2 stars.

I truly wanted to like this book because of the representation. Perhaps I'm too old and cynical but if all it takes for you to fall for someone is knowing that they like you then you're not he die hard anti- romantic that you think you are. This book has a very middle grade trying to be older vibe and it personally didn't work for me.

Sophia at least had some depth as a character, but she was probably the only one out of the group of 6 that did. Emma's biggest issue in the book is coming out to her parents. HUGE ISSUE. but the book also says that she parents are supportive of all her choices and an incredibly close family. I really think that was made to be a bigger deal than it should've been.

Also for a book marketed as a f/f relationship there's a LOT of hetero stuff going on. I felt like half the book was talking about Tom and Kate and Myrah and Peter. Like... we don't even meet Peter in the book and there's like whole sections about him.

Matt and his whole sabotaging subplot was absurd. Who would believe such a thing? Also if they're such close friends and such "good wholesome" people then i really doubt matt's douche and entitlement attitude would have flown under the radar for all those years. You don't just wake up one day and act like that.

Overall this book wasn't it for me. 2 stars for the rep alone.

Emma was so excited to recruit her friends for the film festival. She was a die-hard romantic determined to make the gay rom-com of her heart, but the return of Sophia posed a problem. Sophia had lost all faith in love and wanted to make an angsty artsy film. After butting heads, they decided to split into two groups, but their friends had an idea they hoped would reunite them all.

I had no clue when I picked this book up, that it was a Much Ado About Nothing retelling. Reflecting on the story, I can see it clearly now. There were the two romances, and the plotting to get enemies Sophia and Emma together. There was even a nefarious plot, which gave this light hearted tale a touch of drama, but the story was punctuated by many new and fresh elements as well.

I had a great time running all over New York City with this crew, while also getting to see Sophia and Emma's view of each other slowly soften. I so wanted Emma to find her match, while I hoped something would dispel Sophia's negative opinions about love. These two went from throwing angst-filled grenades at each other to exchanging stolen glances and cute and witty banter.

The book leans on the lighter side, but Desombre gave it some emotional depth. Sophia realized she was bisexual and was out to her friends, but not her parents. Her fear of revealing her sexuality to them was backed up several times in the story by her parents' actions, and it was something that weighed heavily on Emma throughout. Sophia was struggling with her parents' divorce and her mother up and moving to a new country without her. She had a lot of emotions to work though, and I felt her angst was justified to a certain degree. It was very heartwarming seeing these two work through their issues with a little help from each other.

Overall: This story was light-hearted with a touch of drama and some really cute and sweet moments, I enjoyed watching Sophia and Emma work through their problems, make a movie, and find love.

F/F enemies to lovers? Okay, you got me. I really enjoyed this one! I love that the publishing world is finally allowing authors to write simple contemporary YA books normalizing diversity.

I really didn’t like the characters but i think it made the story more realistic that they were selfish and obnoxious.

Over all it was a sweet story with wonderful LGBTQIA representation. I would recommend this book to high school students for a leisure read.

I Think I Love You is a fabulously fun, quirky, and entertaining contemporary. The romance is what hooked me - I'm a sucker for all enemies to lovers and queer ones even more so! Featuring detailed and complex characters, it's about the fronts we put up to the world. Do opposites attract? If something starts out as a lie, does that mean it always is one? Talk about a predicament all fake daters find themselves in. And I love fake dating!

The characters were obnoxious and selfish but I loved how they were also realistic and relatable. I liked the romance but I wish there was a little more development. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a Much Ado About Nothing retelling, but it defintely felt like one. So, if that's something you're looking for, or if you want an entertaing f/f YA romance, I'd recommend this.

I loved this book so much. I Think I Love You is the queer modern-day Much Ado About Nothing retelling I never knew I needed until I read it. It tells the story of Emma, an unabashed romantic bisexual whose goals for the summer are simple: make the gay rom-com of her dreams for a film festival with her friends. her plans are thrown for a loop when Sophia, still reeling from her parents’ divorce and her mother's remarriage returns from spending the year in Paris and threatens Emma's plans. Through meddling and matchmaking from their friends, Emma and Sophia may just discover something deeper between them underneath all the banter and bickering.
I adored this book. It was such a breath of fresh air. It was equal parts emotional as well as funny and sweet. I hadn't known about the Much Ado About Nothing angle going in, but as a big Shakespeare fan, I absolutely loved it! it was layered in but updated so well. I really enjoyed the ways that Desombre both played with, poked fun at, and homaged the original in hers while making it feel fresh and new and able to stand on its own.
I really enjoyed the writing in this; I thought Desombre did an excellent job of putting you in the moment and evoking the senses as well as the emotions of course. Even if it plays on tropes we’ve seen before, she made her own story, and as Emma pointed out in the book, there are not enough happy queer love stories, particularly with WLW or bi girl characters, and I loved the care the author took in representing that. It made me feel seen and warmed my heart. I also loved that as a bonus we got body positivity fat rep with Kate who embodied the Hero character in this. I loved her and Emma and their friendship. It felt very real.
I had a very good time reading this book and if you’re looking for a queer enemies-to-lovers good time, look no further than I Think I Love You out March 2nd!


