3.5* – Eun is a mess. Her career is her whole life but is it worth it? Five years ago, she left her father’s house yelling at him after he tried some intervention to stop her from being a lesbian. His sudden death brings Eun back to her hometown and highlights how lonely she really is. When she meets Morgan, the locksmith who took her father’s dog in (not that Eun even knew he had a dog), it’s lust at first sight.
I find instalust in books much more plausible than instalove. And the way Brenda Murphy exposes it makes total sense. How it turns into more too.
Because she’s a mess, Eun is pretty frustrating. She’s always done what was expected of her (except the lesbian thing) so she’s not sure what she wants. Morgan is incredibly patient with the back and forth but she, too, has her own insecurities (how could a woman like Eun want a woman like Morgan?) so she screws up too. And that’s when I wanted to yell at the both of them. Talk, people! You can’t accuse the other of stonewalling instead of talking if you run away too. Ugh.
Fortunately, Brenda Murphy doesn’t write stupid people so the not-communicating didn’t last too long. They did have a lot of sex, and while I’m usually all for it, it felt a bit repetitive.
Lockset is the second book in the University Square series but can be read as a standalone. I may have liked it a little more than the first book, On the Square, and I recommend reading both.
Jude in the Stars 