Tag Archives: Romance

ARC — How to Be the Best Third Wheel — Loridee de Villa

Genre: Romance, Comedy, YA
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warning: As provided by the author… “WARNING: This book may cause a loss of brain cells from facepalms, premature wrinkles from periodic cringing, irregular and rapid heartbeat from character ships, occasional uncontrollable swooning, and many relatable moments. The author takes no responsibility for damage to books or electronic devices if you hurl yours across the room.” Which I found hilarious.

“How to Be the Best Third Wheel” follows Lara as she comes to the realization that she’ll be the biggest third wheel this year: all 3 of her best friends at school are in relationships now. She compiles a useful guide with funny rules (stated at the beginning of each chapter) about how to survive just this: being the third wheel. As her school and social dynamics change, and she’s forced to tutor her archnemesis, she goes through all the typical teenage crises—including falling in love herself.

So, I have to set the record straight. I gave this book 3 stars as a YA romance book, but as a YA fanfic or Wattpad novel? I’d probably give it 5 stars. This fic is quirky, funny in a childish way, and plagued with clichés—but that’s something the author warns us about on the very first page.

I would recommend this book as a gift to a very young reader. If you’re looking for a book that’s a romance but is completely clean, with only a few innocent kisses here and there, then look no further: “How to Be the Best Third Wheel” is for you.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: May 03, 2022

Hook, Line, and Sinker — Tessa Bailey — Bellinger Sisters #2

“You can’t live life worrying about what people will think. You’ll wake up one day, look at a calendar, and count the days you could have spent being happy.”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 5 stars
Content Warnings: Sexual content, bullying, objectifying and sexualizing men, and discusses parent death.

“Hook, Line, and Sinker” is the second book in the Bellinger Sisters/It Happened One Summer series and I was 100% there for it. It follows Hannah Bellinger, an LA-based director’s personal assistant who’s hoping to climb up to soundtrack making, and Fox Thornton, a self-proclaimed player and king crab fisherman. After a weekend in Seattle that took place in the first book’s timeline, they become friends and keep in touch even after Hannah leaves Fox’s small fishing town. Their unexpected friendship has left Fox perplexed, as he’s never had a woman want to be his friend only for his wits and personality. But Hannah isn’t interested in him, she’s focused on the crush she’s had on her boss for forever. They’re focused on staying as friends and that’s it, even if their hearts seem to have other plans…

Do I know what the title of this book means? No. Did it matter whatsoever? Also no. This book was the sweetest escape from reality. Hannah is such a complex and distinct character, I did not feel like I was reading a different story with different names but from the same point of view—which is something that I usually feel when reading series where the main characters have the same gender. Hannah was not Piper. “Hook, Line, and Sinker” is NOT “It Happened One Summer”. I would even dare say it could work well as a standalone. And I absolutely loved it.

Do not make me choose between these two books, I loved them equally but differently. “It Happened One Summer” was spicier, in my opinion, while “Hook, Line, and Sinker” was more emotional—and spicy too, just not as spicy. I wish I would’ve waited to read one of these books by the ocean. They feel like the perfect beach read.

I would recommend this book to people who liked “It Happened One Summer”, and to fans of books like “The Hating Game” by Sally Thorne and “The Simple Wild” by K.A. Tucker. If you like small-town loves and the clashing of two worlds, this is the book for you.

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It Happened One Summer — Tessa Bailey — Bellinger Sisters #1

“Trying to figure out what to do when no one is watching. And wondering if maybe that’s the stuff that actually matters.”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 5 stars
Content Warning: Veeery sexual (consensual) content and discusses parent and spouse death.

“It Happened One Summer” follows the Bellinger sisters, Piper and Hannah, as they’re sent off to a remote fishing town after a Los Angeles-scale scandal. Following Piper specifically, this first book in the Bellinger Sisters series shows how the eldest of the sisters gets to know the town her late father adored. They meet a bunch of unique people, but there is one particular boat captain that’s caught Piper’s eyes… But in order to fall in love with him, she must fall out of love with LA and the spotlight, which is something she doesn’t think she can do. Set in a quaint-y, old town, this book is fast-paced and very entertaining.

