{"id":32087,"date":"2026-03-23T12:56:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/?p=32087"},"modified":"2026-03-23T12:56:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:56:23","slug":"review-a-girl-like-her-by-talia-hibbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/23\/review-a-girl-like-her-by-talia-hibbert\/","title":{"rendered":"Review \u2764\ufe0f A Girl Like Her by Talia Hibbert"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-32087\" data-postid=\"32087\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-32087 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    \t\t\t<!-- module_row -->\n\t<div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_row themify_builder_row tb_cn32436 tb_first tf_w tf_clearfix\">\n\t    \t\t\t<div class=\"row_inner col_align_top gutter-narrow tb_col_count_2 tf_box tf_rel\">\n\t\t            <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_column tb-column col3-1 tb_2y2d436 first\">\n                                                        <div class=\"tb-column-inner tf_box tf_w\">\n                        <!-- module image -->\n<div  class=\"module module-image tb_lnfs436 rounded drop-shadow customBorderRad_top image-center auto_fullwidth tf_mw\" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <div class=\"image-wrap tf_rel tf_mw\">\n\t\t    <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=640%2C960&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"wp-post-image wp-image-32088\" title=\"a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert\" alt=\"a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=400%2C600&amp;ssl=1 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/>\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<!-- \/image-wrap -->\n    \n    \t<\/div>\n<!-- \/module image --><!-- module text -->\n<div  class=\"module module-text tb_5bp9436 customBorderRad_bottom repeat \" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <div  class=\"tb_text_wrap\">\n    <p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\"><em><strong><span class=\"a-text-bold\">She&#8217;s hard to hold onto, but he&#8217;s good with his hands&#8230;<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">Prickly, autistic, and shadowed by a scandalous past, Ruth Kabbah will always be Ravenswood&#8217;s black sheep. It&#8217;s a lonely life, but at least it&#8217;s safe\u2026 until Evan Miller comes to town.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">Calm, confident, and instantly accepted by their small English town, Evan is Ruth&#8217;s opposite in every way\u2014yet he meets her suspicion with a smile, handles her awkwardness with ease, and watches her with a hunger that threatens to tear down her all her defences.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">The gossips want to know how she&#8217;s bewitched him. Ruth just wants to know when he&#8217;ll get bored and leave. Because if there&#8217;s one thing she&#8217;s learned, it&#8217;s that girls like her don&#8217;t get happily ever afters.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">But when a monster from Ruth&#8217;s past comes back to haunt her, she&#8217;s forced to make a choice: should she trust Evan completely? Or is her heart safest alone?<\/span><\/p>    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- \/module text -->                    <\/div>\n                            <\/div>\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_column tb-column col3-2 tb_jde6436 last\">\n                                                        <div class=\"tb-column-inner tf_box tf_w\">\n                        <!-- module text -->\n<div  class=\"module module-text tb_39m7436  repeat \" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <div  class=\"tb_text_wrap\">\n    <p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25879 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/smitten-top-pick-banner-1-2.png?resize=296%2C72&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"72\" \/><\/p><hr \/><p><strong>Release Date:<\/strong> Mar 3, 2026<br \/><strong>Series:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Ravenswood<br \/><\/em><strong>Format:<\/strong> Print<em><br \/><\/em><strong>Book: <\/strong>1<br \/><strong>Heat Level:<\/strong> Hot<br \/><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Sourcebooks<br \/><strong>Imprint:<\/strong> Casablanca<br \/><strong>Price:<\/strong> $18.99<\/p><hr \/><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><strong>Hibbert&#8217;s re-release of her first novel had me in a chokehold.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is the first book in her Ravenswood series. If you enjoy inclusive, diverse romance, this book is a great place to start. It\u2019s also full of small-town drama that reminded me of that soap opera feel that reels you in. From the first pages, I wanted to know every last piece of tea, all the scandalous secrets.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ruth Kabbah has one helluva secret, one she\u2019s kept to herself all while allowing an entire town to paint a different picture of her&#8230; a not-so-flattering, insulting picture that\u2019s made her a town pariah. She likes her life this way, accepting that this is exactly what she deserves. That all of this is her fault. Ruth is resigned to her life of comics, hiding in her home unless she absolutely needs to leave (like Sunday family dinners), and pretending the hateful stares and rude comments don\u2019t bother her. Everything is fine until she gets a new neighbor, an incredibly smoking hot specimen of a man who is suddenly bringing her home-cooked meals to be&#8230; nice.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Evan is starting over. Ex-military with not a lot of opportunities, the welding job in Ravenswood seemed a blessing. He\u2019s already making friends at work, and at home&#8230; well, his neighbor worries him. She\u2019s eating like a teenager and doesn\u2019t have a stove. She needs a little help and maybe some company. Evan can\u2019t help but like her, even if she is the grumpiest woman he\u2019s ever met. Not to mention she\u2019s smoking hot. When the boss\u2019s son tells Evan to stay away, he can\u2019t help but figure out why. The journey to that answer results in falling, hard.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This one is all twisty, a bit of a slow burn with plenty of heat. I don\u2019t want to give away any of the backstory and the scandal that deserves to be read directly on the page. But the character development is spot on. The pacing matches the story, and this one hit all the buttons. I could not put it down. If you love Tracy Livesay or Nina Crespo, I high recco Talia Hibbert.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>~ Landra<\/em><\/p>    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- \/module text --><!