Love is real in the town of Grimbaud and Fallon Dupree has dreamed of attending high school there for years. After all, generations of Duprees have successfully followed the (100% accurate!) love fortunes from Zita's famous Love Charms Shop to happily marry their high school sweethearts. It's a tradition. So she is both stunned and devastated when her fortune states that she will NEVER find love. Fortunately, Fallon isn't the only student with a terrible love fortune, and a rebellion is brewing. Fallon is determined to take control of her own fate-even if it means working with a notorious heartbreaker like Sebastian. Will Fallon and Sebastian be able to overthrow Zita's tyranny and fall in love?
Love, Fortunes and Other Disasters is one of those books that just makes you swoon, which is appropriate since it was published by Swoon Books. Clearly the two are a match made it heaven. I loved the idea that Grimbaud was this wonderful, magical place, where love rules all, and you can get such a thing as a love fortune. How good would it be to know how your love life would go? Whether you would meet someone, or be alone forever? I mean sure that would suck if you found out you'd be alone, but it would save a LOT of heartache, surely? Actually, a love fortune is only a good thing if it's a GOOD fortune. Which is the entire plot of Love, Fortunes and Other Disasters.
Grimbaud is obviously a fictional place, in fact it's almost a bit like a fantasy book, considering it's magical, and in no way grounded in real life, and that took me a little while to get into, but I did. It helped that Fallon Dupree is one of those girls you love immediately, and I was so devastated for her when she got her fortune, because that's an awful thing to hear. All of the characters in Love, Fortunes and Other Disasters were memorable though - Nico, Anais, Sebastian, Hiriji, the twins, they all added to the story and I'm absolutely stoked that a) there's a novella featuring Nico and b) the second book is Hiriji, which is AWESOME. But Fallon was the main character, and I loved her. She and Sebastian just clicked, despite his reputation, and I loved the whole concept of tearing Zita down (God knows she needed bringing down a peg, or five!).
Despite the slow start, I really enjoyed Love, Fortunes and Other Disasters. It was such a sweet read, it's one of those books that just makes you genuinely happy. Karalius writes like a dream, and I'm so, so glad I signed up for the blog tour for Love, Charms and Other Catastrophes because it finally forced me to read this book first. Bravo, Kimberly, this was a delight!
