**I received an eARC of Writing Mr. Wrong by Kelley Armstrong through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this opportunity.
Writing Mr. Wrong by Kelley Armstrong is an adult romance novel set in Canada. It is about a debut romance writer, who based the asshole male main character on a guy she knew in high school, who is now an NHL player. It is set to be published on June 24th, 2025. I rated it 4 stars on Goodreads.
Here’s the summary from Goodreads:
The #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers a fun romantic comedy about a woman reconnecting with her high school ex after writing him into her latest romance book.
Gemma hasn’t written in years, but post-divorce, she dove back into writing romance. When her proposal didn’t sell, she became convinced it was because no one wanted her nice-guy heroes and decided to write and absolute Mr. Wrong…based on her first crush, Mason Moretti, now a star hockey player. She’s sure no one will make the connection between her highland laird and an NHL enforcer. Of course, someone does, and her secret is out.
Mason is going through some drama of his own as an aging hockey player, and when his “reunion-cute” with Gemma goes viral, he proposes some media-worthy fake dating to help her book. Which is so sweet and not at all to help solve his own image problem. Gemma reluctantly agrees. Mason convinces Gemma to go away with him so she can finish her overdue second book while giving him anti-asshole lessons. And if he really just wants to get time away with her, that’s not an bad move, right? Or is it?
Kelley Armstrong is one of my favourite authors, and something I love about her is how widely she writes and how many different genres she explores. I have read horror, mystery, supernatural, and now contemporary romance books from her, and on the whole I have been super impressed by her work. I have reviewed the following books by her: Someone is Always Watching and Finding Mr. Right. Incidentally, Writing Mr. Wrong is a follow up/spin off from from Finding Mr. Right, as the FMC of the former is the older sister of the MMC of the latter.
To start with, I absolutely loved the premise of this book. The idea of basing a character in a book on someone you know, and I expect it’s something that has happened a lot. It’s especially fun the way that that played out in this book. It was an excellent plot device for them to reconnect over. Every rom-com needs a meet cute, and that absolutely worked for them.
I loved how very Canadian this book was. It’s not very often that I read a book set in Canada, so I really appreciated that element of this story. Vancouver is pretty close to where I live so there were a lot of elements of city life that I recognized. It just felt so comfortable and familiar in that way.
Both of the main characters in this novel were really great. I found Gemma to be compelling, and her insecurities/flaws to be incredibly realistic. It made sense to me why she didn’t always default to standing up for herself, and why she retreated inside herself. On the other hand, Mason also came across as incredibly realistic. His internal conflicts made complete sense to me. Hockey was everything to him, and he’d been conditioned to believe it was his entire value, so the potential of losing that is scary.
The writing style was great. The characters had good banter, and the author easily got across the way that they were feeling. I was really compelled to keep reading partly because of how it was written, and ended up devouring this book in just two sittings.
I do feel that I should warn you that while there is some pining and lusting, it is on the whole pretty slow-burn for a romance. The pacing in some ways felt a bit off to me because of that, because it took a while for them to actually get together, and then the novel just progressed so quickly after that. I actually did worry that there wasn’t going to be enough pages for her to fully and truly finish the story.
Ultimately, I had a great time with this book, and if you like contemporary romances and stories about writers and hockey players, you should definitely consider checking this out!
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