Review of Definitely Better Now by Ava Robinson

In Ava Robinson's debut novel, she offers an appealingly imperfect main character making missteps and forging a path forward while adjusting to romantic, family, and work complications after a year of sobriety.

Emma is friendly but reserved with her coworkers. She's focused on extending her one year of sobriety--a fact that she doesn't share easily with others, except at her frequent recovery support meetings.

When she's assigned to assist on the committee for the office's extravagant upcoming holiday party, she's thrown together with a cheesy, persistent executive who unfortunately spotted her joke of a dating profile before she pulled it down--and Ben, the intriguing IT manager she can't stop thinking about.

But her dating game is rusty, her sobriety program mentor is claustrophobically rigid, her estranged father is facing devastating news, and Emma is afraid to be her real self with anyone new as she navigates her new, sober life. It feels like every messy part of her life is about to converge in a destructive collision.

I fell in love with Emma and her imperfect, determined path forward, her sometimes-regretful reckonings with her past, and her fight to be vulnerable for a potential relationship she begins to believe in. Her missteps felt relatable, and I was hooked by her difficult decision-making and her bravery.

This is a great example of a light-fiction-feeling romance that deals with weighty, meaningful themes. It's a combination I love.

More Romantic Novels with Weighty Themes

This is Ava Robinson's first novel.

Abby Jimenez and Carley Fortune are two more authors who offer deep, heartfelt situations, messy complications, and real-life consequences within a romantic structure.