Overall Grade: A-

Tropes: small town; preacher’s kid FMC; age gap; close proximity/neighbors; single dad MMC

Expectations – the heavy suggestions that society lays on you based on some arbitrary set of standards. Many times, it’s impossible to live up to those expectations. When we try, we conscript ourselves to wear an identity far too big or small for our spirit. Some wear the heavy clothing of expectation with a facade of perfection. Don’t look too closely, though. You’ll see the tears in the fabric or the breaks in the musculoskeletal system from carrying that uncomfortable weight. Others will throw off the garment of expectation and make their way, but that way is often lonely and fraught with unease because making one’s own rules about life is a bumpy path away from society’s suggestions. 

You may be curious why I began this review for Jewel E. Ann’s The Apple Tree with this reflection on expectations. Well, her first two stories in her Sunday Morning series underscore this idea of expectations. Yes, she shades around these ideas with the story of a “good girl” hate to love romance with a “bad boy,” her boyfriend’s brother in book 1, Sunday Morning. But the second book, The Apple Tree, provides a bit of the antithesis to the first book. Eve, the younger sister of Sarah, the FMC of Sunday Morning, isn’t afraid to “break the rules” of the household when she falls hard for the new next-door neighbor, single dad MMC, Kyle and his son, Josh. 

Jewel E. Ann uses the idea of expectations to underscore how we might come to her story with a set of expectations mired in societal standards. Should Eve and Kyle have a successful romance if 1) they have a ten-year age difference, 2) she isn’t quite sure what career she wants, and 3) as a teacher and coach, their small community might have certain opinions about them? You can’t help but notice your awareness of their plight as you read their story. Ann deftly moves us through the complications of their burgeoning relationship, forcing readers to encounter and interrogate their expectations for Eve and Kyle. What she leaves you with, though, is a realization that it doesn’t matter. Love is love, after all, and Eve and Kyle have the qualities necessary for working through the difficult moments in a love relationship. 

Everything standard in a Jewel E. Ann romance is found in The Apple Tree. Obviously, the ongoing tension that underpins the angst of her romance both drives the story forward while also slowing the read (some of us have to read the ending to remember the promise of romance’s HEAs). Her prose is some of my favorite in romancelandia. It isn’t like a Kennedy Ryan or Sierra Simone’s almost academic elegant prose, but she writes sentences that grab at you with their candor and reflection. Even more, Eve and Kyle are likable, even when they make choices that pull the happiness out of the story. You understand their choices because they feel like choices the reader would make. Jewel E. Ann’s characters, even when set in unreal plots, are relatable because they live in worlds (most of the time) like our own. 

If I have one criticism of The Apple Tree, it’s the same as I had for Sunday Morning. I don’t understand the need to set it in the ‘80s. Honestly, the ‘80s references are sprinkled throughout the book in such a way that she could have removed them, and we wouldn’t miss out on them. I know it allows her to remove cell phones and technology of the 21st century, but I don’t believe it would have changed the story. Again, this is my curiosity. I’m sure there are ’70s and ’80s babies who love the allusion to one of their favorite time periods.

Jewel E. Ann’s The Apple Tree continues her Sunday Morning series beautifully. I prefer Eve and Kyle’s story to the story of her first book. Kyle and Eve fall hard for each other. Their love for each other, at its core, is never the problem of this book. They find “their person” in the other. It’s the expectations of everyone around them that muddies their love (well, except for Grandma Bonnie – my favorite character in the book). Thankfully, Jewel E. Ann aptly walks us through their story carefully and gifts us with a beautiful happily ever after to revel in.

In love and romance,

Professor A