Jessica Martin’s For the Love of the Bard was one of my favorite summer reads last year so I was excited to get my hands on a copy of her latest novel, The Dane of My Existence. This latest novel takes us back to the charming, Shakespeare-obsessed town of Bard’s Rest, New Hampshire, and reunites us with the close-knit Barnes family. I adored this town and this family, so it was great to be back with them, although the focus this time is on oldest sister, Portia, who we briefly met in the first book.

Portia left Bard’s Rest years ago to pursue a career as a big shot corporate attorney. She has returned home because she’s currently taking a company-mandated sabbatical before she moves to Boston to manage one of her firm’s satellite offices. Portia considers herself an “ice queen” as she is career-driven and has little interest in relationships and/or dating. She’s also much less enthusiastic about Shakespeare than her family and most of the other residents of Bard’s Rest. I’ll admit that it took a few chapters for me to really warm up to her, but once I did, I loved her, especially when she realizes that there’s a real estate developer threatening Bard’s Rest and goes to the mat to try to save the town.

I also very much enjoyed Benjamin Dane, the hot shot commercial developer Portia goes toe to toe with. She fully expects to take him down with little trouble, but he surprises her by being equally skilled when it comes to strategizing and outmaneuvering the competition. At first I really wanted to hate him since he poses a threat to this charming little town, but it becomes clear early on that there’s a lot more to Ben Dane than meets the eye. I loved watching Portia and Ben verbally spar, but I also liked it when he catches her off guard because he isn’t the arrogant alpha-male she was expecting. Watching their relationship evolve from a rivalry to one of trust and openness really made this an enjoyable read for me and I was eager to see if they would get past being on opposite sides of this real estate drama.

Aside from enjoying getting to know Portia better and seeing her fall into a relationship she didn’t see coming, I also just really loved being back in Bard’s Rest. If you’re a Gilmore Girls fan, imagine Stars Hollow but with quirky Shakespeare enthusiasts as residents, loads of fun Shakespearean references and puns sprinkled about, and a huge Shakespeare festival that takes place every year. I loved the town so much and was disappointed to learn that it didn’t really exist in real life because I totally would have visited there!

If you’re in the mood for a fun rivals to lovers romance filled with witty banter, Shakespearean references, and all the small town and close knit family vibes, I highly recommend both For the Love of the Bard and The Dane of My Existence.

This delightful book two in the Bard's Rest Romance series can be read solo, but I'd encourage readers to read the first, For the Love of the Bard, for maximum reading pleasure. The author captures the feel of a small Shakespearean-themed town with aplomb, and the characters -- especially MCs Portia and Ben -- with warmth and wit. A compelling story perfect for lovers of romance and Shakespeare!

The Dane of My Existence had A LOT to unpack in the second in A Bard's Rest Romance series. In this installment, we find Portia on a forced sabbatical and headed home just in time for the Shakespeare festival. Needless to say, she doesn't anticipate she'll be in a fight to save her hometown against a commercial developer vying for the property. The problem, Portia and Ben, while at odds on the property, find themselves steadily falling for each other.

The setting for the festival is fun but the story got bogged down into too many sub plots - Ben's back story, Portia's Mom cancer, the historical mystery of the island, the love story. Honestly all I wanted was the festival and the romance, so by the end I was exhausted with the storyline.

Thank you Berkley for the complimentary copy.

The Dane of My Existence is the story of Portia, a lawyer on a forced sabbatical, who returns to her Shakespeare obsessed hometown for the summer and has run-ins with an out of town developer. Portia’s family and friends were all very endearing and added some comic relief. The town was definitely its own character in this quirky romcom with the stores all having Shakespeare themed names and the residents all completely into the big annual Shakespeare festival. I wish the book delved more into the actual festival but the romance was a cute enemies to lovers trope, the side story about her life as a law firm lawyer was very relatable and I just loved the vibes of a New England summer

Thank you for the free book @berkleyromance!! #penguinrandomhousepartner #berkleyIG #BerkleyBookstagram

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒏𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒚 𝑬𝒙𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲: small town, Shakespeare, enemies to lovers, romance between two workaholics 😂, Well Met series, summer festivals
𝗣𝘂𝗯 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: July 4 (TOMORROW!)

“𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗲-𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗱 𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴: 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂”

And that, friends, is the voice of our female lead Portia, aka the Ice Queen 😂 She was mandated to take a sabbatical before taking in a new role as the youngest partner in her firm. With her mother being recently diagnosed with cancer, she decides to spend her 3 month vacation at her hometown - Bard’s Rest, NH. There she runs into Ben who’s a real estate developer and was snooping around to acquire a piece of land he can develop into a high rise building. That’s all I’d say about the plot. 😅

I absolutely loved Bard’s Nest! It is now one of my favorite fictional small towns (if it’s real however, that’s even more awesome). Anyway, the town is full of quirky side characters and establishments named with Shakesperean puns! I am not a super fan of Shakespeare but I do love reading about a town full of people that are totally obsessed with him!

If you love the Well Met series, this is the Shakespeare summer festival version of that! This is the second book in a series, I haven’t read the first one and while you see cameos from the first book, this whole book can work as a stand alone. :) I love that our female lead is workaholic and hates feelings and it was so fun reading about her choosing between love and career. The banters were also smart and amazing! And I’m a fan of every relationship that existed in this book: family, friendship, romantic.

I did struggle with the long narrations and it was also somewhat of a slow burn. Tbh, I would probably consider this more of a women’s fiction with a side of romance. There will be a third act breakup so just be aware, I know some of you are not a fan of those 😅

💭 What’s your favorite fictional small town?? I need to add more to my list!
☕️ I love Stars Hollow (Gilmore Girls), Inglewood (Lovelight Farms), Wakan (Part of Your World), and Rome, Kentucky (When in Rome)

💭Do you love summer festivals??

Though this book is part of a series, it stands alone just fine.

I found Portia the least interesting of the women introduced in the first book, but Martin does a great job of making a tightly-buttoned workaholic sympathetic, as Portia learns that there’s more to life than career. In learning to appreciate her family, her hometown, and her friends, she in turn becomes more lovable.

The road to romance is fun, as Ben is a great sparring partner. Best part of the book for me was the verbal duels of wit. Portia and Ben's scenes were the highlight of the book.

For the most part, I enjoyed the secondary characters, the town itself--especially the Shakespeare-related shop names. It's a fun small town fantasy, but that's such a fragile bubble, and at least for me adding cancer to it weighed the story down when it ought to be light as a soufflé, knocking my rating down a point. Because of the undertone of anxiety the book began to slide more into contemporary fiction from romance, though we do get our HEA.

This is the first book that I have read by Jessica Martin and it certainly won’t be the last if The Dane of My Existence is anything to go by. I loved everything about this romance, the unforgettable characters, the romance between Portia and Ben, and how the good guys won in the end, even when the odds seemed to be stacked against them.
I highly recommend The Dane of My Existence to anyone who is looking for a great story full of characters that you will love and some that you will love to hate combined with the added bonus of a sweet and entertaining romance thrown into the mix.

Really enjoyed this one, including living the small town life vicariously. Shakespeare sex and ethical decisions make for a fun read.

WOW! This book is SO GOOD! It is romantic, witty, original, moving, and so much more! Whenever I picked up "The Dane of My Existence", I was whisked away, and could not put this book down!

This is the second book in Jessica Martin's "A Bard's Rest Romance" series...and this series is SO GOOD! Ms. Martin's writing is visceral, vivid, detailed, descriptive, and full of heart. Her characters jump to life right off of the page, and their relationships to one another are so clear. Her passion for writing and the story she is telling is so clear to me as the reader as well.

Portia Barnes is an extremely hard-working lawyer, who is told she must take the summer off. She heads back home to visit her family in Bard's Rest, Upon arriving, she soon meets Ben Dane, a man with his own ideas about the future of Bard's Rest which include turning an extremely important much-loved part of town into condos. I do not want to say too much about the plot due to spoilers, but, I will say, this book has so much in it: witty banter, romance, heartbreaking moments, heartwarming moments, and so, so much more. As the story progresses and Portia and Ben disagree on what to do, yet begin to see their relationship deepen as well...will they be one another's happily-ever-after? You will just have to read to find out!

I loved seeing some of my favorite characters from the first book as well! Also, I so wish Bard's Rest was a real place! I would totally love to go there!

Also, as someone who absolutely loves Shakespeare, I absolutely adored the many Shakespearean references throughout this book!

If you enjoy Contemporary Romance, I highly recommend this book! I so look forward to reading what Ms. Martin writes next!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC of this book, and for Berkley Publishing Group for having me as part of the Blog Tour for this novel, it is incredible! All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Picture a hot-shot attorney climbing the corporate ladder with single-minded determination. Now picture her getting the promotion she wanted but being forced to take a three-month sabbatical before assuming her new role. Even worse, having to spend those months in the Shakespeare-obsessed New England hometown she couldn't wait to escape. It's a recipe for disaster but when a hot-shot commercial developer sets his sights on the island where the town performs its plays during the annual Shakespeare festival, that hot-shot attorney realizes her quirky hometown just may mean more to her than she thought. And so might the hot-shot developer.

