Quick Synopsis

An adventurous romance about finding love when you least expect it, set against the backdrop of bustling Manhattan.

Publisher’s Synopsis

If your twenties are supposed to be the best years of your life, Bennet Taylor is failing miserably . . . with a big emphasis on the miserable. Where’s that zest she keeps hearing about? She’s a temp worker in New York City with no direction, no future, and no social life. And at the painful center of this listlessness is grief over the death of her first love.

When Bennet runs into Henry Adams just hours after standing him up for a first date, she makes an alcohol-fueled confession: She’s not ready to date. In fact, it’s been years since she felt passion for something. Not even pottery, or organized sports—not anything. Rather than leaving her to ruminate, Henry jumps at the opportunity for adventure: Bennet needs to find a passion for life, and Henry will help her find it. Every Saturday, they’ll try something new in New York City. As friends, of course. 

As their “passion project” continues, the pair tackle everything from carpentry to tattooing to rappelling off skyscrapers, and Bennet feels her guarded exterior ebbing away. But as secrets surface, Bennet has to decide what she wants, and if she’s truly ready to move on. With emotional resonance and sparkling banter, Passion Project is a fun, flirty, thoughtful story of finding a spark—and igniting happiness.

Book Review

Passion Project is a debut romance novel about navigating prolonged grief, opening yourself to new possibilities, and the hopefulness of finding a spark and igniting passion. Bennet is struggling to move past the death of her former boyfriend and begin dating. After standing up a date, she runs into the ditched date, Henry, at the restaurant where she was hiding out. Henry decides to help her (as a friend) find her zest for life again, calling it a “passion project.”

I am always happy to encounter a unique plot in a romance novel. Passion Project promised an uplifting, hopeful journey moving past grief and into love. However, I did not feel like the execution quite hit the mark, resulting in a less-than-convincing courtship.

Beyond the book’s concept, I enjoyed the adventures Bennet and Henry embarked on as part of the passion project, although I was skeptical how a few of them would help Bennet find a passion. London Sperry leads readers through Manhattan and expertly describes how the city makes you feel. Yet, I felt like the physical descriptions of locations are a bit lacking, making it difficult to picture them if you are unfamiliar with the locales. (Also, Passion Project is seemingly supposed to take place in the summer. Where was the sweat and stink? Depicting New York in the summer as romantic and not sticky is laughable. The biggest romance happening in the summer is between New Yorkers and either air conditioning or their summer getaways (Fire Island, the Hamptons, etc.). IYKYK.)

My qualms about Passion Project really come down to the romance and the characters. I never found the romance believable since it felt like a small subplot, pushed aside by Bennet’s grief, guilt, and personal growth. Consequently, when the romance did take center stage, it seemed force between two people who were mismatched and not at the same place in their lives. This is partially because the resolution is incredibly rushed. The conflict is resolved very suddenly, without showing the emotional work it would require. A dissatisfying resolution led to an underwhelming ending with no emotional payoff.

This brings me to Henry and Bennet’s characterization. I had no issue with either as characters, but there were several points where I asked myself if they were well matched. Bennet was quite selfish and closed off while Henry was exceedingly nice and mature (which is also difficult to buy into knowing single men in this city). I would have preferred dual points-of-view to at least understand how Henry was falling for this self-absorbed woman who needed therapy. (I will admit to being a bit judge-y about her grief and her protracted inaction regarding working through it.) The result was that I never emotionally invested in the characters or their friendship-turned-love-story.

Overall, Passion Project is a decent debut novel with a unique premise that fell short on execution. I would recommend it for those who are about enjoying the journey more than the ending and who can look past a character’s flaws.