Review: Our Stop

Author: Laura Jane Williams

Overview from Goodreads:

What if you almost missed the love of your life?

Nadia gets the 7.30 train every morning without fail. Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma’s after too much wine.

Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn’t been able to sleep properly since his dad died.

One morning, Nadia’s eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper:

To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I’m the guy who’s always standing near the doors… Drink sometime?

So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.

Personal Review

If you’re ever in London, you should definitely check out the Missed Connection publication. It’s an extremely fun and addictive read as you try to look around you to see if you can see the two people that are trying to connect meet each other. You can see the appeal with why these two characters would be of interest to read about. You’ll also like this novel if you liked You’ve Got Mail – it’s not a remake, but you can definitely see the inspiration.

Nadia has constant moments of creating “New Year’s Resolution” type deals with herself to improve her life. She vows to get up earlier and be on time to work, become more organized, and also to improve her love life.  She also wants to find love, but has been burned before by past experiences. She has good intentions to keep up her morning routine, but finds herself failing each week, only to start again the following week.

Daniel sees Nadia one day on the 7:30am Northern Line train and develops a crush on her. He places an ad in Missed Connections as he is a shy romantic asking about meeting the “cute blonde girl” he saw on the train. Nadia sees the message and wants to find out more about the guy from the message. They keep having exchanges in the paper and keep trying to meet, but events occur and they miss each other. They agree to meet at a bar and end up not meeting and other forces keep them apart for most of the novel. One complaint is that the story drags for the length it takes for Nadia and Daniel to meet. It’s still enjoyable, but I feel the part before they meet in person could’ve been cut to make room for the aftermath of our two main characters getting together.

The writing in each of their ads was cute to read and the interactions between the two main characters were nice. Nadia took a while to get used to as she seemed a little immature in many situations that was a little wearing on the reader. I feel that she didn’t experience the typical character growth that you usually see in many other novels of this genre.

The theme of social media was a good addition as people became obsessed with their story and their personal hashtag. It was an intriguing look into how people can become so invested in another person’s life and how people just want to believe in the love story (or just the possibility of one). This aspect put a lot of pressure on Nadia and Daniel’s relationship so it was a good insight into how something seemingly harmless, such as people just being interested in another’s love story, can actually have negative ripple effects as Nadia and Daniel can’t just get to know each other in public in peace at some points.

Overall, this book was a fun read that didn’t take a lot of effort to get through. I enjoyed reading it and would definitely read more by this author. I didn’t become fully invested until about halfway as the beginning was just too slow as a set-up, but by the time the story truly got going then it was all worth it. This book had some flaws and didn’t stick to me as one of my must re-reads, but I still liked it and will pick it up again if the mood strikes.