I know that I generally talk about K’s darker or more taboo stuff, but this book isn’t. This book is a romcom. A tremendously funny, laugh out loud until I can’t breathe, almost peed myself romcom. I mean, yeah, it was so fucking funny. But you could very much pick up K’s touches in it. I haven’t really reviewed any of JD’s books on here, but she works a lot with K, both in co-writing situations and in shared world series. The collabs tend to be on the lighter side. So, let’s talk about Conheartists.
Luca is a lifelong con artist. He’s good at it. but, this time around, he’s bitten off a little more than he can chew. He’s managed to piss off a mobster named Arlo Rossi. Not only has he managed to piss off Rossi, he’s also managed to get Rossi chasing him. But, Rossi isn’t the only person who is after Luca. So is Mr. Death. He has taken Luca’s sister and little niece and has called Luca and told him that he needs to be at a certain address by a certain time, and oh yeah, steal a certain person.
Francis, AKA Frannie, lives in a tiny town in New Jersey called Teterboro, which has a steady population of under a hundred people. Her mom died a couple of years ago, and her dad died many, many years ago. Her mom owned an antique store, and now Frannie owns and runs the store, along with Mabel, her much older best friend, who was also her mother’s best friend. Frannie’s other best friend is Mabel’s twin sister, Beatrice. Bea loans Frannie some totally excellent smutty books. Frannie has a dog named Chandler Bing, she’s obsessed with Lean Cuisine and Richard Simmons. I can’t blame her about being obsessed with Richard, he’s a pretty awesome guy. Frannie is incredibly sheltered, and kind of lives in her own world, in a good way.
Things are all good, until some crazy man takes an axe to her front door, and tells her she’s being kidnapped. She thinks that Mabel and Bea have set up something to give her some kind of adventure, so she talks the guy into letting her pack and taking Chandler with her.
Luca calls Frannie a little squirrel, and she totally is. There’s a joke about people with ADHD getting dis…. SQUIRREL! See, totally true. The book never says that Frannie has ADHD, so I’m not saying that’s why she is the way that she is. I’m guessing it’s more that she’s just so damn hungry for new adventures, experiences, and memories. Everything she sees is something that is new to her, and it’s easy to get distracted when that happens. But it’s that very feature that makes her so damn charming and so damn sweet. Pretty much everyone who meets her falls for her because she’s so charming, enthusiastic, bubbly, and excited. I think that Frannie could be really close to incredibly annoying, but there’s just something about her that negates that possibility.
Luca is clever, loyal, and protective. You can tell just how much he is by the way he’s doing whatever Mr. Death wants him to do so that his sister and niece are safe. He also starts to feel that way about Frannie too. At first, he’s incredibly exasperated by her, which I can understand why he might feel that way, but it doesn’t take too long for him to change his mind and feel a totally different kind of way.
The book is primarily a dual POV, with a couple of other chapters from other POVs. We really get to know both Luca and Frannie that way. I loved getting into both of their heads. It was pretty great.
Like I said, there is so much funny in here. My husband kept asking him why I was cackling, and then I’d have to explain green ketchup, the big winner, or Dr. Death.
I damned near laughed myself into an asthma attack during Chandler’s POV chapter. It was so perfectly funny.
OK, that’s all I have to say about this one. Go check it out. Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 