Pride & Joie: #MyNewLife, A Series by M.E. Carter

Series: #My New Life

Release Date: December 22nd, 2017

Rating: 3.25/5 stars

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I have to mention that Pride & Joie is a compilation of a completed serial series, meaning that the story is broken up into three parts. There is repetitive information given at the beginning of each part. I understand that this is a/was a serial series, but for me, it really interrupted the flow of reading.

Pride & Joie was seriously cute and funny. I’m not usually a fan of romances where the main characters are 40+. I am also wary of books where one of the MCs has a deceased significant other. The heroine was hilarious with her inner monologue since she is a 40-year-old woman going to class with a bunch of 20-year-olds. It was seriously amusing reading her reactions to the football gossip since her son is on the football team. She’s definitely a southern mom–very proper and polite–but while she’s judgy, it’s more of a judgment from experience (she was a party girl in university, and that’s how she got pregnant). I also really enjoyed her time with her friends since it added to her character: Joie isn’t just a mom. Although her mothering of certain football players was also really cute.

I also really enjoyed the hero of the story. He was very respectful, but you could still tell he was totally into Joie. It was also fascinating seeing how Carter pulled off the transition from being Isaac’s (Joie’s son) Coach to him being the mother’s boyfriend. The football component also took up a decent amount of Pride’s POV, which I found was refreshing. Also, there was no rush in the development of Carter Pride and Joie’s relationship; the main characters each had their own lives, which took up a significant portion of their time (Pride with his job and Joie with her school).

Each part of the serial series has its own “problem” or situation that the couple has to overcome. As the story progresses, the issues (of course) become less superficial and actually start to boil down to the compromises the main characters have to make with each other. This made it feel like a more realistic romance, but–for me, at least–it also made it loose some of its magic. It came to such a point near the end that I was kind of un-falling for the hero since so many things that were important to Joie were kind of going over his head.

The most annoying part of Pride & Joie was Joie’s name. For me, Joie is pronounced the same as Joey, but further into the first part, you find out her name is actually pronounced Joy. However, for the rest of the novel, I could not get out of the habit of pronouncing it, Joey! Also, while there was no jealousy or insecurity of Pride’s deceased wife on Joie’s part, there were times that the hero would compare them, or Joie would ask very serious and wtf questions concerning Carter’s dead wife (but that really only happened once). I’m sure Carter didn’t mean for it to come across as him comparing them (he even tells Joie that he can’t compare them), but it’s suggested in the way that Carter recounts how with Sheila (his wife) he never had to do ‘x,’ etc. It got to the point that I really didn’t want to hear about her anymore, although I did understand it was a vital component of their relationship.

Overall, Pride & Joie was funny and cute. Still, throughout the novel, I felt that the “cute” factor was diminishing, being replaced by this tension of uncertainty over the main characters’ relationship. I understand that no couple or character is perfect, but I have fallen in love with some characters that are perfectly unperfect, and for me, Pride and Joie missed the mark.