I will be posting this full review on Goodreads on 2/16/21 and this review on Instagram (@findangoh) on March 4th as part of the TBR and Beyond Book Tour.

I THINK I LOVE YOU is the sapphic rivals-to-lovers story that I needed to heal me. I love the dynamic between Emma and Sophia, from their intense dislike of each other to the gradual love and respect they show for each other. Please read it if you want a fluffy romance that reminds you that while love is complicated and scary and hard, it is worthwhile.

. I Think I Love You follows Emma Hansen and Sophia Kingsley, two girls in the same friend group, competing for a coveted first-prize trip to a film festival in Los Angeles. To attend the NYC-LA Film Festival, all they have to do is create a fifteen-minute short film in the genre of their choice. Easy enough, right?

When Emma finds out about the film competition, she instantly ropes her friends into helping her create the Gay Rom Com of her dreams. It’s a subject that’s close to her heart, especially since she’s out at school, but not to her family - save for her cousin, Kate. Everything seems to be going as planned, until Sophia is back after spending a year abroad in Paris, and is determined to shoot down every idea of Emma’s.

Following her mother’s remarriage, Sophia has spent the last year in Paris. While returning home after spending a year away is never easy, Sophia’s also got the additional stress of trying to fit back into her old friend group. Especially after she’s the one who stopped responding in the group chats, and didn’t tell anyone that she was coming back. With news of the competition, Sophia’s eager to use it as her way to get back “in” with her friends. But her pragmatic, still-jaded-from-her-parents-divorce self seems to put her foot in her mouth at every chance.

Before long, the group decides it’ll simply be easier to just split up into two groups: Emma, Kate and Myrah in one, and Sophia, Tom and Matt in another. It’s an easy-enough temporary solution for the sake of the competition, but Kate, Myrah, Tom and Matt are determined to get everyone back together, and getting along. With their meddling, it isn’t before long that Emma and Sophia start seeing each other with a different lens.
I found I Think I Love You to be an incredibly fast-read -- In fact, it’s the book that got me out of a reading slump. I kept going “Oh, I’ll just read one more chapter”, and before I knew it, it was 12:30 am, and I had finished the book. I really enjoyed how each chapter alternated between Emma and Sophia’s point-of-views. I haven’t read a lot of enemies/rivals-to-lovers where we get to read both points of view, and really appreciated how it allowed us to understand both girls better.

One of my favorite things about I Think I Love You was how Emma’s bisexuality was approached. I loved how she wanted to fight for representation, and how Desombre discussed how important representation is. I loved how supportive Emma’s friends and cousin were. There’s a specific moment in I Think I Love You between Emma and her parents that I loved, but I can’t touch on it too much because it’s a major spoiler. The strong friendship and family dynamics in I Think I Love You were such a standout for me. Emma’s special bond with her parents was adorable to read about, and I really appreciated how they .properly communicated about their feelings In contrast, Sophia’s relationship with her dad, and her more complex relationship with her mom was one that was more familiar to me, and one that I saw a lot of truth in. Something I truly loved about the familial relationships in I Think I Love You was the communication that occurred between the children and their parents, despite the complexity of their dynamics.

There was definitely a lot of scheming, whether between Emma, Myrah, and Matt, or Tom, Kate, Myrah and Matt, or any other combination of the group, and I enjoyed the chaoticness of it all. You could definitely tell how they all cared for one another, and how they just wanted the best for one another. That being said, I wish there was less manipulation, or at least more honesty about the schemes after they had occurred.