I love complex characters, ones who on the surface appear to have it all together while under the water are paddling as fast as they can. That's Portia. It's satisfying to watch her story unfold, watch her learn to accept her vulnerabilities, own her mistakes, fight to right injustices, work to grow, and, yes, even fall in love. Ben is a wonderful counterpoint to her: open, supportive, and understanding. He has layers of his own which, maybe, allow him to understand hers a bit better than most. He sees her, not only the hard-driving, take-no-prisoners attorney she is but all the complicated, vulnerable, closet-do-gooder layers swirling within. I couldn't help but cheer for them to find their happy ending.

While there's plenty of emotional depth in this book (Portia's mother is battling cancer and Portia is coming to terns with that), it's balanced with hope, hilarity, and light, with mom leading the charge. I closed the final page fully convinced of mom's full recovery.

The dialog in the book is crisp, with snappy banter and sly innuendo, and not only between Portia and Ben. The well-established animosity and ongoing point-counterpoint between Portia and the long-time town clerk (the person in small towns who runs everything) and how that all plays out is one of my favorite parts of the book. Other favorites are the poignant mother-daughter moments, fun sibling dynamics, a lost dog, a hilarious petting zoo scene, and too many more to list.

If you're looking for a few hours of laugh-out-loud fun cushioned with emotional depth and a happily ever after, all set within a quirky, Shakespeare-obsessed, New Hampshire town, pick up a copy of The Dane of My Existence. It has my enthusiastic recommendation.

This is the second book in Jessica Martin's A Bard's Rest series but I didn't feel like I was missing anything by reading this book first. Having said that, after meeting book one lead characters author Miranda (Portia's sister) and hot veterinarian Adam in book two, I immediately downloaded their story, For the Love of the Bard.

*ARC received from publisher. Fair and unbiased review.

Thank you to @berkleyromance for an eARC. All thoughts are my own.

The Dane of My Existence contained some of my favorite things:
- Shakespeare
- businesses with themed names (from, you guessed it, Shakespeare)
- a tight-knit family
- a town coming together with a common goal
- a themed festival
- vocabulary words that would make my AP English teacher proud

I wholeheartedly enjoyed this story! Unlike many romance books, Ben gets right down to business and asks Portia out on a date right away.

I really loved how their relationship developed over the summer with their looming professional conflict in the background. Their interactions with Portia’s family were so fun, and I loved watching them explore the small town.

As a huge lover of the Bard, this book was a home run. Throw in lines like “musical troglodytes, all of you” and I’m 100% in. This was such a fun rom com and a great read for summer.

I have not read For the Love of the Bard, but I am going to remedy that ASAP.

The Bane of My Existence by Jessica Martin boasts a dynamic and winsome cast, with a fiery chemistry that evolves from enemies to lovers. This captivating tale is perfect for indulging in while lounging on the beach.

REVIEW FOR THE DANE OF MY EXISTENCE

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars

Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub / @berkleyromance for the gifted copy!

𝕊𝕐ℕ𝕆ℙ𝕊𝕀𝕊:
This small town romance was super cute and a perfect summer read. Set in New Hampshire in the fictional town of Bard’s Rest, Portia Barnes is taking some time off prior to moving from New York to Boston to be Managing Partner of her law firm’s Boston satellite office. The youngest in her firm to ever become managing partner, Portia has a lot of stress that comes with that. But it’s not all fun and games when real estate developer Benjamin Dane comes sniffing around Bard’s, seeing if there is any opportunity for property growth. Protecting the town and their annual Shakespeare festival comes easily to Portia, but when Ben proves to be a worth adversary, his softer side is what draws her in, leaving her heart exposed.

𝕎ℍ𝔸𝕋 𝕀 𝕃𝕀𝕂𝔼𝔻:
• small- town feel
• read like a cozy mystery, but with romance
• loved the supporting cast of characters
• super punny, but not off putting or incredibly cheesy
• reminded me a bit of Well Met by Jen DeLuca (with better characters) with a dash of The Mistletoe Romance by Codi Hall

𝕎ℍ𝔸𝕋 𝕎𝔸𝕊ℕ’𝕋 𝕄𝕐 ℂ𝕌ℙ 𝕆𝔽 𝕋𝔼𝔸:
• the two MCs went back and forth so much I got whiplash lol
• I could see the character growth on the page, but I didn’t feel it really. However, I was still rooting for both of them at the end

𝕆𝕍𝔼ℝ𝔸𝕃𝕃 𝕋ℍ𝕆𝕌𝔾ℍ𝕋𝕊:
I really liked this story, so much that I went out and got the first one before I even finished. The Dane of My Existence hit shelves yesterday, 7/4, so if you like small town rom coms with the perfect amount of cheesiness, add this to your list!

