This one was definitely a let down for me. I was so excited about it specifically because I love the 80s and 90s romcoms. They bring my heart happiness. And when I read the MCs names were Harry and Sally, I fell in love. But alas, my heart was broken. Everything felt so forced and off throughout the whole book. The pacing of it all lacked, and just the whole romantic aspect was not there. It just all felt completely fake.

This was cute and enjoyable for the most part but I didn't like some of the very causal fatphobia that I came across while reading. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

I wanted to love this but I honestly feel like I read it before. The UK setting was refreshing and I enjoyed the friend group but it felt very similar to the Kerry Winfrey books and so for me it was a pass..

Wow! I didn’t expect to love this as much as I did, but it so surprised me! The premise of this was so good! Fake dating, but only on Tiktok! Harry moves in with Sally when both run into a financial issue, skip ahead two months and they start recreating famous romcom scenes and posting them to Tiktok! Slowly we see them fall in love and get their happy ever after, but the whole journey was fun and just good vibes.

I would so recommend this as a lighthearted romcom with a dash of life lessons in the mix!

One criticism I did have was that, at the start in particular, there were scenes or bits of dialogue that felt underdeveloped and skipped over. Somethings felt a bit lacking and like they didn’t make sense because of this, but very easy to get over and an enjoyable read regardless!

I found this one a little difficult to get into and something about the pacing felt off. Maybe it's because the obstacle between Sally and Harry didn't feel big or realistic enough. I get that the whole point of the book is embracing and referencing romance tropes, but it was hard to read without rolling my eyes at each cliché (Harry and Sally being the MC names for one).

Trigger Warnings
This book contains:
- Reference to cheating
- Suggested familial financial extortion/violence.
Characters
Sally is the romance loving, café owner with a room to let after her younger sister has moved into her boyfriend’s place. Her life is all about romance. Romance movies of all kinds, a café themed on love and creating early love experiences for other couples and wanting to find her own perfect match.
Harry on the other hand is a total love cynic. He’s a builder by trade whose parent’s marriage has been falling apart more and more since his dad retired. While he never had a loving home growing up, what he’s experiencing as their marriage deteriorates solidifies his belief that love doesn’t exist.
Storyline
Thanks to Sally’s sister moving out and the debt she needs to repay, she’s forcing to let her sister’s old room out. A friend of a friend puts Harry in touch with Sally because he’s in desperate need of renting a room on a short-term basis.
As they live together, they learn more about each other, most prominently, their difference of opinion about love. One night after a few drinks, they re-create the famous lift scene from Dirty Dancing, and overnight become a Tik Tok sensation.
Overall Thoughts
As the name suggests, this fun love story is basically a rom com the whole way through. While I don’t think I’ve seen EVERY movie they recreated or referenced, I’ve seen most and I loved reading about their adaptations.
I had such a fun time reading this. I think pretty much every time I picked this up, I found myself giggling and laughing at what they were up to.
And in amongst all those funny moments, Harry is beating the gender stereotypes in his industry as a builder. I won’t say how, because that might spoil the surprise, but it was so nice for this to be popped into the story in such a natural way.
Overall, a hugely fun book that is quite inclusive in such a natural way that I kinda wish more authors could do.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

A fun, flirty, and fast-paced romcom. Sally and Harry (notably not from When Harry Met Sally) are two unwitting flatmates with vastly different opinions on love, and sudden TikTok fame leads to them reenacting many iconic romcom scenes for their audience.

I liked the characters and their chemistry, and the tension and conflict between them made sense. Both characters have their own lives and problems to deal with, even if some of them were a little ridiculous.

The 3rd act conflict is entirely predictable, and I did not like how quickly it was brushed aside, as it was actual sexual harassment committed by the ex-girlfriend towards Sally and Harry. The novel also contains some casual internalized fatphobia and offhanded diet culture comments that I felt were unneeded. I was also put off by the pro-"pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and focus on work as a sign of worth, especially in relation to how Sally's sister is depicted.

Overall, a fun premise and a typical contemporary romance novel that hits the right notes for a quick read!

This was fantastic and such a fun read. I loved it so much and kept turning the pages. Can’t wait to be able to share this with friends.

Who of us, at least those with a love for watching films about people falling in love, hasn’t wished they could step into the frames of their favourite romantic comedy?

