Ruby Spencer’s Whisky Year by Rochelle Bilow (Review by Stephanie Rowitz)

Rating: 5/5

Ruby Spencer is ready for an adventure. Sick of feeling lost in a sea of countless New Yorkers in a job she’s outgrown, Ruby sets her sights on moving to a remote town in the Scottish Highlands for a year to write a cookbook. There she encounters many eccentric and endearing characters who make her rethink what home really means to her. As if she wasn’t already warming up to the idea of moving to Thistlecross permanently, she meets ruggedly handsome Brochan, whose direct and swoon-worthy approach to courting Ruby just might be what she needs to cleanse her drab American dating palate.

If you’re a fan of the “overworked woman who’s frustrated with where her life is headed travels to a small town to reevaluate things” trope, then this book is for you. I love this kind of storyline, so this book was right up my alley. The writing is whip-smart and snarky which makes this book a delightful, laugh-out-loud kind of read.

I also liked that the main characters were a bit older in this book. Ruby is in her mid-thirties while Brochan is closer to forty. They both have been in other relationships so they’ve figured out what they want out of life and in a potential partner. I also liked when miscommunications arose between the two main characters, as they often do in Romance novels, they discussed it like adults and took time apart to think about whether or not they were willing to work through their problem together. It was such a refreshingly mature way to handle something that often gets blown out of proportion in Romance novels that it left me feeling that these characters would be fine long after the story concluded. I really like how the author navigated conflicts and tough life decisions in this book.

The ending is sweet, but in a very believable way that leaves you feeling satisfied and like you, too, could run off to the Scottish Highlands to start a new chapter in your life if you wanted to. I whole-heartedly recommend this book.