Return to Bard’s Rest, where Shakespeare puns and potential romances are aplenty. In The Dane of My Existence, Jessica Martin’s charming creation of a town is a constant delight, but it’s lawyer and rogue non-Shakespeare lover Portia Barnes at the heart of this tale.

It wasn’t easy to become the youngest managing partner at her law firm, but Portia did it. Now on a sabbatical until she moves into her new office, Portia is at loose ends. She’s not like the rest of her family and the idea of loosening up and not working is alien to her. No dust will settle on her skills though, because Bard’s Rest is at risk. Developer Benjamin Dane is sniffing around her beloved town looking to build condos that could certainly impact the town’s charm and main source of revenue. With a new opponent, Portia’s in her element…until her attraction to Ben knocks her off her feet. Ben is the perfect sparring partner and I really enjoyed their banter. Ben and Portia are well matched on every level. I loved that they understood each other’s commitment to and enjoyment of their work. That they grew to trust each other enough with their whole selves, even the imperfect bits. Portia and Ben’s slide from enemies to lovers to more worked because they had great chemistry and fit perfectly. Portia isn’t warm and cuddly on the surface and Ben likes that about her (as did I) and doesn’t seek to change her, which I really appreciated.

But the course of true love never did run smooth, so of course Martin doesn’t make it easy on her hero and heroine. As much as they’d like to, Ben and Portia can’t forget they’re at odds and if one of them wins it means the destruction of something else to the other. I was very much looking forward to seeing what happened and Martin made all the bumps in the road worth it in the end.

The Dane of My Existence is the second book in the Bard’s Rest series. If you don’t mind some minor spoilers then you can jump in here without any confusion. The Barnes family and their friends bring this town to life in delightful ways and really help the story shine. I liked Portia’s interactions with her sisters, best friends, and townsfolk. Bard’s Rest is a place I absolutely love spending time in and I hope for more romances set in this town.

This is the second novel in the Bard’s Rest series, and I liked it even more than the first novel. There’s something about the heroine, Portia, who disdains her kitchy hometown, but still tries to save it’s legacy theater. Seeing her walls crumbling under Ben’s charm was fun, but it was really her strong sense of family that won me over. I could imagine being that woman who wanted to leave Bard’s Rest behind her, but then finds that it means more to her than she ever understood. This story had a lot of heart!

I’m somewhat obsessed with the idea that there may be a real town out there like Bard’s Rest, but at least I know that there’s another sister who has yet to have her love story told. Can’t wait! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

what a precious and fun read!! i am always so thankful to netgalley for giving me access to books before they come out. this was such an enjoying read! you should definitely check it out when it comes out!!!

Once again I’ve read a romcom series out of order. So, my first note for anyone reading this review, start with the first book to avoid spoilers!

That being said, that title is what really roped me in. It screamed enemies to lovers and I am all about that trope. Unfortunately, the title and the plot didn’t quite line up which is where I knocked my review down a star. I absolutely loved Portia and Ben but enemies to lovers, they were not. They were basically insta love at first then they fought (in a way that was pretty reminiscent of the usual third act breakup) and then back to lovers. I didn’t ever get “enemies” for them.

I don’t see enough characters like Portia. Driven, focused on work, but still relatable. So I really enjoyed her character. This book was laugh out loud funny at times as well. I will definitely read the first book and hope to see a third book about Cordelia as well.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I wanted to love this book so badly. But it just felt slow and over descriptive to me. I love the idea of two workaholics coming together in this Shakespeare themed town. I, too, love Shakespeare. The secrets and the lies and the drama that could have been talked through were too much. Keep the puppies and the great cast of characters, but the secrets and lies did me in.

From what I read, this book seems to be about 90% snark. Sorry, I just couldn't get into the story. DNF.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Portia is not going to let Ben knock down and develop Bard's. Nope, she's not. Nor is she going to fall in love. This is a sweet and steamy small town romance featuring an attorney and a real estate developer going head to head about the future of a small town. Admit it- you kinda know what's going to happen but know that the characters are terrific. You don't need to be familiar with Shakespeare to enjoy this but it does help to appreciate all the sideways references to the Bard and his work. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, A fun fast read that made me smile,