Book Review: Love Like the Sun by Riss M. Neilson

[ID: a white hand holding a yellow and pink book up against a bush covered in dark pink flowers blowing in the wind. The book has an illustration of pink and orange flowers on the cover with “A Love Like the Sun” written in bold white text.]

I’m always on the hunt for books with disability representation based on personal experience but somehow I managed to miss A LOVE LIKE THE SUN when it was first released in 2024.

This book is a friends-to-lovers, fake dating adult romance with chronic kidney disease representation so I immediately snapped it up with high hopes.

Unfortunately, I feel very conflicted about this one! Riss M. Neilson has a stunning, cinematic writing style that kept me glued to the page and I loved our main character, Laniah. The setting and side characters felt real and believable. But there were several things that just didn’t work for me.

Firstly, the fake dating arises because the main male character COMPLETELY bulldozes Laniah’s boundaries and upends her life without her permission. I wanted to see him grovel for the rest of the book, but he continues to push her boundaries in ways that felt like a red flag to me. And just when I was rooting for their romance, the noble idiocy trope rears its head for a frustrating third act.

I really appreciated the portrayal of Laniah’s kidney disease and felt like her experience with medical gaslighting was SO relatable. But it really only becomes a focus in the last third of the book and I didn’t feel like there was enough time to experience her journey.

I think I would’ve preferred if her kidney disease had been diagnosed at the halfway point of the book and then we could’ve gotten more of a focus on Lanaih’s emotions and seen Issac and Laniah learn how to be a real couple. My personal preference would’ve been for more focus on character development and fewer steamy scenes.

Even though I had so many issues with the plot, the beautiful writing kept pulling me back in. You can really feel how much heart has been poured into this book. It shines from the page! (Pun intended.) I just wish that it was more my cup of tea…