Love, Julie

Thank you @booksgosocialgroup and @netgalley for the eARC of Love, Julie by @jandersonwrites in exchange for an honest review!

📖📖 Book Review 📖📖 While rhis book jumps off from characters in an earlier novel, it is definitely a stand alone (I really want to go back and read Someone to Kiss now though). Trust me when I say, I had no problem jumping right in! Julie’s life has been a bit of a mess lately and she had a bender after seven months of sobriety. She is trying to get things back on track but definitely starts off the book a hot mess express. Jamie Anderson creates beautifully realistic characters that experience the whole spectrum of emotions from embarrassment to joy, all of it shared with a strong support system that brings a sense of comfort to the reader and a boat load of laughs. I truly appreciate that this book allows humor to shine through difficult and emotional situations because it is such an important part of life. Love, Julie is an unapologetically relatable and hilarious novel about going through the hard stuff to heal and learn to live with grace and humility.

Review is posted on Goodreads and will be on Instagram ahead of the publication date.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

Despite the heavy sounding plot following Julie's struggle with alcoholism, this was such a funny book with real characters. Luke is everything you want in a man. I loved the writing. I hadn't read the other book by this author (Kate's story) so this can definitely be read as a standalone. Having read this, I don't feel the need to go back and read about Kate and Ben, however I will absolutely read more by this author in future. This was a delight.

loved this book because it had my name lol but it was her story to sobriety and finding love with Luke while helping plan her friend and brother's wedding. loved her friend Quinn and that she stood up for herself.

I was pleasantly surprised by this moving, keenly observed romantic comedy. It features Julie, a middle aged recovering alcoholic on her journey of self-acceptance, redemption, and finding healthy love. I’m living an essentially sober life and I found the author’s descriptions of the challenges of being sober in today’s society totally relatable. Her love interest, Luke, is a genuine, emotionally intelligent, sunshine, single dad. I was completely invested in their grumpy-sunshine, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn romance. It didn’t hurt that the setting is Regina, Saskatchewan, an hour from the family farm where my father grew up. I’d recommend for readers looking for a complex, mature romance. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

What a fantastic read. This was such a down to brass tacks look at the reality of addiction. I think Julie was a great representative of how the female mind can make us have self doubt and therefore create self sabotage. I feel that Luke and several other people that were new to her life helped break the cycle. I liked that Luke had more of a dad bod and wasn’t an alpha male. He was the Labrador to her black cat . Letting people in , letting your guard down and learn to trust can lead to your best life! Thank you to NetGalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Ok. Wow ! 😍 I knew I’d love this one. But I didn’t think I’d love it THAT much. As someone who’s lost quite a few close ones to alcoholism, I admit that was somewhat worried. This book paints such a realistic picture of alcoholism. But not only the illness itself but the understanding or lack of understanding of the aforementioned illness. It’s groundbreaking really. I’m quite difficult to please when it comes to such touchy topics as often, the authors forget to build characters that operate in nuances of grey rather than black or white, wrong right, addict/non addict, good/bad, enabler vs non enablers…but this one nailed it on the head.
Very realistic fictional characters. Finished it in a day. Kind of hope there’s a sequel of some sort. . Thank you so much NG and Jamie Anderson for this gem. 💎 . Once it releases, I shall recommend it to my mother. I’m sure she’ll be touched by this book too. 🥹

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

I thought this book was so lovely and poignant. It was nice to see a main character who wasn't twenty but still hasn't gotten it all together yet. Julie was wonderfully flawed and while I know the author doesn't have personal, first hand experience with substance abuse, Julie's struggle with alcohol was portrayed in a realistic but also thoughtful way.

This book had so much more depth than I anticipated! As a woman in her late 30's I enjoyed reading a novel where both the MFC and MMC are in their 40's - not the usual 18-25. The challenges they faced were ones that I was able to connect with better, because of this I was more invested in the story overall. I loved the ending and did not see the twist coming - based on how the author wrote I thought for sure we saw the ending from the start. I could have done without the epilogue, however, I felt that made the story a little "overdone".

One thing I could have done without was some of the dialogue between the MMC and FMC. While they are more mature characters, their self-awareness during conversations felt "Dr. phil-ish" and I often skimmed these parts.

overall, I loved this book and will be recommending to my reader and non-reader friends alike,

Love, Julie hits all of the right boxes for a easy and delightful romance read. The book heavily features strong character growth from the main character, and while usually I found myself rooting for Julie, at times her low self-worth and emotional journey felt a little redundant...but what is a good romance book without wanting to grab the main character's shoulders and shake them a bit. Luke as the romantic interest was beautifully written, sweet, warm, and someone you want to pull out from the pages. The book occasionally lacked description of the main characters and sometimes the pace felt a little jumpy, but overall it was rewarding page-turner.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this as a Read Now choice.

Wow, what a book.

Julie is in her 40s and a recovering alcoholic who has just fallen off the waggon. She is full of self-loathing and decides to act as a wedding planner for her brother Ben and her best friend Kate who want to get married in a year, to prove to them that she can be relied upon. Suddenly she is stuck with her brother's friend Luke who wants to be a co-planner. Julie is annoyed. Luke gets on her nerves - he is simply too cheerful for her.

This is an effortless read about real people with complicated feelings of depression, anxiety and worthlessness but also love and friendship.

The romance is slow-burn which is the only way this could have worked. Julie needs to learn to trust herself again, to stop pushing people away and to understand that she is a good person who deserves romance, commitment and love. It is fantastic to see her opening up to Kate, Ben, Luke and new friend Quinn, to address her self-destructive behaviour with men and to distinguish between self-preservation and self-sabotage.

I loved this book and couldn't put it down. All the characters have such depth. I loved Julie from the moment she let rip in the first AA meeting - she is such an authentic hot mess, and she was completely right to be pissed off with the God guy!

Luke is fantastic as a single dad love interest who is kind, warm and non-judgmental. His emotional intelligence shines off the page.

I have also just realised there is an earlier book that detailed how Kate met Ben. It's called Someone to Kiss and I trawled my library and e-book library apps in vain - only to find I'd got it as a free Kindle book a year ago, LOL. It's now on Kindle Unlimited and I shall read it shortly!