-- module text -->\n<div  class=\"module module-text tb_ydi6437 customBorderRad repeat \" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <div  class=\"tb_text_wrap\">\n    <p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4bGidfL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Amazon<\/a><\/span><span class=\"s2\">\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- \/module text -->                    <\/div>\n                            <\/div>\n            \t    <\/div>\n\t    <!-- \/row_inner -->\n\t<\/div>\n\t<!-- \/module_row -->\n\t<\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She&#8217;s hard to hold onto, but he&#8217;s good with his hands&#8230;Prickly, autistic, and shadowed by a scandalous past, Ruth Kabbah will always be Ravenswood&#8217;s black [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,48,56],"tags":[153,217,404,405,485],"class_list":["post-32087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landra","category-reviews","category-sourcebooks-publishing-companies","tag-4-5-stars","tag-contemporary-romance","tag-recommend","tag-recommended-reads","tag-top-picks"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Review \u2764\ufe0f A Girl Like Her by Talia Hibbert - Smitten by Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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Books"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/5a4181aeb9cd5641e30023b9b4d3e00d","name":"beverley","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d01d9a027fd24b3d94658206104dd5d7aaffba75b651e55c08358a9bc51b26a1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d01d9a027fd24b3d94658206104dd5d7aaffba75b651e55c08358a9bc51b26a1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d01d9a027fd24b3d94658206104dd5d7aaffba75b651e55c08358a9bc51b26a1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"beverley"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog"],"url":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/author\/beverley\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?fit=1000%2C1500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"builder_content":"<img src=\"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg\" title=\"a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert\" alt=\"a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a-girl-like-her-talia-hibbert.jpg?resize=400%2C600&amp;ssl=1 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><strong>She's hard to hold onto, but he's good with his hands...<\/strong><\/em><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prickly, autistic, and shadowed by a scandalous past, Ruth Kabbah will always be Ravenswood's black sheep. It's a lonely life, but at least it's safe\u2026 until Evan Miller comes to town.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Calm, confident, and instantly accepted by their small English town, Evan is Ruth's opposite in every way\u2014yet he meets her suspicion with a smile, handles her awkwardness with ease, and watches her with a hunger that threatens to tear down her all her defences.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The gossips want to know how she's bewitched him. Ruth just wants to know when he'll get bored and leave. Because if there's one thing she's learned, it's that girls like her don't get happily ever afters.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But when a monster from Ruth's past comes back to haunt her, she's forced to make a choice: should she trust Evan completely? Or is her heart safest alone?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/smitten-top-pick-banner-1-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"296\" height=\"72\" \/><\/p><hr \/><p><strong>Release Date:<\/strong> Mar 3, 2026<br \/><strong>Series:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>Ravenswood<br \/><\/em><strong>Format:<\/strong> Print<em><br \/><\/em><strong>Book: <\/strong>1<br \/><strong>Heat Level:<\/strong> Hot<br \/><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> Sourcebooks<br \/><strong>Imprint:<\/strong> Casablanca<br \/><strong>Price:<\/strong> $18.99<\/p><hr \/><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><strong>Hibbert's re-release of her first novel had me in a chokehold.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This is the first book in her Ravenswood series. If you enjoy inclusive, diverse romance, this book is a great place to start. It\u2019s also full of small-town drama that reminded me of that soap opera feel that reels you in. From the first pages, I wanted to know every last piece of tea, all the scandalous secrets.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Ruth Kabbah has one helluva secret, one she\u2019s kept to herself all while allowing an entire town to paint a different picture of her... a not-so-flattering, insulting picture that\u2019s made her a town pariah. She likes her life this way, accepting that this is exactly what she deserves. That all of this is her fault. Ruth is resigned to her life of comics, hiding in her home unless she absolutely needs to leave (like Sunday family dinners), and pretending the hateful stares and rude comments don\u2019t bother her. Everything is fine until she gets a new neighbor, an incredibly smoking hot specimen of a man who is suddenly bringing her home-cooked meals to be... nice.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Evan is starting over. Ex-military with not a lot of opportunities, the welding job in Ravenswood seemed a blessing. He\u2019s already making friends at work, and at home... well, his neighbor worries him. She\u2019s eating like a teenager and doesn\u2019t have a stove. She needs a little help and maybe some company. Evan can\u2019t help but like her, even if she is the grumpiest woman he\u2019s ever met. Not to mention she\u2019s smoking hot. When the boss\u2019s son tells Evan to stay away, he can\u2019t help but figure out why. The journey to that answer results in falling, hard.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This one is all twisty, a bit of a slow burn with plenty of heat. I don\u2019t want to give away any of the backstory and the scandal that deserves to be read directly on the page. But the character development is spot on. The pacing matches the story, and this one hit all the buttons. I could not put it down. If you love Tracy Livesay or Nina Crespo, I high recco Talia Hibbert.<\/p><p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>~ Landra<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4bGidfL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Amazon<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32087"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32091,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32087\/revisions\/32091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}