It’s been a while since I read Much Ado About Nothing, so I will say that a lot of the references completely flew over my head, but that didn’t take away from any of my enjoyment! What I didn’t love, however, was how some of the characters felt a little obnoxious to me? This might just be because I’m an adult reading YA, but they felt really young to me. I have a lot of empathy for Sophia, who self-isolated from her friends due to FOMO and feeling left out, but returning home and expecting everything to be the same, when you haven’t put in the effort to maintain those friendships, and continuously comparing everything to Paris definitely got on my nerves. Emma also felt a little juvenile and self-centered, and I wish that the two of them would’ve actually tried to see things from the other person’s perspective. I also felt like I might’ve missed some moments, because it felt like Emma and Sophia’s annoyance-to-rivals-to-lovers journey felt very abrupt.

Overall, I found I Think I Love You to be an easy read, and thoroughly appreciated the bisexual representation in it.

I dont read nearly as many sapphic books as I’d like to, so I was excited to try this f/f romcom. Sadly though, I was not a fan. Both of our main characters are insufferable. Self centered, obnoxious, and needlessly dramatic. They are both just so toxic and terrible. Also, the plot contains so much unneeded drama and lying from every character. It just got so frustrating to read. Drama in a book should make the reader excited and anxious, not annoyed and angry. And the word love was thrown around so much. Every character in this book felt the need to say they were in love after like 2 days of dating their S.O. It got incredibly annoying
And for a queer romance, there was so much straight content to read. So much of this book is focused on all the other friends and couples in the group. Also, It is so rare to have a friend group with one queer person in it. It’s a bit nit picky but I found it unrealistic that a group of friends from a New York City art school would only have one queer person. Much less that the school would only have 2 out sapphic students. I came for gay content, but if anything the straight couples got more attention, which i just was not interested in reading.

ive been having a hard time trying to rate this book im not sure why but ive got a lot to say so lets get into it! this book follows a bisexual girl named emma who is super into rom-coms and all thing lovey, as well as a lesbian girl named sophia who after her parents divorce, no longer believes in lasting love. they don't really like each other but are part of the same friend group making a film for a film contest, although emma and sophia both have extremely differing ideas to what their film should be.
i'll divulge into what i liked and didn't like about the book, but im hiding it under a spoiler section just in case!!

the good:
- i thought emma and sophia were SO cute like even during the enemies stage how they would unconsciously point out positive quirks about each other in their heads it was adorable
- the book was so sweet overall, i really enjoyed the idea of the book
-the balance (or lack thereof) in the friend group was a dynamic i both loved and hated at times but its a sweet friend group in general
- emma and sophia in the end and parts of them in the last 50% were nice, i liked seeing the development especially in emma.
-emma and her going on and on about france in the beginning was sort of pretentious BUT i can sympathize with her because she used it as a cover up to how she actually felt AND she understood her faults for that. i really loved emmas arc through the story, she was my favorite character.

issues i had:
- the characters: especially in the beginning, i found both emma and sophia sort of insufferable. emma acted so immature and her actions and words were just.. childish. i can't even recall why she didn't like sophia at first, was it that people thought they were going to get together as the only sapphic girls in their grade? but thats not sophias fault....? im not sure, that part was sort of confusing. emma was just not a favorite character for a lot of the book but by the near-end i really started to warm up to her (i also realized i can relate with her more than i thought)
- the miscommunication and careless planning and meddling was really frustrating at times. you just KNOW its all going to blow up in their faces and cause a bunch of unnecessary problems BUT I WILL SAY it prompted maturation and growth out of the characters so im not too mad about it
- side characters: not a biggie but i would've liked to see more content from myrah i thought she had a lot of unused potential. maybe more out of tom too.

more i liked!!!!
- the pacing of the story was quite nice (except the i-love-yous came very very fast and early to me but i won't hold it against the book, its supposed to be cute!) \
- the way the book wrapped up was amazing, i especially loved the final 20% or so
- emmas development was really great to read about, also getting to read more about the reasons behind why emma and sophia act the way they do is nice. also emma confronting her parents made my tear up :'(

the characters had this real aspect to them. though the book is a little on the (i don't want to say childish, but teenage-y?) side, it was overall super cute and fun! its an adorable sapphic love story <3

I can’t believe this is Auriane Desombre’s debut novel! I couldn’t get enough of her entertaining and flawless writing and the witty banter between the characters. I love the fact that this story was told through Emma and Sophia’s points of view because I felt as though I was given a front-row seat to their conflicting thoughts and emotions. This author definitely deserves the highest of fives because she gave this lovely story the right amount of angst, humor, romance and heart-breaking moments and I’m not ashamed to admit that I had a hard time with putting my kindle down after I got past the first page.

