Love In Ruins: A Small Town Forced Proximity Romance (The Pink House Book 1)
My take on the book:
Samantha, a travel blogger on probation, is assigned a task by her boss Angolie to visit the Pink House Hotel in Pearl Grove and submit a critical review of the property. Unable to secure a booking, Samantha crashes a wedding being held at the hotel, posing as the bride’s cousin. During her stay, she meets Abhay Parambil, the eldest son of Krish Parambil, who inherited the Dutch colonial property from his father.
Abhay works round the clock to run and maintain the hotel seamlessly, as constant issues like kitchen fires, power failures and broken water pipes keep him on his toes the entire day. Eldest among the five siblings, Abhay gave up on his dreams to save his ancestral hotel, which meant the world to him. After the wedding is over, before Samantha could check out, a heavy storm takes over the coastal town, blocking the roads and forcing Samantha to overstay.
Samantha quickly builds a good relationship with Abhay and the other hotel staff, helping them and other hotel guests through the storm. Samantha and Abhay hope their relationship turns into something meaningful, but writing a review that her boss expects might destroy Pink House’s reputation forever. As she slowly falls in love with the place and the man who ran it, Samantha is conflicted between her commitment to her job and her heart.
What is the reality behind Samantha’s assignment and how will it affect her relationship with Abhay forms the rest of the story.
The author weaves a story that is both warm and tense. The Pink House Hotel is almost a character with its Dutch colonial charm, its imperfections, and its stubborn refusal to give up that mirror Abhay’s own personality. The duck pond, the charming “Dawn” and “Dusk”, the library, these details make Pink House a real place and not just a prop.
The coastal setting of Pearl Grove adds a lovely atmospheric quality to the narrative, and the storm sequence and the Parambil boat festival are handled with a lot of detail and finesse.The minor details like the locals Abhay interacts with, the bookshop owner, the flower vendor effortlessly add the small town charm.
What I liked most is that the romance does not overshadow the ethical conflict at the centre of the story. Samantha is not simply a woman falling in love but a woman being asked to choose between two things she values, and that makes her journey genuinely interesting to follow. Abhay is written with a quiet dignity that stays with you long after the story ends. Rosie, Victor, Krish, Dev and Rishi are all supporting characters that add depth to the story while being emotional support for Abhay. I am eagerly looking forward to the next books in this series which will narrate the story of Dev and Rishi.
Love in Ruins is a breezy yet emotionally layered read, perfect for anyone who enjoys romance stories with a little bit of moral complexity.
My rating:
4/5.