My Own Best Enemy : A Sweet Romantic Comedy (Apple Valley Love Stories Book 2)

Emily ("Emi") Jones has told herself she hates Nash Hendrix ever since her first day of class in the third grade, at Apple Valley Elementary School, in a fictional small town in Oregon, when she was introduced to the class as Emily Jones, and young Nash snarkily referred to her as "Enemy Jones." The students in the class began gleefully chanting that nickname, and it stuck to her for the next 10 years, throughout elementary school, junior high and high school, much to her anguish. Emi became firmly convinced, and has never changed her mind throughout the last two decades, that Nash's nickname is the entire reason she was an alienated loner with no friends the whole of her school years. However, in spite of telling herself she hated Nash, even though he never did anything else to her again after that one incident in third grade, Emi would secretly watch him play on the school baseball team during junior high and high school, acting very much like a girl with a big crush. She never had a boyfriend until she started dating a new boy in school her senior year, Travis Wainwright. After graduating high school, she dated Travis mostly long distance for the next nine years, ultimately, briefly, becoming engaged to him, until he dumped her seven months ago for another woman.Emi is an anxiety-ridden perfectionist who has spent her entire life constantly afraid of rejection. Her only real friendship is with her BFF Brooke, who is the heroine of the first book in this series. They were college roommates all the way through their four years of undergraduate work as well as the years it took for Emi to earn a master's degree in library science and Brooke to pursue a teaching degree. Emi is currently a librarian in her old hometown, Apple Valley, where she returned a year ago in order to be finally in the same place as Travis. She is still there after he dumped her. But she is currently applying for work all the way across the country in order to escape from the bad memories of her broken romance and her unhappy childhood.At the start of this story, Emi is trying hard to overcome her lifelong anxiety disorder by keeping a journal and trying to take risks, in order to move beyond her constant fear of the humiliation of failure. There is no indication she is seeing a therapist. Because Brooke is getting married to Nash's best friend Mac, as maid of honor and best man, they are brought together constantly for many wedding planning events throughout this novel.Emi is an extremely unlikable heroine. She describes herself, to herself, as a nice person who's constantly polite, but for the first 70% of the book she is constantly rude, to the point of downright nastiness, every time she is near Nash. In contrast, he is consistently pleasant to her, never returning her rudeness. Her motivation for being a bully to Nash is that she hates him, and obviously wants to punish him, because she has convinced herself that he ruined her life when he impulsively gave her an extremely mild nickname 20 years ago, when they were both 8-year-old children.This entire premise is so nonsensically immature on Emi's part, it is hard to believe that within the course of the two weeks during which the story events occur, Nash would fall in love with her and her with him.The story is told in the first person point of view of both Emi and Nash. From his side of the fence, we learn that though he has worked for Mac's family's construction company his entire adult life, Nash doesn't feel like he has truly found his path in life. Other than having his BFF Mac, in his own way he is just as socially alienated and maladjusted as Emi. He has never made a commitment to any woman, only very casually dating over the years. Since this is a G-rated novel, there's no indication that he has ever been sexually involved with anyone. Mainly because the author steers as far away from sexuality as is possible, to the point of the protagonists coming off as borderline asexual. There is nothing more sensual between them, even at the end of the novel where the HEA of marriage is in the offing, than a few kisses, and no part of each other's body is ever touched by them except their faces and each other's hands.The small town setting is very limited in its presentation. There are multiple scenes at the library where Emi works, several scenes at a local coffee shop, a couple of scenes at a local bar, and multiple scenes at different bridal-venue stores. Other than that, there is not a strong sense of place or personality for the town of Apple Valley. This, however, is fairly typical for the genre of Hallmark-style, small-town romances. Fans of that type of book may enjoy this story, if they can get past Emi's incessant meanness.I rate this book as follows:Heroine: 2 starsHero: 3 starsSubcharacters: 3 starsRomance Plot: 2 starsSetting: 2 starsOverall: 2 stars

I really enjoyed this story just as much my second time through — in some ways, maybe even more than the first. Nash and Emi are some of the best main characters (although, as much as I’ve tried, I still struggle to choose a top favorite pair from Julie Christianson’s Apple Valley Love Stories 🤷‍♀️). Both Emi and Nash struggle with some big insecurities and fears, and both have to decide if it’s worth it to work through those and move beyond them.For the audio version, Rock Engle and Stephanie Rose narrated. I enjoyed them both and will be listening again — I liked the representation of Nash more than that of Emi though, overall. For Emi, I think I found her inner thoughts more realistically portrayed than her actual dialogue with others, at least going by what I had imagined/was expecting. Even so, it was good, and I loved it.Julie Christianson does an excellent job of making her readers feel like we’re there in the midst of this world she’s written. These books can be read as stand-alones (they’re each a complete story), but they’re best read in order because you’ll get the full context and also avoid spoilers that way… not to mention, they’re each excellent! One of my favorite romcom writers – and she only writes clean stories, so I love that I don’t have to sort through reviews to make sure that I’m not going to run across anything I don’t want to read.I would categorize this book as… a plate of nachos. Something that keeps you coming back for more.

I fell in love with Nash and Emi immediately and couldn't get enough of their connection. I laughed, I swooned, my stomach tightened at the emotional moments, and I loved every minute of this story! Nash is the perfect cinnamon roll book boyfriend, and Emi is as unique as she is beautifully flawed.

So much tension, and so satisfying when I got to the end. This series has been terrific, and I cannot wait to read Lucy’s story next. I accidentally started with the fourth book in the series, but that hasn’t detracted from starting from the beginning at all.

Even if you haven’t read the whole series, you’ll enjoy this as a stand-alone. But I highly recommend the series. You’ll fall in love with all of the characters as well as Apple Valley.

I really enjoyed this book. Lighthearted and fun. ❤️

This book is one of the best examples of healing and moving on from past romantic trauma. FMC had a failed engagement, and MMC has a father who has been cheating on women his whole life. Both the MCs have pretty much sworn off the ideas of romance and commitment. This book was a journey they took to heal individually and to wholly love and commit to each other, and it was extremely empowering to read it.[By standard romance novel terms, this one is a long time enemies to lovers + small-town romance.]

They are quirky, show how different our perspective of self vs what others see of you are, and what strength and resilience mean. I loved the story (though as a romantic comedy you know if it going to be a happy ending - but that's why we read them!) Read in one sitting..

Characters were likeable enough, and it was a nice escape from daily life for a while. First book of this author's I've read, and the 3rd installment sounds interesting, so I might give it a go. We'll see ...