Only One Bed by Kati Wilde
Contemporary Romance
January 15, 2025- Self Published
Kindle Unlimited
Review by Angela
My first thought when I saw that a new Kati Wilde book was coming for the new year was…YAY! An enemies to lovers, forced proximity, only one bed romance was just what I needed.
For the most part this book starts out just as expected- with the FMC, Abbie Walker, taking some time for herself, away from her suffocating family, celebrating Christmas alone in an isolated cabin owned by her boss. Her solitude is interrupted when a man appears at the front door, half frozen and bloody from an accident. She quickly realizes that the man is her mortal enemy, Reed Knowles. The Walkers and the Knowles have been bitter enemies since Abbie’s father and Reed’s mother ran off together, only to die in a car accident soon after. Over the years the animosity has only grown between the two families. But Abbie decides it’s her duty as a good person to care for him until he can leave.
What starts out as a fun enemies-to-lovers romance soon delves into a trauma dump as both of their backstories unfold and all of their grievances with their families gets spilled on page. It was a lot. At times I skimmed through those conversations and reengaged when Abbie and Reed are talking about their art and writing and thinking of their feelings for each other. Not that I don’t think their issues with their family members weren’t valid- I absolutely do. We’ve all had relations who are narcissistic or fake, or even enjoy making other people feel small. And I applauded Abbie’s realization that she needed to enforce boundaries with her sister and mother in order to find her peace. I just wasn’t expecting the whole romantic story to kind of be taken over by these issues.
This is definitely an open-door romance, so if you are craving multiple, super hot sex scenes you will be happy. There is more of a HFN ending, with a promise that the HEA is coming soon. The epilogue was okay for me, it was nice seeing Reed and Abbie moving forward, but I could have done without the shitty ass mom and sister taking up so much page time. But I understand why there needed to be closure since most of the story revolved around Abbie’s problems with them.
All in all, this was just an okay read for me.
Final grade- C
I liked ONLY ONE BED more than you did, Angela. I wasn’t bothered by the “trauma dumping”, rather the opposite: to me, it was an important element of the plot and the growing connection between Abbie & Reed. In fact, my biggest quibble with the book is that—after spending so much time talking about her relationship with her awful mother and (possibly redeemable) sister and realizing that she needs a clean break from their toxicity—Abbie’s ultimate confrontation with them takes place off-page. After dysfunctional family dynamics taking up so much of Abbie’s emotional space for so long, I would have liked to witness how Abbie finally kicked her mother & sister to the curb, so to speak. But I still enjoyed ONLY ONE BED and certainly recommend it.