“Ruby Lang continues to shine, her prose the best kind of snappy contemporary writing.” –The Seattle Review of Books Love can take root where you least expect it. Tyson Yang never imagined that one day he’d be the de facto spokesperson for an illegal community garden. But when the once-rat-infested-but-now-thriving Harlem lot goes up for sale, Ty can’t just let all their hard work get plowed … their hard work get plowed under.
Even if he is irresistibly drawn to the lovely but infuriatingly stubborn real estate associate.
Magda Ferrer’s family is already convinced this new job will be yet another flop in her small but growing list of career path failures. But her student debt isn’t going anywhere, and selling her uncle’s historic town house and the lot nearby means a chance to get some breathing room.
Ty is her charming rival, her incorrigible nemesis, the handsome roadblock to her success.
Until one hot Harlem night blurs the hard line drawn between them, and the seeds of possibility in this rocky garden blossom into love…
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Uptown series
Book 1: Playing House
Book 2: Open House
Book 3: House Rules
This book is approximately 48,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
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This is such a wonderful contemporary romance with a great HEA that you will crave for.
Magda Ferrer’s career path has been one failure after another with a surmounting school loans. Now, Magda is focused on becoming a realtor and determined to succeed. Her goal is to sell the properties her broker trusted her with, and an uncle giving her a chance. Magda learns quickly that selling a property involves much more than just getting an offer from a buyer – it involves some complications like attachments to the property, memories made in the home, and sometimes an illegal community garden.
Tyson Yang an accountant helps with the community garden in Harlem. Along with the ladies in the neighborhood, they fix up a dirty trash ridden lot and transformed it into a beautiful garden the neighborhood is proud of. Ty represents the group into making an arrangement to buy and save the community garden.
Ty and Magda clearly on opposite sides develop a strong attraction for each other that is absolutely undeniable.
Ruby Lang creates wonderful depth in these cast of characters. I enjoyed their back stories, the funny scenarios, and dialogue. Ty and Magda are charming and their attraction heartwarming. It is a wonderful contemporary romance that is flirty, sexy and heart fluttering. I was absorbed into their lives and happy to be a part of their summer romance in Harlem!
Thank you to Harlequin for providing an ebook copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book and all opinions are mine. #partner #harlequinbooks
A very warm, loving community-based romance, which is something I find endlessly comforting. Tyson is doing the classic romance hero ‘I have lost too much and cannot bear to lose again’ only unlike 90% of those heroes he isn’t a dick about it. He’s bereaved, scared and traumatised, and is in fact finding companionship and solace in helping out with the old ladies of the community garden, he just doesn’t want to admit it. Magda is broke and focused on dealing with her debts after a series of expensive career changes. They’re on opposite sides but there isn’t a great deal of conflict between them: it’s much more about finding a way together over their internal issues and family troubles. A lovely comfort read.
I actually enjoyed this book more than Playing House maybe because the length is longer and there was more side characters to give depth to the story, overall this was a great romance with a small town vibe despite being set in Manhattan, fully fleshed out imperfect main characters and sense of community and family. And very sexy! Who knew rooftops and blackouts could be a hot combination! In Ruby Lang’s second book in her Uptown series, we meet (again) Magda Ferrer an newbie real estate broker and Tyson Yang newbie community gardener. Open House plays on a variant of enemies to lovers trope. Mainly Magda is the broker assigned to selling the abandoned lot that’s been turned into an urban community garden by residents of the neighborhood and Ty well he’s been part of the garden from the start. But they really really like each other, on the other hand they’re not in a position to be involved with anyone at this time. I love how this all played out, how both Magda and Ty’s personal struggles added so much depth into their developing relationship with one another. I also loved how the history of the neighborhood was added into the story, giving readers bits of history that played a part in the plot. Now I really want to visit Strivers’ Row Houses! Overall, I think readers will fall in love with Magda and Ty and the rest of the gang the way i did.
A realistic heartwarming romance. the author does a fantastic job a creating a story that highlights diverse cultures and features real life issues people face. oh and that roof scene was sooo hot!
I read Playing House last month and I liked it, so when I was thinking about what to read next, I decided that Open House would be a good option and I was not wrong! It was even better than Playing House and I enjoyed it a lot! Ty and Magda were so cute together, I loved their romance and how much they grew and really came into their own — they were wonderful. Open House tugged on my heartstrings, put a smile on my face, and gave me the warm-fuzzies. It was sweet and excellent — I loved it so much!
~ 4.5 Stars
I wouldn’t have expected a love story that’s set in New York and revolves around gentrification to be this sweet and realistic at the same time, but this one was and it works. I love the messy, challenging, multicultural, multiracial world Ruby Lang has created here. I like it because I recognize it.