Well, I must say this was the spiciest book I’ve read in a while—but that wasn’t why I gave this book 5 stars. I gave it 5 stars because this book had everything: a compelling love story, complex characters, emotional growth, and feelings other than just lovey-dovey romantic love. We see how the sisters grow to love the town they’re in and the people that live in it. We see how they become more aware of the value of things and the pleasure of doing good, honest work. We see them go through a rollercoaster of emotions, and we feel all the confusion with them. And yes. In the end, we get our happily ever after, but it’s made even sweeter because of how we got there.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys romances. I am pretty sure it’s impossible not to like this book and its characters.

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“You can be as high maintenance as you want, honey. But I’m the only one who does the maintenance.”

99 Percent Mine — Sally Thorne

Genre: Romance, Comedy
Actual Rating: 2 stars
Content Warnings: Sexual content, chronic illness, and medical content.

“99 Percent Mine” is the sophomore book by Sally Thorne and it follows Darcy Barrett, her twin brother Jamie Barrett, and their childhood friend Tom Valeska. Darcy is a young, free spirit that just wants to travel the world, although her heart’s a bit of an impediment to that. The Barrett twins have inherited their fortuneteller grandmother’s house and have to remodel and sell it, as per their grandmother’s will. So in comes Tom Valeska, Jamie’s best friend, and Darcy’s long-standing crush, who coincidentally is a contractor and house-flipper. This story pretty much told itself.

This wasn’t a comedy and it wasn’t even that much of a romance either. The characters seemed to be emotionally stunted, and the interactions between them were awkward and over-the-top in all the wrong ways. I like reading fiction books because they tell a story of something that I feel could potentially happen in real life, and this book wasn’t that.

I feel like I wasted my time reading this book but in the end, I think it was my bad because I grabbed it without checking any reviews. I blindly believed it would be amazing because Sally Thorne is amazing, but now I guess she is a hit-or-miss writer, like most other authors.

I would not recommend this book, but I would actually really highly recommend “The Hating Game” and “Second First Impressions”, which are the other two books by Sally Thorne and those two really are *chef’s kiss*.

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One True Loves — Taylor Jenkins Reid

“All I know is that my parents have always made love seem easy and sometimes I wish they prepared me for how truly complicated it can be.”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 4.5 stars
Content Warnings: Mentions injury descriptions, death, and suicidal thoughts.

“One True Loves” follows Emma Blair’s story in a somewhat chronological order. Emma falls in love with and marries Jesse, her high school sweetheart. On the day of their first wedding anniversary, he is lost at sea and presumed dead after a helicopter crash. Emma then moves back to her hometown and after some time falls in love again and gets engaged to Sam, a high school friend—only for Jesse to be found, alive, after surviving years on a deserted island. Now with a husband and a fiancé, Emma is left to find within herself where her love lies.

This book perfectly describes how it’s possible to love two people at the same time in completely different ways. I empathized with Emma, felt for Jesse, and just absolutely loved Sam. I felt like this was a slow-paced book only because I’ve gotten so used to books with alternating timelines. In “One True Loves”, we get to see a glimpse of the future before jumping on a normal timeline, but after learning that Jesse was alive and getting to know him in the first few chapters of the normal timeline, I couldn’t help but want to see another glimpse into the future and then another and another.

I would say this was a very sad book even though it had a somewhat happy ending. I wouldn’t have had it any other way but at the same time, I wish the characters hadn’t had to go through that. That’s how lovable they were, you really did not want to see any harm done to them.

I don’t know why but this book reminded me of Colleen Hoover novels. this wasn’t that big of a tragedy but if you enjoy CoHo books then I would definitely recommend “One True Loves”.

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To Marry and to Meddle — Martha Waters — The Regency Vows #3

Genre: Romance, Royalty
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warning: Sexual content, as per usual in this series.

“To Marry and to Meddle”, the last book in The Regency Vows series, follows the sweet Lady Emily Turner and the scandalous Lord Julian Belfry. Emily has found no acceptable suiters in the six seasons she’s been part of due to her family’s troubles, while Lord Julian is still cast off from society as he owns a theater with a dubitable reputation. Emily wants to be married off to someone half decent-not her father’s creditor-while Lord Julian wants his theater to become a respectable one-one where men take their wives, not their mistresses. Settling down for a marriage of convenience, Lord Julian hopes Emily will help bring higher society into his theater while Emily will finally be free of her family’s shame, but they weren’t counting on any feelings that may arise.

