ARC Review: Sparks (Omega Skies #1)

Sparks (Omega Skies #1)
by Wendy Higgins

Published by: Self-Published
Publication Date: August 25, 2020
Date Read: August 4, 2020
Genre: Adult – Contemporary
Source: eARC from Wendy Higgins
Format: E-Book

From Goodreads:
At twenty-four, Harlow Robinson has run headfirst into a quarter-life crisis. Her high school girlfriends have dropped like flies, one wedding after another, forcing her into panic mode. It’s fight or flight time, and flight wins—literally. She breaks off a loveless engagement with her childhood sweetheart and abandons a teaching degree to become a flight attendant for Omega Skies.

Now Harlow is living her best glamorous, single life as a self-proclaimed sky muffin, at least that’s how it appears from the outside. But 3:00AM wakeup calls and nights alone in hotels make the days blend into a blur of loneliness. When her seven roommates sign her up for the dating app Sparks, Harlow finds herself navigating an entirely new lifestyle with more men than she can handle.
What’s a girl to do? Date them all, of course.

From New York Times bestseller, Wendy Higgins, comes her first contemporary adult romcom. Please sit back and keep your seatbelts fastened because this will be a bumpy ride. Enjoy your flight.

“You’re complete right now, as you are, boo. You need to know that. No man defines you or your worth.”

I have been such a huge Wendy Higgins fan for so long. I absolutely loved her YA Paranormal books and so when she reached out and asked if I would like to review her first Adult Contemporary novel, I jumped at the chance. Now, before I go any further I just want to clarify that I am not the biggest Contemporary lover. I don’t mind the odd one or two but I am a Paranormal Romance/Fantasy girl through and through. It’s rare that I absolutely love a Contemporary. Now… having said that I absolutely LOVED Sparks. Right from the start I couldn’t put this book down and I worked my way through it so freaking fast!

Sparks follows Harlow, a flight attendant who escaped her home town leaving a fiancé that she didn’t really love. Her friends decide to sign her up for Sparks, a dating app. Now Harlow finds herself, a hopeless romantic, going on dates with a mixture of different guys. But can see weed out the ones worth her time? And will she be able to find that happy ever after she is so desperately searching for?

I loved Sparks. Like I truly, truly loved it. Harlow was such an amazing character to follow this story through. In so many ways she was exactly like me. The more I learned about her the more I felt like I was reading about myself. Her skepticism about the strangers she met on the dating app… some of her thoughts were definitely things I would think. Harlow was a little naive and innocent in the beginning. There were things that she did where I was like no, girl…. don’t do that! But that just made her journey and her character growth that much better. She is such a different person by the end of this book than the girl we met in those first few pages. I loved that.

Sparks is fast-paced and I found myself speeding through this book. This is the most amazing thing for me. I often get bored when reading contemporary books but that was not the case at all with Sparks. I was completely in love with these characters and I just sped through this book and was left wanting more. I loved every single moment of it and it just, to me, shows what a fantastic author Wendy truly is. She has, in the past, been referred to as the queen of paranormal. That isn’t the case… she’s the queen of everything! No matter what genre she decides to write I will follow her faithfully and know the book is just going to be amazing.

Sparks was heart-warming and it really sticks with me as a favourite book. Although it is a romance and Harlow does get her happy ending the thing that I loved most is that it was Harlow’s journey towards accepting herself for who she is and realising she doesn’t need a boyfriend to be happy. She is enough all by herself. I think that’s something that many single people out there sometimes need to be reminded of.

If you are looking for a super sweet, romantic read then I highly recommend Sparks. It is absolutely hilarious, seriously I was LOL’ing so hard and having my family look at my like I was a lunatic, many times throughout this book. It was just brilliant and perfect and I loved every moment of it. It was everything my utterly hopeless romantic heart could have asked for. I can’t wait for Wendy’s next contemporary book!

“I liked who I was, and not everyone was going to understand me, but that was okay. I just needed to understand myself.”