Duke, Actually

This was SO wonderful. The banter, especially via text messaging, is fabulous. This is a friends-to-lovers, but the two of them as friends are fab, and they don't even get around to declaring love/kissing+ until like 75% of the way through. But I don't even care. It was delightful!

Dani is going through a divorce and has sworn off men, of course, and Max is the unwilling baron of a fictitious European country, of course. It's academia-adjacent, swoony (this guy clearly adores Dani even when they're just BFF), there's some New York at Christmas vibes, and it includes a Love Actually plotline that's way better than any of the actual-movie plotlines. (I say this with love. I actually really like Love Actually and watch it every year, even though a lot of the plot is objectively stupid.)