Book Reviews

Book Blurb

A drunken mistake, and a one-night stand. It was never supposed to be more than that.

Noah Fairweather doesn’t care what it looks like. Going on holiday with your parents is all rather civilised and normal, even for an almost forty-something British doctor. Anyway, it’s a gorgeous beach resort, all-inclusive food, and the room is actually a villa with a private little terrace. Deckchairs, sun, sea, sand and he’s already eyed up a bottle of nice Shiraz on the room service menu.

What he hadn’t quite counted on was ending up being someone’s…ridiculous rebound shag.

Fair enough, but…now he’s got a bloke in his bed and his parents next door, and the guy…

Crap.

This wasn’t at all what this holiday was supposed to be about. There’s no future here, is there? Can a simple hook-up, a million miles from home…ever become something real?

Nah. Life doesn’t work like that. Does it?

We Need tyo Talk is a standalone novel.

 

Book Review

What happens in a holiday resort stays in the holiday resort. Meaning no long-lasting love stoy has ever come out of a holiday resort one-night-stand, right? Aggravating circumstance, the two protagonists involved are Noah Fairweather and Fox Riley—both no spring chickens, let’s be honest. Each one has been around the block a couple of times, has been knocked about, has been bruised, and is a tad wary of engaging in anything that goes further than a polite, “How do you do?” Noah’s reason is that thinks of himself in mostly negative terms (not handsome, not well built, no social skills, the worst user of dating apps since dating apps have been invented, a man living the dull life of a friend- and shagless doctor in a small town in southern England). Fox’s reason would be his latest boyfriend, who turned out to be a gaslighter of the most accomplished order (if you’re polite) or a narcissistic abuser (if you aren’t). Why his friends insisted on allowing that jerk to accompany them on their yearly summer trip (with his new paramour, moreoever) makes him question whether they are his true friends…

 

Noah and Fox would be an ill-fated match no matter what. But as mentioned, their “thing” starts in a holiday resort. Fox is there with his aforementioned friends (or “friends”, matter still pending), Noah with his… parents (how pathetic can you get?). They would never have talked to each other, either, for all the previously mentioned reasons, if some Higher Power with a special sense of humor hadn’t decided it would be interesting to watch them do it nonetheless. In fact, the chain of events is simple. Fox gets drunk, stumbles about in the dark, and falls asleep in the deckchair of Noah’s private terrace. The latter finds him there the next morning, one of Fox’s feet half-roasted to a crisp by the sun, and his doctor’s instincts immediately kick in—only they are stronger than his natural reserve. And the tragedy, comedy, plot starts rolling… Will they, can they, should they? And if they, you know, then what about when they get back to Europe? With Noah stuck down in the south of the UK, carrerwise, family-wise, and Fox up in Scotland where he’s managing a boarding school? Too many miles for a story rather that from the get-go was built on quite frail foundations…

 

The Higher Power with the special sense of humor is of course the author of this sweet love story, Sophia Soames. Making the impossible become possible is one of her trademarks, together with messy situations, quirky, perfectly personalised characters (no copy-paste guys on her watch), interesting settings brought to life by a powerful writing style, funny banter that always makes me giggle for pages, and the cute Happily Ever After one is looking for when opening a romance novel. This has been a book I particularly liked—you know, sometimes you’re lucky, pick up the right book at the right moment, and everything just clicks. That was the case with  ‘We Need to Talk’, which turned out to be the exact read I needed without even knowing it.

 

Let’s talk about Noah and Fox. Their back stories are offered, as always with Sophia, in little bits and pieces. More often than not, those pop up in a conversation between the two main characters, more often than not in a moment where one of them, for whatever reasons, has a bout of complete honesty. The beauty of it is that the reader discovers those fragments of a life together with the talker’s romantic counterpart. They not only help flesh out the character in question, but also create instants of intimacy, of shared understanding and empathy. What better way to get to know a person, be it a fictional one? While following those little revelations, I started to get a better grasp of each man: their wounds, their strengths, their weaknesses, the cracks in the daily façade they offer people.

 

Yes, this was a read I wholly recommend. Last details: you get sunny beaches and windswept heather under rainclouds. You get a mother and father (Noah’s) who are larger than life and so cute you’d love to invite them to your next barbecue. Plus you get another endearing surprise in the person of a young boy looking for a family, with an unbelievably imaginative mind and a strong will that maybe is capable of shaping everyone’s future in a direction no one could have guessed…

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the author. This book has been provided by the author for the purpose of a review.

 

Additional Information

Format	ebook and print
Length	Novel, 308 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-June-2026
Price	$4.99 ebook, $12.99 paperback, $16.99 hardcover
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2TL35C