Review: Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake

A clever and steamy queer romantic comedy about taking chances and accepting love—with all its complications—by debut author Ashley Herring Blake.

Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her.

When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all.

Having raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise…at first. Though they’ve known each other for years, they don’t really know each other—so Claire is unsettled when Delilah figures out exactly what buttons to push. When they’re forced together during a gauntlet of wedding preparations—including a plot to save Astrid from her horrible fiancé—Claire isn’t sure she has the strength to resist Delilah’s charms. Even worse, she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to… 

• Title: Delilah Green Doesn’t Care
• Author:  Ashley Herring Blake
• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication Date: February 22nd, 2022
• Genre: Contemporary, Romance, LGBTQ+ 
• Targeted Age Range: Adult
• Content Warnings: past parental death, emotionally distant parent, explicit sexual content, toxic/controlling relationships of side characters
• Rating: ★★★★.5

The last thing Delilah Green wants to do is return to her hometown of Bright Falls. The town is filled with painful memories of her past — losing her father as a young child, and growing up with her emotionally distant step mother and a step sister who never bothered to get to know her. However, when Delilah’s step mother offers her a large sum of money to photograph her step sister Astrid’s wedding, she can’t refuse. Things take a turn when Delilah runs into Claire Sutherland. Delilah’s known Claire since they were teenagers, as Claire is one of Astrid’s best friends and part of what Delilah likes to call Astrid’s “coven”, but the two were never friends. But when meeting as adults, Delilah and Claire can’t deny their immediate connection. Delilah decides that if she’s going to be stuck in this godforsaken town and deal with her exhausting stepsister and stepmother for two weeks, she might as well have some fun. What Delilah doesn’t expect is for this trip to have her rethinking everything she thought she once knew.

I can’t lie, I initially picked up Delilah Green Doesn’t Care because of it’s beautiful purple cover – we know I can’t resist anything that has the color purple on it! This book may have been a cover buy, but I’m so glad that I picked it up because I ended up loving it! I’ve been really enjoying romance novels lately, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care is one of my favorites in recent memory! There are so many fun tropes that I love in this one:grumpy/sunshine, there’s only one bed, and best friend’s sibling, to name a few and all of them are done very well.

This book was a hard one to put down as I really enjoyed Blake’s writing style. Everything flowed smoothly and it made me feel like I was experiencing everything with the characters as opposed to reading about them. The writing is super funny and quippy without being over the top or slapstick. It felt very reminiscent of how I converse with my friends and how we tell stories, which I think is part of why I connected to it so much. Also, I love a good romance that is set during another character’s wedding, as hijinks always ensure, and this book absolutely delivered on that!

While the book may focus on a group of thirty-something adults, I think of this as a coming of age story. To be clear, I don’t mean that this is a coming of age story where the character’s are realizing their sexuality and coming to terms with that. Delilah and Claire are very clear about their sexualities and have been since they were teenagers, what I mean is that both women have had this idea of who they are and who they can be up until this point, and throughout this book they realize that there’s still so much about themselves that there is to discover. This is a theme that I personally really enjoy, and am hoping that it’s further explored in the next book, Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail.

This story is absolutely character driven, and I loved these characters so much. The book’s title may be Delilah Green Doesn’t Care but Delilah Green does care. In fact, she cares quite a lot. I thought that Delilah was a greatly complex character and I adored her. She’s whip smart, funny, snarky and a total badass. She has a deep capacity to love, but because of past trauma and miscommunication, she’s used to closing herself off and it was so wonderful to watch her open up and flourish throughout the book. 

I really adored Claire as the love interest! She has such a big heart, is truly is a ray of sunshine and I loved her relationship with her daughter, Ruby. She’s a very dedicated mother and is doing her best to give her child everything that she deserves even with her somewhat difficult relationship with Ruby’s father. She runs a bookstore that I would absolutely spend all my time in and I just adored her.

Claire and Delilah’s relationship is literally everything I love. I love their effortless banter with one another — they’re so flirty and I am swooning! They’re really able to open up and be who they are with one another in a completely judgment free way that both of them really needed and it was so great to see them tear down their walls for one another. The line “And for once you let go / of your fears and your ghosts” from Taylor Swift’s You Are In Love absolutely applies to their relationship and I’m just kind of obsessed with them.

This review would not be complete if I did not take a moment to talk about the character who I want to be my new best friend, Iris. Iris is the third member of Astrid’s best friend group, and I found myself laughing out loud every time Iris said anything. She’s super sarcastic, and bold but completely genuine and is the type of friend who drops everything the second one of her friends needs her. She’s just absolutely hilarious and I am obsessed with her. Anytime she said anything I found myself either saying, “I would say that” or “Bestie, you get it!” so I feel like Iris and I are kindred spirits. Blake’s characterization is so strong, and all the side characters have distinct personalities, but for me, Iris was absolutely the stand out.

One of my least favorite tropes in romance novels is miscommunication. I just sit there the entire time yelling at the characters saying, “just use your words and talk to them!”. There is miscommunication in Delilah Green Doesn’t Care but not in the way that you would expect. Instead of the miscommunication happening in the romantic relationships, it happens in the familial relationships, and in this case, felt so realistic and understanding that it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it made me more sympathetic to all the characters involved (well except for Delilah’s stepmother Isabel, I’m still not a fan of her). The type of miscommunication here is so common in families, and I think that Blake navigated it in a real and relatable way and I loved how Delilah and Astrid handled these realizations as adults. 

Astrid really grew on me and I found myself really feeling for her as the story went on. I was so proud of her for standing up for herself, and I think that she went through a really great character arc as well. I’m looking forward to seeing her story continue in Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail.

What makes me laugh is that when I first planned on writing this review, I had anticipated it being on the shorter side, but once I started sharing my thoughts I simply couldn’t stop. I truly loved this book and I know that I’ll be revisiting it many times.

Links for Delilah Green Doesn’t Care: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound