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Falon Ballard’s Just My Type begins with Lana Parker, a writer of a relationship advice column (and not by choice), being dumped by her boyfriend of four years on the night she expected he was going to propose. The next morning, she arrives at work hungover to discover that her high school sweetheart, Seth Carson – the one who broke her heart – has not only moved to LA, but now works with her at the same online magazine. And when her boss learns of their history, she offers Lana, a serial monogamist, and Seth, a serial dater, the chance to compete for their own column – something that Lana has long been holding out hope for. Thankfully, they don’t have to date each other. No, Lana needs to “learn to be okay with being alone” and Seth needs to “find someone to be happy with long-term.”
At first I wasn’t really sure how a book about a serial monogamist learning to love herself and be comfortable with being alone could have a satisfying ending for a feminist like me, while also being a romantic comedy. Meaning, I feared that the only way it could possibly work out to be a rom com would be if she capitulated and basically said, “screw it, I love him, and that’s more important than my personal growth.” So I was very pleased to see that Ballard was able to write the novel in a way in which Lana experienced personal growth, before finding the love of her life. And I mean, in reality, that’s the way it should be anyways, right? As the saying goes, you can’t love someone else, if you don’t know how to love yourself. And so at its core, this book was about Lana’s journey healing from a childhood of neglect and learning to forgive and release her anger, so that she could find her way to her own happily ever after with Seth.
On a personal level, I loved this book, and I chose this book in particular to be my first blog post in a while for a reason. More than anything, Lana wants to write a review column. Now, I admit that I don’t necessarily want to be a reviewer for a career. I want to write books. But because I want to write books, I read a lot of books. And I have been thinking for a long time about how I wanted to write about the books I read. And this is my way of just taking that leap. Thank you Lana Parker, and author Falon Ballard, you have totally inspired me.
The other thing that I appreciated about this book was that the sex scenes were realistic. About 80% of women need clitoral stimulation to climax (a fact that is well memorized from my years as a Pure Romance consultant), and so it drives me a bit crazy when I read steamy romance books where out of nowhere, the protagonists are having sex and then suddenly she’s climaxing without that. For the record, I understand that it’s possible to have vaginal orgasms, and secondly, I understand that all books to a certain degree involve fantasy. It’s just that I can better immerse myself in the fantasy world of a book when the characters actually understand a woman’s body and know how to pleasure her, than simply relying on chance. And so I appreciated Ballard’s attention to accuracy in these scenes.
One minor observation that I have about the book as a whole is that there is a lot of lingo used throughout. For instance, at one point during the writing competition, one character remarks how people commenting on the articles are “shipping them.” It probably shows my age (I’m an elder millennial), but at first, I was legit so confused. At first, I thought maybe it was a typo, but then I realized it’s a shortened verb form of the word “relationship,” suggesting that the two main characters belong in a relationship together. There were also unfamiliar acronyms like “OTP” (one true pairing) and “MCU” (Marvel Cinematic Universe – and her obsession with the MCU is a bit over the top by the way), which were unexplained, but I was able to decipher thanks to Google. Younger readers probably wouldn’t have been thrown by these phrasings though, and even though I experienced momentary confusion, I didn’t find that it detracted much from the story.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes romantic comedies in general and specifically ones with characters who are “finding themselves”, anyone who likes reading about writers (one of my favorite tropes, as a writer), and is also a fan of steamy romance novels – although note that it is a slow burn romance.
If you are interested, you can pick up your copy of the book from Bookshop.org here.
I’d love to hear from you! Will you read this book? Or have you read this book already? What did you think? Leave a reply below!
Lisa Futscher 
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