They are usually so perfectly put together, so wonderfully alive with romantic possibility and eventually, after many twists and turns, meet-cutes and pulling aparts and love realised, we simply want to dive right in and live the fairytale right alongside the characters we love.

But alas, rom-coms are rom-coms and real life is … NOT.

Well, usually; in the giddily confected delights of Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner by Kathryn Freeman, not only are rom-coms loved and adored with considerable affection by one of the lead characters, Sally, but they become the vehicle that she uses to power herself to social media viral fame courtesy of the reenactments (#EpicRomcomReenactmentFailure) she undertakes with her newly-installed roommate Harry (yes, Harry with the names of these two unexpected cohabitants just the first of a buzzy list of rom-com favourite references that pepper this charmingly fun novel).

At first, recreating the lift scene from Sally’s epically favourite rom-com Dirty Dancing is just a bit of harmless fun, making use of the fact that gruff, romance-averse Harry, fresh from a recent break-up courtesy of his girlfriend’s infidelity, has the build and strength, courtesy of running his own building company, to make the moments come alive.

But then the recreations strike a chord with Sally’s fellow TikTok users and one impromptu homage becomes a slew of them, all of them building in views and sponsorship, not the kind that will make them mega rich by any stretch, but which may allow coffee shop-owner Sally, who has money issues courtesy of debt accrued by her wayward sister Amy, and Harry with some pressing financial issues of his own, the chance to make a little extra money.

That’s all it is at first – business; Harry is adamantly clear about that, and Sally, convinced that Harry, burnt by a loveless childhood and some bad relationship experiences, not least with his ex Isabelle, is incapable of going any further than fun flirtation, assuming he’s in the mood, doesn’t even begin to believe it could go any further than a viral partnership.

But then, a blizzard of recreations follow courtesy of films like When Harry Met Sally (naturally, and yes, it is that scene which makes the cut), The Notebook, Never Been Kissed and An Officer and a Gentleman to name just four of the many rom-coms referenced in what amounts as an effervescently vivacious love letter to the genre, and while they will not admit it, both Harry and Sally find themselves getting more emotionally involved than either intended.

Their fans notice it too, and the digital cry goes out for them to take it further with every recreation, not hard when they are rather enjoying their proximity and the legitimate excuse they have to express, by proxy, the feelings building up for both of them.

Ah, but that’s where Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner starts to invest some weighty emotionalism into its story.

Sally isn’t prepared to settle for anything short of her lifelong PERFECT romantic dream, and Harry, who’s decent, kind and lovely but who is also convinced by his parents’ coldly indifferent union that real love simply isn’t a thing, and certainly not something he will ever attain so why bother.

And so, while the emotions and the chemistry are there and obvious to Harry’s loved-up friend Mike, and Sally childhood besties, artist Kitty, who’s fiercely protective of her friend, and gay band member Vince (he’s gay not so much the band) that love is very much in the air, if not in short, punchy TikTok reenactments, neither Sally nor Harry can bring themselves to give themselves over to what they’re feeling.

It’s a classic rom-com dilemma, and while it’s par for the course for the genre, Freeman, who infuses Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner with sparkling, witty dialogue (the kind that would be very much at home in a Nora Ephron classic of the genre) and vibrantly three-dimensional characters, does her own compellingly meaningful things with it, using Harry and Sally’s emotional blockage to explore how trauma can render otherwise wonderfully loving people incapable of doing anything more than skirting around the edges of attraction.

Thanks to this focus on the fact that real people, even ones falling in love, can be so broken they can make do anything with the best thing to ever happen to them, Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner feels like it occupies a rarefied place where all the headily frothy trappings of rom-coms are gorgeously, humorously and touchingly in place, but a lot of real life emotion too.

Far from weighing down Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner with a tad too much emotional reality, being honest about how the brokenness of the past can come close to derailing the romantic possibility of the present and future – we say “close” because we all know that love cannot be denied in a rom-com and most definitely won’t be stymied here – adds some unique substance to this delightfully heartwarming and funny tale.

The novel is also an evocation of why rom-coms are so beloved.

It touches with heart and real passion on why we’re happy to lose ourselves in confected tales of love, why it’s so important to us to imagine how perfect life and love can be, even if we have the real thing ourselves, because even the best of realities can feel tarnished and a little less than fit for purpose.