As soon as I read that this book would be about Lord Julian, I knew it would be the funniest of the lot, and I wasn’t wrong. I think Lord Julian has been my favorite character and ever since we met him in the first book, “To Have and to Hoax”, I have absolutely loved his quirkiness and his bravery, as I don’t think I would’ve been able to do what he did, leaving his family to own a theater and be an actor, in the period of time that he lived.

I feel like this last book in The Regency Vows series was relatively slower-paced than the books that preceded it… Or perhaps it was just that I had grown tired of the dynamics of these books, as I felt like they all told the same stories to some extent. I would concede that this was the sweetest of them all, but oh well. I’m not sure if I would recommend reading these books back to back. The series was lovely, but I guess somewhat repetitive.

I would recommend this book to fans of the first season of Bridgerton and this series to any lovers of period dramas. It has been a truly entertaining ride, and I am so glad I found this series when I did: a few weeks before the second season of Bridgerton dropped, and just as its third and last book was released.

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To Love and to Loathe — Martha Waters — The Regency Vows #2

Genre: Romance, Royalty
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warning: Sexual content, death of a family member, and grief.

“To Love and to Loathe” follows Jeremy, the Marquess of Willingham, and Diana, Lady Templeton, as they become lovers of sorts. The Marquess and Lady Templeton have known each other forever and their sexual tension has been evident for just as long—but they’d never be the perfect match for the other, the Marquess is a player and Diana’s brother’s best mate. That’s why, when they’re younger, Diana marries someone else, someone much older, becoming Lady Templeton and then just as quickly becoming a widow. Now, years after becoming a widower, Lady Templeton is approached by the Marquess of Willingham because his pride has been wounded. Having a previous lover critique his sexual skills and branding them as mediocre, the Marquess asks Lady Templeton to take him as a lover, as to be reassured that his skills are indeed acceptable and so other men are aware that she’d be interested in taking in a lover. Through a regal friends-with-benefits situation, this book will transport you to the 1800s and make you fall in love (again).

This was a very lighthearted book with the same storytelling, dynamics, and tropes as the first book in this series. Following two characters we met in “To Have and to Hoax”, this second installment was told through different points of view and had some enemies-to-lovers action going on—just like the first installment did. The only reason this book had a lower rating than the first book in the series did is that I got bored at times. Objectively, this book wasn’t extremely slow-paced, but I just lost interest and had to stop reading it. This book did not hook me as intensively as “To Have and to Hoax” did.

In essence, you’ll love this book if you loved the first book in the “The Regency Vows” series, but at the same time, I feel like this book would work well as a standalone. Yes, you’ll understand some backstory better if you’ve read “To Have and to Hoax”, but if you get your hands on “To Love and to Loathe” first, don’t hesitate to read it.

I would recommend this book to readers who like the friends-with-benefits and enemies-to-lovers dynamics.

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The Party Crasher — Sophie Kinsella

“A relationship isn’t a snapshot. (…) It’s a journey.”

Genre: Romance, Comedy
Actual rating: 4 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses divorce and deals with abandonment issues, but there aren’t really any other content warnings that I can think of.

“The Party Crasher” follows Effie, a (currently unemployed) event planner, as she crashes her family home’s “house cooling” party. Effie’s father and stepmother Mimi were the ones who raised her but now, after Effie and her siblings grow up and move away from home, they get a divorce. This has left Effie to question if everything she lived in her childhood was real because she really could’ve sworn they were a happy couple. A few years later, in comes Krista, Effie’s father’s gold-digging girlfriend. As Effie’s family’s quirky home is finally sold, Krista organizes a house cooling party and “forgets” to invite Effie. Hurt, but on a mission to rescue one of her childhood toys, Effie sets out to attend the party anyway, without anyone seeing her there. In a series of unfortunate (and comedic) events, Effie ends up not going unnoticed and has to resort to the help of her siblings and even an ex-boyfriend. In this heartwarming novel, Sophie Kinsella gives us the quirkiest of quirky families.

This has been the funniest romantic novel for me. I see so many books cataloged under romantic comedy when they’re really just romances without a huge tragedy, but wow, that was not the case with “The Party Crasher”. This book made me cringe and feel secondhand embarrassment and giggle and downright laugh at times. Effie, the main character, was going through a rollercoaster of emotions, and so was I.

I would say this was a relatively PG romance, but it was still cute and heartwarming in all the moments that mattered. I liked the characters, even the hatable ones, and I liked how fast-paced this book was, there were no dull moments.

