like?
- Talking about loss and disability. If I were to ignore the last half of the book and just concentrate on the first half, I could honestly say I did learn a lot. It humbled me.

What could've been better?
- The characters seemed one-sided. There was no depth to them, they lacked the basic attraction towards one another. No chemistry. They were together in my opinion because the author wanted them together.
-While the writing was good, the internal monologue, the tell and not show, ruined the experience for me. Things kept repeating, over and over again. It became a task to read through the book.
- The book kept jumping between weeks and months which didn't exactly add anything to the story. Almost 80% of the book is just the two MCs having internal conversations without any other character involved. Maybe I could let go of Seraphina's internal voice because of her injury but not Milo's.
- There were some parts where I just rolled my eyes. So highly unrealistic but predictable that made me cringe.

Overall, I wish this book had been written well. Seraphina's story seems to have been written in haste. She deserves more. Even though Milo seemed to have a rough past, it just left so many questions unanswered for me.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this opportunity.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. While it was definitely a cute, simple romance book, I struggled with an underlying plot point. Let me explain: Seraphina, a math genius basically, suffered a traumatic brain injury and is trying to find her new normal in live with aphasia (forgetting words). She does everything to hide her disability while trying to still do the type of work she loves. Here she meets Milo, tech genius, and *cue romance*.

While I know this is supposed to be a romance and I enjoyed the character together, I really disliked how quickly the romance progressed and how quickly Serphina recovered from setbacks in her healing throughout the story. It gave the impression of her needing a man to heal her, which is NOT the type of character I can relate too or want to relate too.

I wish I liked this story more. It had so much potential based on the short description, but I'm just disappointed.

There are so many things I loved about this book. It was an easy but compelling read, I got through the book in less than a day. It was heartbreakingly sweet and dealt with its main characters disability in a refreshing way. I’ve read so many books where the characters disability is used in a cheap attempt to add complexity to their character, only to “fix” the character at the end, or to barely mention it again. This is not that book. This book gives us a beautiful love story both between the two main characters, Milo and Seraphina, as well as the main character coming to terms with her new reality and learning to love herself again. Seraphina was such a sweet character who made you feel every emotion she felt.

I also loved the way the main characters interacted. Milo does not do relationships when we first meet him but as soon as he falls for the Seraphina, there is no question as to whether or not he wants a relationship with her. We don’t have to endure the period of uncertainty where the characters who clearly have feelings for one another pretend to be just friends with benefits which is refreshing. Instead he handles his feelings in a mature way, telling Seraphina why he may act a certain way and that he’s working on it.

5/5

I read this in one day! Only had breaks to eat. Sometimes when I read books fast, I may have a hard time connecting to the characters but this was not the case. I grew to care deeply for them. I could feel their emotions for each other of the page and I felt transported. I really loved this book and can’t wait to buy it physically when I comes out!

so cute !!

ive never read any book with a MC with brain injury.. i honestly don't know much abt it but it was rlly interesting to read how Seraphine managed herself w her strict routine 🤞 and ofc how she got more comfortable with opening up abt that side of her to other ppl.. i rlly loved her character development 🤲🤲
can't say much abt Milo.. he was sweet ig u know i love me a good rich man 🤫


as for the plot I felt like it started and I was expecting slow burn.. but then it quickly began picking up pace and yh it was good but I wished she extended their pre-dating relationship more 🤔🤔 instead of just saying 'it's been two months since..'

lastly, their chemistry was kinda meh.. not excellent but not bad per se.

(got this ebook through netgalley) (less)

I know this book will appeal to a wide audience of readers, but it wasn't a great fit for me. I was promised a story centered around a nerdy mathematician and a hardworking scientist who slowly fall in love and learn to deal with their past trauma. Unfortunately, that wasn't the story I found myself reading.

We begin the first chapter in Seraphina's point of view. We learn she is a young woman suffering from aphasia, a condition involving severe brain damage, and that she has an extremely low level of confidence. Her disability makes it hard for her to speak and remember certain words, resulting in her landing a cubicle job. Then, after an awkward encounter with CEO Milo Grant in the elevator, she is offered a position as a research assistant. Unfortunately, the story went downhill from there.