Rom-coms, of course, are eminently ready to deliver on all our fantasies and dreams, and the joy of Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner is that it both explores why we love them with happiness-inducing verve and thoughtful empathy, and serves up a perfectly, wonderfully wrought story of love against the odds and with all the fairytale touches that we crave.

Love is a wondrously good and lovely thing and it comes deliciously alive in Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner, a novel full of vivaciously fun, viral moments that come romping into real life with vigorous reluctance (that’ll make sense when you read it, and you should) and convinces us by sheer dint of its enthusiasm for romantic possibility and actuality that maybe, against all the traumatic odds, that we can find and embrace love, in all its heart-holding splendour, after all.

I love RomCom movies, Dirty Dancing is one of my favourite movies. I loved the movie references in this book and it definitely made me feel nostalgic.
I'm not a huge fan of TikTok or Viral influencers, so this part of the book didn't appeal to me as much.
However this is a fun and lighthearted read.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC.

I love Kathryn Freeman’s books. She has a way of writing a sweet, engaging rom com with interesting characters. Unfortunately for me I found this book a bit of a slog. It took me a while to work out why - the whole premise is based on Tik Tok re-creations. I’ve read a Penny Reid book that had that similar premise and I found it cringey. Also just a bit far fetched they’d go viral so quickly given how Tik Tok is full of everyone doing the same sort of things for attention. Yet everything about this book was delightful and a good read for someone who doesn’t find Tik Too cringey as I do. To which I say, buy this book, you will enjoy it.

A cute, funny, romantic story of a romcom loving girl searching for true love and a cynical builder boy looking for a good time. It helped that I’m a romcom lover myself so I loved the use of lines from the films. The story also involves friendship, heartache and hope over adversity. Easy to read and something to make you smile.

I genuinely enjoyed this book from cover to cover.
Lovable main characters? Check
Engaging chemistry? Check
Humor? Check
Reminds you of all the classic romcoms while bringing the characters closer together? Check and check!
This is easily my favorite RomCom so far this year. My only problem I had with this book is that it had to end...

This was such a cute contemporary romance!!!! I loved the references to classic rom coms throughout the book. It made reading this feel like a hug from the genre. Harry was such a realistic skeptic when it came to love. I really appreciated the way Sally was able to balance out some of his cynicism despite having had tough things happen in her life as well. I think the elements involving social media added to the story in a fun way without falling into an overly modernist style. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and will be looking out for what Kathryn Freeman puts out next!!

Personally I like to go into romances knowing pretty much nothing. If you do as well here’s the pitch:

Sally is a romantic at heart. Harry is a skeptic of love and romance. When the two meet in unlikely circumstances the pair are lead down paths they may have never foreseen. Follow their adventure filled with rom-coms past and present as they navigate what could be a romantic comedy of their own.

The title is what first caught my eye! I love a good romcom and this had all of the essentials! Two strangers who soon become friends turned lover. If you are looking for a feel good romantic comedy, this is what you need!

This was such a hilarious, cute novel! I loved all of the rom-com references, and the characters were funny and easy to relate to. I would definitely recommend!

Thank you NetGalley, HarperCollins UK and One More Chapter for access to this delightful arc!!

4/5 Stars!!

This was a cute, fast, and funny read, perfect for a palate cleanser if you're between books/series! Harry and Sally have good chemistry, and they're so funny to read together. This really made me want to rewatch the rom coms they reenact, lol!

This is the perfect read for romance lovers. It’s a lighthearted, funny and swoony love letter to rom coms and the magic they inspire. Is it groundbreaking? Not really but it is a whole lot of fun. Very solid choice for anyone who misses the golden age of romantic comedies.

The characters in the book fell flat for me. It was an earnest attempt at making them feel like real, relatable people but they seemed to fallible and like plot devices rather than real PEOPLE. The conflict felt juvenile along with the reactions from the characters not responding strongly to it. In conflict, you would assume characters would have strong reactions and emotions, but the female main character did not seem too phased - so how are readers supposed to feel strongly towards it? Overall, the general premise of this book was fun and could be someone else's jam - it just was not mine due to the weak characterization.

This title and the Dirty Dancing lift on the cover was enough for me to pick this up from the beginning. I love love loved Harry and I just wanted to hug him. Sally annoyed me a tad which is why this is three stars but together they were great. The friendship in this book also gave me Happy Place by Emily Henry vibes so if you enjoyed that one, I can see you liking this too. All in all, I had some issues with the MC but I did enjoy this book.