I really struggled through this one. I received it complimentary from NetGalley but my opinions are my own. I didn’t love the characters and I found them weird and pretentious but not relatable. It felt slow moving to me. It wasn’t bad but I just didn’t get into it at all and felt like I was drudging slowly through it.

The play on words that makes the title perfection, to how it was all tied together with lines from films was great. The two main characters spoke volumes to me on how two people meet and it grows in moments and actions from there, I truly enjoyed Love, Unscripted.

Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read this title in exchange for my review.

Love Unscripted is the story of Nick Marcet who lives his life behind the big screen piecing together movies. While his affinity for his craft often makes the character a bit bland, his loves seems to come to a standstill when Ellie his girlfriend of over 3 years leaves him, he gets evicted, and he loses his job all at once. The story goes from present to past and back again, however, for me Nick came off as a bit whiny and under developed, but the book still had plenty of cute moment.

The movie references and sometimes cute banter gave me some of that rom-com feeling that I was seeking. The self-discovery and growth shown by Nick as he goes back and looks at his relationship with Ellie in a new light. At the beginning of their relationship everything seemed so perfect, from their first perfect night together, to the ending of their relationship Nick is able to see that maybe his need to find a love like those in the movies isn’t something that can ever achieved because real life love is so much bigger and better.

Thank you Netgalley for the early copy in exchange fro an honest review.

I enjoyed this title, especially its dual timelines and seeing the beginning of Nick and Ellie's love story, but it was hard for me to get into the present day parts. Nick is a bit self-pitying in a way that made me feel like Ellie could do better. The writing was still good and had many cute movie references and plenty of humor, but not my favorite in terms of romance.

This book was so good! I will recommend it to everyone who comes into the store because I think it will end up on my favorites of the year list. which is saying a lot because I was NOT a fan of her previous book with the baseball romance.

When I read the description for Love, Unscripted I knew I had to read it! This novel jumps between 2008 and present day to give the reader the backstory of Ellie and Nick’s relationship (which I felt worked well with the plot). The present day Nick and Ellie have hit a rocky patch and by going back to 2008 we get to organically see where the fissures started and how it all broke down. I found both Ellie and Nick were both endearing, but there were definitely times I want to shake Nick and ask he what are you doing!? lol. Overall, I enjoyed the premise of Love, Unscripted and look forward to reading more from Owen Nicholls in the future.

I wanted to love this book because of the cover (even though I’ve been warned about that). It was hard to get past the pity party feel for the main character. It was not as light hearted and fun as I had hoped for.

This cover and synopsis are proof that you can't judge a book by its cover. I thought that the cute couple on the cover and a promise of an uplifting love story could do no wrong and I would read this book and fall in love. Well, I wouldn't really consider this a romance as it was more of a pity party for the main character.

Nick spends the entirety of the book in flashbacks of the first time they met and dealing with the aftermath of her Ellie moving out. I wanted to feel for me because break-ups suck but he never once questioned if he was the problem. He laid the blame on her and was really spiteful towards her even when she tried to make an effort to be friends and check up on him. I didn't like his character one bit.

Ellie has a big role in the flashbacks but when it comes to present day she isn't present a lot but she is mentioned quite a bit. In a way it's like the memory of her is haunting him and this seems to be the case when he tries to go on a date and he is literally talking to an imaginary Ellie, talk about a real cockblock.

The plot was meh and didn't leave wanting to know more about these characters. I felt like the romance wasn't there and it was just more about Nick hashing out the past and trying to come to terms with the present. It didn't leave me interested.

The only thing that gave me enjoyment was the movie references.

Overall, this was not what I was expecting and it was a letdown.

The love story of Nick and Ellie has as many ups and downs as Nick's favorite movies. He is a cinema operator and lover with little ambition. He cannot truly be a partner to Ellie until he learns to love himself and find his way in life. The movie references throughout were fun and the flashbacks to the night they met sprinkled in kept the story going but it was hard to root for either of these characters. It will probably be made into a best selling rom-com movie.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free, advance copy for review.

An interesting love-ish story. The plot focuses on Nick.and his struggles to find himself and love. Overall, I enjoyed the story but I found th ed characters, who we in their late 20s, early 30s to be frustratingly immature. Overall, an interesting look inside one human's mind.

I thought the premise of this book was cute, but the execution was super not. I was expecting Hornby, but this isn’t there yet. I actually bailed on this book about halfway through because I just couldn’t get through it; it had already been a month of me trying to work through, but I felt it was very long and the protagonist was very lacking in any interesting qualities which it made it hard for me to root for him. Also, the back and forth time in time distracted me from the flow of the story and made it harder for me.

The comparisons to Nick Hornby and David Nicholls in the blurb for this book are apt. Our narrator, Nick Marcet, is a London man who has spent his adult life working as a projectionist in a cinema and watching the films he loves. He's also spent the past four years in a relationship with Ellie Brown, his first real girlfriend--a relationship that has just ended as the book begins. Over the course of this hilarious, hearbreaking, beautiful novel, Nick performs a postmortem on the night they met (also the night of Obama's election in 2008), and in present time tries to figure out what went wrong.