As a struggling real estate agent trying to sell one of few open lots in a historic but still gentrifying and highly coveted section of Harlem, and a community activist trying to protect the garden currently occupying it, Magda Ferrer and Tyson Yang are natural rivals if not out right enemies. This being a romance, though, of course they eventually find common ground in addition to passion. And it all unfolds in a way that is convincing and affirming. That’s in no small part due to Ty’s boundlessly thoughtful, nurturing and generous nature.
He says something to Magda towards the end that I think is meaningful, because it represents a modern ideal of loving support for a working woman: “You may not always have time, but I have patience.”
Ty may not be the absolutely sweetest and gooey new man of every ones dreams, but he’s pretty close. It’s not as flashy as the stereotypical alpha brought to heel and grovel before the heroine, but In our current context, and given the way Ruby Lang tells the story, that’s pretty darn sexy.
Ruby Lang’s “Open House” was a short, sweet, cute, and funny story. While it is technically the second book in Ms. Lang’s Uptown series, it is a complete standalone, and it is not necessary to have read the first book to understand the events of this one.
I read and (mostly) enjoyed the first book in this series (“Playing House”), but I actually liked this one better because the characters seemed to be better developed, and the growth of the romantic relationship between main characters Magda and Tyson felt more natural to me. I especially liked Magda and found it easy to understand how her childhood and family situation drove her need to succeed in her real estate career, which was the main source of conflict in her burgeoning relationship with Tyson. Magda was a lot smarter and stronger than her mother and sisters gave her credit for, and I appreciated that she made the effort to stand up to them and demand to be treated like an adult even though it was difficult for her.
I found it tougher to relate to Tyson, especially at first, because I didn’t feel like I got to know him as well as I did Magda. His mother’s death clearly had a major impact on him, but I kept expecting there to be more to his story, like a bad breakup. At any rate, a number of the things he did and said seemed to come out of left field when they happened, even though most of them were explained later. An example is when Ty quit his job, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time because he had barely even mentioned his work up to that point, and I certainly never got the impression that he was unhappy there. (His decision to quit was explained later in the story, and it was a reasonable explanation, but still, I was frustrated at the time because there was no clear setup for it.)
Despite that (relatively minor) frustration, Magda and Tyson were both likeable lead characters, and the secondary characters were pretty great as well, especially Tyson’s sister Jenny and Magda’s Uncle Byron. Jenny had a great sense of humor (her joking description of the community garden as a “vegetable cartel” made me laugh out loud), and I could see her being featured in a future story of her own. (Uncle Byron’s joke about the “socialist vegetables” was also pretty funny. There were some great one-liners in this book.)
Overall, I enjoyed this story, thought it was generally well-written, and would recommend it. I plan to pick up the next book in the series.
*ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.
Author’s CWs of cancer, difficult family relationships, microaggressions. I add loss of family member/spouse/parent
I loved this contemporary, enemies to lovers romance by Ruby Lang. Magda is trying to be independent, struggling with life choices and feelings of inadequacies, a job that seems to be working out and older sisters who still try to mother her and do not listen. Ty is hovering somewhere between trying to not make connections because he’s afraid of more loss in his life and his inherent nice-ness that creates those very connections with others. They meet when their lives seem at cross purposes. Magda needs to sell a vacant lot and Ty works with the local residents who have turned the lot into a neighborhood garden. Open House has everything. Community, family with all its good and bad, themes of grief and loss and moving on, main characters that I really loved and side characters that added depth, humor and even a little bit of the guy you love to hate. I want to wander these streets in Manhattan, see the homes and absorb the community and eat the food that’s described. Sexy times on the page, including some hot then awkward phone sex that totally works. Highly recommended! I’m looking forward to reading the next one in the series.
A fun easy read that follows Magda and Ty as one must sell the land an illegal community garden stands on and the other tries to save it. They may be on ‘opposite’ sides, but the attraction is strong and hard to resist. They may argue every time they see each other, but thats not all they want to do! At the same time Magda is trying to sell a town house for her Uncle that he does not seem to really want to sell whilst attempting to make her family see her as more than a failure.
Ty is struggling to not get attached to anyone and distance from everyone has become a habit. His sister has decided to move away from New York and he is torn about following her. Either way he is determined to save the garden before he leaves!
Short and sweet, and a fun easy way to spend a couple of hours.
So what I liked about this book was that the story was a little different, I don’t recall ever reading about a community garden so kudos to the author.. That being said I felt like I wanted more, I wanted more connection and I didn’t feel like we got that, maybe it is that I started with this one and this is the second book in the series but it wasn’t that I was lost because you can read it as a standalone but I just wanted more. I like the enemies to lover trope but again needed a little more but all in all not a bad book and if you want a quick read than this is for you, if you want some deep emotional leaving you breathless or sleepless then nope not for you.
rcvd an ARc at no cost to author..(netgalley) Voluntarily reviewed with my own thoughts and opinions