I would recommend this book to young adults looking for a funny, light, romantic story to get out of their heads. This book is enthralling and entertaining, it’ll help you forget everything in the real world for a few hours.

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ARC — Sari, Not Sari — Sonya Singh

“But sometimes you are lucky, (…) if you find love and it finds you.”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 5 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses racial discrimination.

“Sari, Not Sari” follows Manny Dogra, the CEO of a company called Breakup that aids its clients in just that—breaking up through emails, with dignity and tact. Her business is extremely successful, she’s engaged, and she thinks she’s finally overcoming the grief that came with losing her parents. Then in comes Sammy Patel, a handsome businessman who is looking to take a break from his non-Indian girlfriend so he can attend his brother’s extravagant Indian wedding without ruining it all. But here’s the thing: Breakup only works with permanent break ups, not taking breaks. Sammy tries to convince Manny to take the case, persuading her with her supposed understanding of the Indian culture. But here’s the thing, Manny is Indian but she didn’t *grow up* Indian, she really is as americanized as can be. When Sammy agrees to give Manny a crash course in all things Indian as she attends Sammy’s brother’s wedding as a business partner—not a date—, she takes the case and reconnects with the roots she didn’t even know she had, as she slowly starts to understand what it means to be a Patel, to be Indian.

This was the slowest of slow burn romances, but as this was also a book about personal growth I’ve decided not to write it off because of that. With the sweetest of plot twists, “Sari, Not Sari” deserves its full 5 stars and maybe even a bit more.

This book perfectly illustrates imposter syndrome with regards to culture, which was impressive considering that imposter syndrome is usually related to profesional development and not to more personal matters. Manny was dealt a hard hand, but she’s trying to do the best with what she’s got. Sammy had the best intentions, although perhaps not the best execution. The Patels were both welcoming and cruel? At the end of the book I had fluctuates from loving them to hating them to loving them again.

And I have to point it out: THIS IS SONYA SINGH’S DEBUT NOVEL? Excuse me, what? Sonya, I can’t wait to see what’s to come for you. This book was so sweet and the love in it so tender and the friendships in it so solid. Character development was on point, they weren’t just copy/pasted slates of the same 3 character traits; the characters in “Sari, Not Sari” were complex and had so many layers and character flaws. I loved them and I loved the story you told.

I would recommend this book to people interested in a romance book that’s more than just a romance book. “Sari, Not Sari” will teach you about self worth, honesty, lost love, grief, and family, all in the midsts of two different cultures colliding.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: April 05, 2022

ARC — She Gets the Girl — Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, LGBTQIA
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
Content Warnings: Discusses alcoholism.

“She Gets the Girl” follows Molly and Alex, two university freshman who are trying their best to get their girls. Molly, being close to home and having a deep relationship with her family, is looking to grow more independent and have her high school crush fall for her. Alex, running half way through her state to attend university as far away from her alcoholic mother, is trying to win her ex girlfriend back and looking to become a better person. After meeting in a party, Alex takes on the mission of helping Molly break out of her shell and get the girl, all the while Alex is trying to show her ex she’s changed, that she can have friends and do selfless things for them.

First things first, it’s SO cute that this book was written by a couple. Rachael Lippincott is an author I hold close and dear to my heart ever since I read “The Lucky List”. Alyson Derrick is Rachael’s wife and “She Gets the Girl” is her debut novel—even though she’s already set to publish another book next year, that’s how promising she is. They both built an interesting world through alternating points of view.

Now on to my review of the book: The self-pity and the “uh I’m too damaged to love or be loved” isn’t a trope I necessarily like, but this book delivers a nice feel-good story and I’m trying to focus on that instead. I don’t know who was more stubborn and annoying, Alex or Molly, but they were definitely exasperating.

I see books as, yes, works of fiction—but fiction in a way that they try to imitate real life at the best of their abilities. Even when reading dystopian or fantasy novels, those works of fiction carry real-life emotions and situations that seem possible in other realities. Sadly, this work of fiction did not hold this to be true. I felt like the characters and all the situation they lived through were so farfetched for the sake of being unique that they somewhat lost their magic.

I would recommend this book to high schoolers and young adults that enjoy LGBTQIA+ books. It’s a nice, light read, and could be a great book to give as a gift.

And yes, even though this wouldn’t be the first Rachael Lippincott book I would recommend, I still wouldn’t dismiss it.

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ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: April 05, 2022