One of the main reasons why I chose to read this book was because of the science elements. I thought the romance was going to be somewhat similar to "The Love Hypothesis" by Ali Hazelwood, and I was looking forward to seeing positive representation of people with disabilities in the STEM field. Unfortunately, it seemed like there were more sex scenes in this book than there were science ones. The sex scenes weren't particularly well written, either. This brings me to my next biggest complaint; the writing. The transitions were choppy, the descriptions were cringe-worthy, and the constant sexual comments were overbearing. If I had to read one more line about Seraphina's "perky ass" or Milo's "hard cock," I think I would have puked.

I don't think this is a bad book, and I liked that the author included a female character with a disability working in the field of STEM, but I don't think this story was ready for publication. Further refinements, both in plot and sentence structure, would have greatly enhanced the story. Reading "Saftey in Numbers" wasn't a horrible way to spend my evening, but it wasn't something I'd see myself repeating anytime in the foreseeable future.

I received an ARC of the book curtesy of the publisher and Netgalley; all opinions are my own.

I decided to read this book, because I saw that the main character had a brain injury which means she is disabled. As a disabled person myself, I'm always looking for more disability representation in books.

This book had me feeling a bit iffy from the beginning about how the disability rep was going to be handled. For example, the description of this book describes Seraphina (the one with the brain injury) as broken. I didn't like that, but I decided to give this book the benefit of the doubt and read it anyway.

This book was infuriating to read. The main character says and thinks things that are ableist so frequently that it's so uncomfortable for me, a disabled person, to read. Throughout the book it was clear that Seraphina was extremely ashamed of being disabled, which that's fine. A lot of disabled people have felt like that, especially when they first become disabled or when they first realize it. But I wanted this book to end up Seraphina being proud of herself and her disability, and that just didn't happen. She kept repeating over and over again how nobody would want to date her because she is disabled and I get that. I really do. But I wanted her to realize that thinking this is wrong at the end and she just didn't.

I made so many notes on the last 50 pages and pretty much all of them are me screaming and not in a good way. I'm not gonna describe all of my notes because I do not have the energy for that, but yeah I expected better from this book.

I blitzed through this book over the weekend as I just could not get enough. Light and witty but not shying day from the realties of life I enjoyed every second. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Seraphina and Milo for the win!

Gosh, I absolutely loved this book. From the beginning it was already relatable in the context of job searching and not wanting to share about brain injury/disability. I have been diagnosed with a mental health illness previously, and it truly sucks when on the outside you seem "fine" but there are a lot of layers and trauma too that needs to be dealt with. I like how the book was sensitive to these topics and portrayed the two main characters in a very human light, in that we are all imperfect, and some of us hide our flaws better than others. Safety in Numbers is a great example of how it takes two to tango, and I really like how the two main characters really complemented each other despite their conflicts and inner critics.

I really enjoyed how both characters' perspectives were taken into account. Both Milo and Seraphina have their own monsters to deal with, but it brought them closer together rather than tearing them apart. I am one of many who dream that there's someone out there who would love me and want me despite my many flaws and weaknesses, and seeing that love/communication happen between Milo and Seraphina made my heart burst with content. If I can't live out my romantic dreams right here and now, at least my favorite characters are living it to the tee!

Both characters' were so likeable, and both fell head over heels for one another. I loved Seraphina's little quirks, giggles, and side stories/knowledge, such as when she helped massage Milo's head when he was really upset. They just get each other and know what makes the other tick, and know how to make each other happier and more at peace. It was such a gorgeous and intimate portrayal of a love story and had my stomach curling in all the right places (especially the steamy scenes, you know what I mean uh huh ;D)

I do think some of the side characters could have had better development. I would have loved to see more depth into Kendall. The way she was written was that she's just a mean girl who's jealous of what she does not have and so she acts out by badmouthing others and being very outwardly judgmental. Understandable that she was most likely meant to be more of a plot device, to keep the story going but again, I do like seeing more rounded "bad guys" in the stories I read.

I also really enjoyed seeing Seraphina's little interactions with different people like the pizza guy who she trusted and her counselors/mentors at the House as well as Lara and Melissa.

Wonderful and quick read, I would recommend this for fans of Colleen Hoover, Amy Harmon, Jennifer L. Armentrout.

2.5 stars.

Let me start by saying that this book had a lot of potential, yet did not deliver in the way I would have wished. We follow Seraphina a young woman suffering from severe brain damage (aphasia). The book starts with her applying for a job she highly qualified for, but doesn't get due to her lack of social skills due to her brain injury. Once the book actually picks up the CEO Milo Grant offers her the job anyway and they start working together.