This is a coming-of-age novel where the protagonist is 30 years old. Watching him grow up as his life falls apart is hopeful, funny, and painful. I only wish we got a little more Ellie in the story. Since the novel is from Nick's perspective, with the exception of some brief third-person interludes (intermissions, as he calls them), we don't get enough insight into her side of their relationship. But I suppose that's not the point of the book.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I really did laugh and cry while reading it. I hope Owen Nicholls writes another book soon!

I wasn't in love with the back and forth between past and present in this book. It was a light-hearted story and I appreciated that the hero saw is own faults by the end, realizing he and his expectations were the problem. In that sense there was a satisfying resolution but I didn't get those rom-com feels or the big laughs that I wanted. It made me smile and laugh here and there but I felt like it was more about the hurdles of young relationship expectations and less about the meet-cute romance. There was a lot of good wisdom and even a few deeper moments that I think is a bit out of place marketed as a rom-com. If this were on a different shelf or had a less "rom-com" cover my expectations might have been met differently.

Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of Love, Unscripted.

I'm not a fan of romance-y, rom-com genre books but I will read it if the premise is unusual such as Love, Unscripted, so I was excited when my request was approved.

After four years, Nick and his girlfriend, Ellie, have broken up. He is devastated.

As the rest of his life semi-unravels, Nick must put the pieces of his life back and find a way back to himself to truly understand why he and Ellie were not meant for each other.

I liked that Love, Unscripted, was an unconventional love story told from the male perspective, recounting the details of a breakup in the present and traveling into the past to detail the night he and Ellie first met.

But, it was hard to like Nick; yes, he was a nice nice, sensitive guy, but meek, mild, lacking substance, ambition, and interesting qualities.

He spends most of his time comparing moments of his life to scenes in classic films (which I found amusing but became redundant fast).

I had a difficult time believing Nick and Ellie connected and how they managed to stay together for nearly four years. It seems the only thing they had in common was their love of movies, and most people enjoy movies.

I did understand Nick when he said he was never good enough for Ellie (she's ambitious, talented, beautiful), and it was this lack of self esteem that caused the end of their relationship. This dichotomy does exist in real relationships but since this is a book, I wished Nick had focused on rectifying this inequality and did something about it.

I appreciated Nick's revelation at the end that he was the reason he and Ellie ended, not her, that he should have invested time and energy into them, not throw in the towel because he assumed they were headed that way.

I wished Nick had stood up for himself, and for Ellie, who came off as your typical manic pixie girl, which was so stereotypical, down to her dyed hair.

The writing was good, but the character development could have been stronger.

Nick's a nice guy, but that wasn't enough.

I really loved the synopsis of this book, but unfortunately I found it really hard to get into. The book starts off very slow and confusing between present day and 2008. I wanted to give this story a chance, but just could not seem to get into it.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, the cover made it seem like it would be something I would enjoy, but I just could not get into this book. It was very slow, the jumping back and forth to 2008 in the beginning threw off the momentum for me.

Ellie had the quizzical eyebrows of Broadcast News-era Holly Hunter and the neon-red hair of Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At least, that's what caught Nick's attention when he met her on the night of 2008's historic election. A cinema devotee and lover of great love stories, Nick always fancied himself the Tom Hanks of his own romantic comedy, and when sparks flew with Ellie that night, he swiftly cast her as the Meg Ryan of his story. For four blissful years, Nick loved Ellie as much as he loved his job as a film projectionist: wholly, earnestly, cinematically.

But now Ellie has moved out, convinced "the fire's gone," and Nick is forced to sift through his memories to figure out where it all went wrong. The fallout from Ellie's declaration that she "doesn't love Nick the way she used to" throws him back into recollections of their first night together. Their shared jokes, her wry smile, the "hope" that filled the night air--his memories are as rose-colored as the Hollywood love stories he idealizes.

That night was a perfect meet-cute, yes, but was their romance as destined for a "happily ever after" as he'd thought? Is he really the rom-com hero he believes he's been? Or did this Harry let his Sally down? Peppered with references to beloved movies, Love, Unscripted explores how even a hopeless romantic can learn that in real life, love isn't, and shouldn't be, like what we see in the movies.



I DNF this book, unfortunately the book lacked some sort of chemistry or flow for me, and I couldn't get into it the way I hoped.

Unfortunately the author's writing style made it hard for me to get into a good reading flow. That's why I struggled with the book and unfortunately didn't enjoy it. As per my rule to only publish reviews of books three stars or higher, I will not publish a review on the book on amazon and other retailers.

Btw, the cover of the book is gorgeous and will hopefully draw many readers to the book.

Thanks for giving me the chance to review this book.

This book was every emotionally unavailable guy that realizes he screwed up by his own undoing on the perfect girl. It reminded me of the movies Ruby Sparks and 500 Days of Summer.

The male lead is every guy that projects a unrealistic expectation on a girl and cannot face reality. I liked that he did look back and realize that he is the problem and the only reason their relationship ended was because of him. Prime example of guys you don't want to date but overall, It was very refreshing to see the male POV and how he goes through the motions of a relationship and coming to terms with his own issues.

I was excited to try this book. While I loved the plot, the back and forth of timelines was a bit too much for me. Like others have expressed, it was a bit messy for the flow of the story. Overall, it was cute.