How To Fail At Flirting by Denise Williams - Book Review

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How To Fail At Flirting is Denise Williams' debut novel, after reading her second romance, Fastest Way To Fall, I knew I had to read this book. Once again, Williams made me fall in love with these characters, and wish I had a chance to experience something like this as well. 

This novel focuses on Naya, a professor who is always hard-working and prefers to focus on her job rather than go out. That is until her friends convince her to go out and complete a to-do list of what to do during the night. She does, even though she wishes not to and luckily she bumps into a stranger who is willing to help her with this list. You guessed it… she meets her love interest, Jake.
He is everything she has been looking for without realising, he makes her confident, something which she has lost after being with an abusive boyfriend. But the question is, will Naya accept her true self as a confident woman or will she return back to who she was before?

At the start, I was quite worried about how this novel will flow due to it mentioning the ex-boyfriend being abusive. However, Williams did an ideal job of this sensitive topic and didn’t picture that this abuse equals love, something which occurs more than it should. Instead, Williams creates a clear understanding that abuse, no matter physical or emotional is not right when it comes to love.
What was also nice was to see that Williams made sure to add that even if a person has been through what Naya has, they, too, deserve love and happiness.
However, there is something that I think was rather clever of Williams, and you most likely would not realise if you read this book before her second novel (which is something I did). One of the main characters in her second novel, Wes, did make a cameo and at that stage, he was still with his girlfriend who is his ex in The Fastest Way To Fall. I really love this Easter egg and it suggests that these books are from the same universe. 
Seeing Denise Williams doing this made me feel even more confident in writing my romance novels as I too love to do this when side characters of a book end up receiving a novel with them as the focus.

As a warning, there is a tense scene near the end between Naya and her ex-boyfriend. Therefore, if abuse is a trigger for you then this novel might not be the one for you. 

Overall, due to how this novel made me feel and the love I have for Williams' writing I would give it 5/5 stars.

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