Clare Gilmore's smart, swoony sophomore rom-com, Perfect Fit, follows fashion start-up CEO Josephine "Josie" Davis as she wrestles with her growing attraction to a handsome consultant and the perennial question of whether and how to balance work, life, and (what might be) love.
Josie has spent her 20s feverishly building Revenant, her Austin, Tex., sustainable clothing brand, and trying to stay out of the spotlight. After an ill-advised kiss in high school that blew up her life in person and on social media, Josie has focused intently on creating a successful company. When her company's new consultant turns out to be Will Grant, her high school best friend's twin brother (see: ill-advised kiss), Josie is forced to confront her inconvenient desire for Will and the distinct possibility that she's invested her entire self-worth into her work.
Gilmore (Love Interest) highlights the insidious ways a person's self-esteem can become entangled with both productivity and public perception, creating some necessary epiphanies for Josie alongside a sweet slow-burn romance. Josie's "biker gang," fellow cyclists Giovanna and Leonie, and her best friend/right-hand woman, Camila, provide both comic relief and wise female perspectives, while Will proves the perfect book boyfriend: handsome, smart, thoughtful, and impossibly kind, with enough of his own baggage to create a modicum of conflict. Although readers can guess how the love story will unfold, the true "perfect fit" of Josie's story is--satisfyingly--centered on finally designing a life to the measurements she chooses. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams