it's casual
Evie Bloom wanted to be a dancer. She worked hard and trained, despite being in pain much of the time. Her grandmother had taken her to doctor after doctor, and none of them found anything wrong. They told her that she was okay, that she just had a low tolerance for pain, that there was nothing they could do for her. So she kept on. It was during a performance with her best friend Theo Cohen that she fell and hurt her ankle. After that hospital visit, a doctor took her seriously and ran more tests. That’s when she found out she had Chron’s disease. And that’s how she knew her dreams of being a dancer on Broadway were over.
She had planned on moving to New York to chase her dreams, and Theo was going there to chase his. He got into college in New York, and even though Evie’s dreams were crushed, she wanted to make sure that Theo still went after his. She had watched him as his mother had battled cancer, and now that she was better, Evie wanted him to follow his dreams, even if that meant he was moving across the country to study education.
Evie stayed in California and eventually found another dream job, being a Foley artist. She loved the idea of adding the sound effects to movies and television shows, and her dance training helped a lot. It had taught her precision and timing, key traits of a Foley artist. But it was a difficult career to break into, especially since she needed a job with health insurance. So Evie worked as an editor for podcasters, a job that offered her the health insurance she needed, while trying to chase after freelance Foley jobs.
Evie and Theo had grown up together, and even during Theo’s years of college in New York, they stayed in touch. They watched Survivor together every week. And when his mother’s cancer came back, Evie was there for him. After college, Theo moved back to California and got a job teaching at the same elementary school where his mother taught. But when his roommates told him they were moving out, he needed a new roommate fast. And then he learned that the lease had a rider, that each person living in the apartment had to make three times the rent payment. But that was only for singles.
Theo comes up with the perfect solution: he and Evie can get married. He has excellent health insurance, and if they’re married, it’s her insurance too. That will free her up to take a fellowship with an established Foley artist and make the connections she needs to move ahead with her dreams. And he can stay in his apartment. It’s a perfect solution. Except for one tiny problem. He’s a little in love with her and always has been. And Evie is a little in love with Theo and always has been. But if they agree to keep it casual, then it will all work out in the end. I mean, what could go wrong?
Friends with Benefits is a rom com where the benefits in the relationship are literally health insurance. This romance deals with a lot of serious issues, like chronic illness, cancer, the death of a parent, and the abandonment of a parent. Evie and Theo both have had to deal with heavy problems when they were teenagers, and that has repercussions in their friendship and in their marriage. There is a lot of laughter and joy in these pages, but there is darkness also.
I listened to the audio book of Friends with Benefits, narrated in alternating chapters by Gail Shalan and GM. Hakim. I thought they both did a really good job with the humor and with the challenging issues these characters faced. I liked that some of the chapters overlapped, with the end of one giving one character’s perspective on the scene with the opening of the next chapter telling the other character’s perspective on the same situation, and the narrators handled those transitions perfectly. I really enjoyed Friend with Benefits. I appreciated how the Chron’s disease was handled with gentleness, and the childhood trauma was talked about with grace.
Egalleys for Friends with Benefits were provided by Celadon Books and an early copy of the audio was provided by Macmillan Audio through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
