BIG GIRL BLITZ - Danielle Allen
Curve (Book #3)
Bramble Books
BUY
Jennifer Browne ( A+)
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
REVIEW: Jazmyn Payne has spent years putting distance — literal and emotional — between herself and the small hometown where she was bullied relentlessly for her size. She left the day after graduation and never looked back. But when her beloved Aunt Addison's health takes a devastating turn, Jazz returns home to spend what may be their last summer together. Dating is the furthest thing from her mind — until Lamar Anderson sits down beside her at a local sports bar. He is warm, steady, easy to talk to, and completely unaware of the weight of everything Jazz is carrying. What begins as an unexpected bright spot in a painful summer slowly deepens into something neither of them planned for, something real, complicated, and profoundly worth fighting for. BIG GIRL BLITZ is, at its core, a story about love in all its forms — romantic love, family love, and the love of learning to finally believe you deserve good things. It was a completely unexpected emotional experience, and it moved me in ways I did not anticipate.
Jazmyn is one of the most fully realized heroines I have encountered in recent romance reading. She is smart, funny, professionally accomplished, and deeply wounded in ways she has learned to hide behind wit and competence. Danielle Allen gives her a rich interior life and the space to be contradictory — bold and insecure, generous and self-sabotaging, clear-eyed about everything except her own worth. Her journey toward believing she deserves Lamar, and love in general, is honest and sometimes heartbreaking, and I was invested in her well-being from the very first page.
Lamar is exactly the kind of hero this story needed. He is not flashy or complicated — he is a man who sees Jazmyn clearly and completely, from the very beginning, and never wavers in that seeing. What makes him extraordinary is not grand gestures but consistency: he shows up, he pays attention, and he never once asks her to make herself smaller to fit more comfortably into his world. Their connection builds slowly and organically — a slow burn in the truest sense — but the depth and intensity of what develops between them stayed with me every time I had to set the book down and long after I turned the final page.
But it is Jazmyn's relationship with her Aunt Addy that is the true beating heart of this book, and the element that elevates it beyond a wonderful romance into something genuinely profound. Addy is Jazz's person — her safe harbor, her fiercest champion, the one constant in a childhood full of cruelty. Watching them spend this summer together, building a bucket list, holding onto joy in the face of loss — it was authentic, beautifully written, and it tore at my heartstrings in the very best way. Danielle Allen handles this relationship with tremendous tenderness and care, and the result is something rare: a love story that reminds you that the love that shapes us is not always romantic.
I loved every minute of this book and did not want it to end. BIG GIRL BLITZ is moving, thought-provoking, and wholly unforgettable — a story about self-acceptance, grief, belonging, and the courage it takes to reach for a love you have always been told you do not deserve. Danielle Allen has written something truly special here, and this is a book that will live in my heart for a long time. A solid A+.
26th April 2026 | romcol@caribsurf.com
Jazmyn is one of the most fully realized heroines I have encountered in recent romance reading. She is smart, funny, professionally accomplished, and deeply wounded in ways she has learned to hide behind wit and competence. Danielle Allen gives her a rich interior life and the space to be contradictory — bold and insecure, generous and self-sabotaging, clear-eyed about everything except her own worth. Her journey toward believing she deserves Lamar, and love in general, is honest and sometimes heartbreaking, and I was invested in her well-being from the very first page.
Lamar is exactly the kind of hero this story needed. He is not flashy or complicated — he is a man who sees Jazmyn clearly and completely, from the very beginning, and never wavers in that seeing. What makes him extraordinary is not grand gestures but consistency: he shows up, he pays attention, and he never once asks her to make herself smaller to fit more comfortably into his world. Their connection builds slowly and organically — a slow burn in the truest sense — but the depth and intensity of what develops between them stayed with me every time I had to set the book down and long after I turned the final page.
But it is Jazmyn's relationship with her Aunt Addy that is the true beating heart of this book, and the element that elevates it beyond a wonderful romance into something genuinely profound. Addy is Jazz's person — her safe harbor, her fiercest champion, the one constant in a childhood full of cruelty. Watching them spend this summer together, building a bucket list, holding onto joy in the face of loss — it was authentic, beautifully written, and it tore at my heartstrings in the very best way. Danielle Allen handles this relationship with tremendous tenderness and care, and the result is something rare: a love story that reminds you that the love that shapes us is not always romantic.
I loved every minute of this book and did not want it to end. BIG GIRL BLITZ is moving, thought-provoking, and wholly unforgettable — a story about self-acceptance, grief, belonging, and the courage it takes to reach for a love you have always been told you do not deserve. Danielle Allen has written something truly special here, and this is a book that will live in my heart for a long time. A solid A+.
26th April 2026 | romcol@caribsurf.com