This book had a lot of things I personally enjoy. Milo is a royal ass, which he admits to being, yet isn't to Seraphina. He does not seem to change at all, apart from the fact that he wants Seraphina, since she's smart and special. Seraphina in her right is an interesting character, but I felt like her brain injury was her defining feature, which I don't agree with at all. Seraphina is a beautiful woman, highly intelligent and driven, yet the book truly portrays her as only being someone with a brain injury. Seraphina on top of that does not want to tell anyone of her injury because she doesn't want people to treat her differently, but gets mad when they do treat her differently, simply due to the fact that people don't know why she is the way she is.

The characters were not used to their full potential and were quite flat, especially Milo since he does not change in the slightest. Something I also missed was the actual research and the wit and grind for research since they are both working on important projects.

As I said a book with huge potential, but it did not deliver as I wished it would.

Thank you to NetGalley for proving this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Very sweet romance! They were so wholesome but had a hidden fiery side.

Premise: This book was intriguing because the main character is a woman in STEM. Seraphina Ellis is a mathematician and computer science wiz, she also suffered a traumatic injury leaving her with a mental disability that impairs her speech and word recognition. To avoid embarrassment, she acts shy in social interactions.

Plot: The story takes place some months after her injury as she is trying to get back into the work force and explore her independence. Queue the CEO, Dr. Milo Grant, of the billion dollar company she is working at. He’s hot, he’s a genius, he’s a grumpy jerk, and he’s very interested in her. Their romance begins once she becomes his research assistant. Things kick off pretty quickly between them after that but it makes sense for his character since he goes after what he wants with tenacity.

Characters: Seraphina had good development and grew a lot throughout the book, however I wanted more for Milo. He also suffered from a lot of trauma and insecurity but we didn’t get to see him face a lot of that. Seraphina was aided by Milo and her rehab team to face her own issues and become empowered by her disability. But I wanted Milo be seen as a better boss/CEO, maybe trust his management more and focus on his research, something. He just felt a little incomplete and immature, I’d have liked to see him grow up more and face more of his insecurities.

Romance: They were a couple who is sweet in the streets and steamy in the sheets! Holy hell, wasn’t expecting that! I liked how Milo was immediately intrigued by Seraphina, and never judged her. He was so accepting. In fact he was encouraging, often telling her how competent and intelligent she is. She was so smart, even if she had a hard time articulating herself out loud. He was so open and really did his best to improve her independence while simultaneously taking such care of her. He was a lovely romance hero! They had a lot of fluffy moments, and good conversation— her speech improved a LOT just from opening up to him. He never pressured or rushed her, and I loved that Seraphina took a lot of initiative and control. She was low key such a dominate lover! It was unexpected but Milo was very into it. He even guessed that she was hiding her fiery side, and he was so right!

This is a pretty adorable and quick read. I recommend for lovers of Kiss Quotient and The Love Hypothesis.

Good book! This is my second book from this author. This book took a different approach to workplace romance. The writing style and characters were sometimes unbelievable, but this a book. I would read more books by this author.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc of this novel

This was a first novel for me from this author.Nice and easy read .Read it in one sitting.Couple of scenarios could've been given a bit more attention but overall fun read with some serious real life issues presented.
Looking forward to the future work from this author.

Would definitely recommend to the readers!

This is not The Love Hypothesis.

I went into this story really excited about another romance between scientists because I enjoyed The Love Hypothesis so much, however, this book did not live up to my expectations.

Seraphina suffers a traumatic brain injury during an accident, which alters the course of her life. When she starts working again at her new job, she piques the interest of the company's CEO, Dr. Milo Grant, and he convinces her to work directly with him.

This is actually when the story really started to lose me. I enjoyed the character Seraphina, and thought she was well developed, but I had a hard time with Milo. He's supposed to be this bad-boy, super smart scientist, with a gooey inside, but I just thought he was annoying. The book is told in dual POVs and I had a really hard time believing Milo's inner monologue. It didn't match who his character was supposed to be. Even though he's a scientist, that doesn't mean he thinks in scientific and formal ways all the time. I just wish his inner monologue was more casual. There's also British colloquialisms that are used, which is understandable because the author is British, but the characters live in the US.

I also found it hard to stay interested in reading because most of the story is told through inner monologue. I personally find it very boring when the plot happens through inner monologue because I would much rather be experiencing the plot with the character.

This story has a lot of potential, but I think it needs more work before it's published.