A Brush With Love by Mazey Eddings
CW: Described Panic Attacks, Grief, Past Parental Emotional & Mental Abuse, Past Death of a Parent, Sexism, Struggles with Anxiety, Drug Use, Hangover, Graphic Sex, Guilt, Past Islamophobia, Potential Alcoholism, Trauma, Past Car Crash Described, Minor Violence, Ableism, Internalized Ableism, Past Cancer Death
3/5
I may have misgivings about Overdrive's replacement, Libby, but it has one perk; you can sort your TBR list with custom tags. I have a tag for Emily Lawrence, one of my favorite audiobook narrators. She has a great voice and I can almost guarantee that a book read by her will be Jewish. This is how I ended up reading A Brush With Love by Mazey Eddings. While I wish she had been the book's only reader, Vikas Adam doesn't have a bad voice. I am also unsure that I would have rated the book higher had Lawrence been the only reader. As I'll expand upon further below, I have mixed feelings about Eddings's book.
A Brush With Love focuses on Harper Horowitz's last year of dental school as she prepares to become a doctor. One morning at school she crashes into Dan Craig, a 1st year doctorate student and ruins his project. When she offers to help fix it, the pair find that they enjoy spending time together. Unfortunately, Harper can't spare much time for a relationship; she has a degree to finish and a residency to secure. Dan, meanwhile, is struggling to find joy in his life. Between a career he doesn't want and Harper's foolhardy plan to be just-friends, he'll need to figure out how to put himself first.
I found that mental health was written and handled very well in this book. Eddings is autistic. She also has ADHD and anxiety. She used her experience with anxiety to write Harper's character. There are clearly described panic attacks, both from Harper's perspective and from Dan's as he tries to help her. Anxiety, guilt, ADHD, Grief, sexism, stereotypes, and more are explored within A Brush With Love. Although I don't think Dan's perspective was needed for this story, I appreciate what both characters brought to the book. Harper was dealing with the overwhelming weight of untreated anxiety while trying to secure her future. She's often close to spiraling when things move out of her control. Dan has been trapped into pursuing dentistry for the sake of his mother after his father died. He had a complicated relationship with his father and dentistry is not his passion. These are two fully realized characters that give the book more depth.
While the schooling plots and mental health exploration kept me interested in the book and stopped me from DNF'ing A Brush With Love, I definitely have some complaints. The first is the main romance. Dan and Harper don't seem like a good fit for most of the book. I feel that Harper is worse for Dan than Dan is for Harper. She strings him along, she gets mad at him for things that are her fault, she always has him over instead of going to his place, and she never tries to encourage him to pursue the career he really wants. As for Dan, most of his mistakes can be chalked up to learning how to help someone with anxiety, but he needs to learn that consent applies outside of the bedroom too. Harper told him not to interfere with her patient, that she had trouble with crowds, and that she wanted to stay just-friends, but he didn't listen. In the end, the book taking place over many months gave me some hope for their future. I just wish the bulk of the development wasn't saved for the end-of-book time skips.
My other major complaint is how Judaism was incorporated into the story. Eddings starts off with heavy Jewish representation via Harper. Harper Hannah Horowitz is a very Jewish name, she goes to Shabbat services at the student union, she's locked into the local Jewish community thanks to her rabbi back home, and she has a favorite deli in Philly. However, this all disappears from the writing by halfway through the book. We're left with Harper's name and the knowledge we gained at the beginning. Given that one of the main reasons I picked this book up was for the Judaism, I felt let down. On an amusing note, I did enjoy the new awareness I have that non-Jews don't all know what Shabbat is. Thank you Dan!
Despite my complaints, I'm likely to read future books by Eddings. She got my interest and I'd like to see what she does with different relationships. If you want to read a romance novel written by a real life dentist or you're looking for a new slow-burn to read, you should check out A Brush With Love. I hope you'll enjoy the romance aspect more than I did!
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