Romantic Revelations: From the Jump Review

The review

Olivia Bakersfield, or as her friends call her, Liv, is the main character of From The Jump, concerned with all things stability and leading the “ideal lifestyle.” We learn early on that there are two things most important to Liv, maintaining her friendship with Deiss, Phoebe, Mac, and Simone and ensuring she is financially stable and is the perfect “her.” The fivesome of friends meet in college and maintain a friendship, regularly meeting on Thursday evenings and planning annual extravagant trips for eleven years and counting. The only problem? Liv’s dedication to living her perfect lifestyle has forced her to miss out on every trip while she attempts to climb the ranks at her unfulfilling and quite boring marketing gig. When pushed by a co-worker to embrace saying “no,” Liv takes a leave of absence from work and rushes to join her best friends on their annual trip to South Africa.

Booking a last-minute flight and hotel forces Liv to relax her ever-planned lifestyle, forgoing her prim and proper routines of looking “presentable” when venturing out. Here, we really begin to appreciate Waldon’s push to realize that it is okay not to be perfect all the time and to embrace each day rather than constantly worrying. We also begin to see the development of Liv and Deiss’ friendship, as she is forced to stay with him throughout the trip after seeing the nightmare of a place she was booked to stay in during her trip. Liv is faced with a dilemma, both internally and externally, from Phoebe and Simone, as they all agree that they will not enter into any type of romantic relationship with the men of the group, Deiss and Mac. Phoebe is the spark of this pact, based on her previous relationship with Mac, which ended and left her devastated to lose him as a romantic partner while attempting to maintain their group’s united friendship. Liv, however, is able to quickly overcome her reluctance to make this promise, as she convinces herself that Deiss would never be interested in her in the first place. As the trip comes to an end, Liv is pushed to think about her friendships after having unfiltered and constant bonding time with her friends.

Upon returning from their annual trip, Liv comes to find that her bank account has been hacked into and her home ransacked, leaving her without a home to reside or her nest of savings to allow her to quit her job and go freelance. Deiss comes to the rescue once more, however, as he insists that Liv stays with him for the time being. Despite her initial reluctance to allow Deiss to do so much for her, Liv begins to fall into a routine, working with Deiss at the record store he manages, working on small freelance projects, and becoming integrated into his daily routines. Despite the bad luck that Liv has faced, she finds fulfillment through working on her own projects and with her own clients while simultaneously strengthening her friendships with Deiss, Phoebe, and Mac. Liv soon also comes to realize that she has fallen for Deiss and isn’t willing to let go of a potential romance with him as he begins to fall for her too. While the two are faced with a few obstacles in establishing their relationship, the story has a happy ending, in which Liv comes to find that she already is perfect as she is, and doesn’t need to live for others or the future, just here and now and for herself.

Personal thoughts

I was surprised at how much I was drawn into this story, finding familiarity in Waldon’s building of Liv’s character and her need to maintain a solid footing and not be forgotten within her friend group. Waldon presents a character who not only has the happy ending we all root for (or I’m hoping we all root for) within romance stories but also a character who is able to recognize who she is and her ability to be independent. I have little to criticize in this story, though I do feel that the ending was a bit rushed and a bit of a surprise in terms of the resolution to issues that arise between Liv and Deiss. While I am not upset by any means about the end result, I think we needed more build-up to this portion of the story, similar to how we see the friendship between Liv and others strengthen in the first half of the story. It almost seems as if we are made to believe that their friendship really can maintain the test of time and troubles which naturally occurs between long-term friends, and then in a matter of pages, made to feel like nothing will withstand and then everything will all over again. The friendship deserved a bit more due diligence in the resolution, but otherwise, I wish overall that we just would have had a few more chapters with the characters, as I wasn’t ready for their story to end.

Book details

Author: Lacie Waldon

Genre: Romance

Length: 336 pages

Series: Stand-alone

Tropes: Friends to lovers

Rating: 💡💡💡💡💡

Spice rating: 🔥🔥

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