Thanks to this wonderful author, I fell head over heels in love with film making because I got to hang out with Emma, Sophia, Myrah, Kate, Tom and Matt while they were busy with brainstorming ideas and blending their unique talents in order to create the best movie ever! I love the fact that friendship and matchmaking were huge themes in this story and I must admit that Auriane Desombre has done a fabulous job with portraying the deep bonds between these endearing characters.

I THINK I LOVE YOU is such a fresh retelling of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Such a wonderful f/f story set in NYC. I thoroughly enjoyed the characterizations and voice in this story. The words really held you the entire time. I would give this story a higher rating than 5 stars. I highly recommend it!

As a result of my various committee appointments and commitments I am unable to disclose my personal thoughts on this title at this time. Please see my star rating for a general overview of how I felt about this title. Additionally, you may check my GoodReads for additional information on what thoughts I’m able to share publicly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this and any other titles you are in charge of.

This is book is absolutely to DIE for. It's every queer femme teenager's validation needed ever. Even as a grown person of 24 I felt this like a balm to my soul. While I thought it was comical that 16 year olds fell in and out of love in the span of 3 weeks, I thought the earnestness of their larger than life emotions and struggles spoke to the 0 to 100 change in feelings. I loved Emma and Sophia and the wildly different experiences they came from. The fact that they were adversaries and foils of each other in every way made their endgame relationship even more enjoyable. I loved Kate and Tom and Emma's parents as well. I felt like Matt deserved a better beatdown than simply one smack in the face but we can't have every dream fulfilled in one book. Super cute and I'm sure my students would be in love with this book!!

I Think I Love You is a fresh, hilarious, f/f retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing set in vibrant NYC. This book contains so much joy, and brims with gorgeous prose to boot. It is a huge pleasure of a read.

Emma is a hopeless romantic, passionate about anything that has to do with love, rom-coms, and happily-ever-afters. She is not yet out to her parents about being bi-sexual, lending her character an honest weight that helps balance nicely her character. When she learns about a film contest whose prize is a trip to a film festival in LA, she goes about creating the bi rom-com of her dreams with the help of her cousin Kate and friends Matt, Myrah, and Tom.

But when Tom’s best friend, down-to-earth, jaded Sophia, returns from Paris and plans to enter the contest with her own sapphic film very different in tone, she and Emma find themselves in direct competition. As the banter-filled, enemies-to-lovers dynamic between Emma and Sophia reveals two girls who could not be more different, we get glimmers of the possibility that their shared love for film, elements of their experiences regarding their sexuality, and their deep desire for connection reveals more common ground than the two have yet to discover.

I love this modern spin on an old favorite and the truly distinct voices of the dual POV between Emma and Sophia. But what really drew me in were the nuances within the characters. Sophia is someone who has seen, up close and personal, the struggles that exist in love. The bitter disappointments of lost love, her parents’ divorce and altered family structure, and the need for belonging after you leave your city behind and return, only to have everything different—were so resonant. And Emma is worried about how to come out as bi to her parents, adding layers of realism to her character. I was so impressed with how deep we got into each character’s psyche, and how much texture these delvings added to the story and characterization.

I also appreciated the matchmaking fun with the story’s side characters, and the use of the stage as a genuine way to work through your emotions, your struggles, your passions, and your burrowed beliefs about yourself and those closest to you.

I Think I Love You explores topics of finding yourself, coming out, falling in love, and its meditations around identity were all seamlessly woven through this funny, sweet, hopeful story. I absolutely loved the voicey quality to each character, as well as the banter throughout. This is a book that would appeal to both rom-com lovers and more serious-minded readers alike who are looking for a heartwarming, beautifully-written f/f love story. A gorgeous debut that made its forever mark on me. Five Stars!

This book was so cute and so easy to read. I loved seeing these two teenage girls fall in love with each other after disliking each other for so long. I had a lot of fun reading this light story that also dealt with the subject of coming out to your family as a lesbian or bisexual.

In I Think I Love You, you'll meet Emma and Sophia. The first is a romantic through and through who believes in great love stories. She adores rom-coms but doesn't see herself in them so when a competition comes up, she knows she has to make a rom-com with bi characters. The competition was pretty cute and I liked the way it ended as it felt very natural. Sophia, on the other hand, doesn't believe in love and is known for being anti-relationships. What they don't know is that she felt that way since her parents split up. We see her feeling very alone and coming back after being gone to Paris for one year is a little tough on her even though she tries to make it seem like her life there was amazing.

When both girls are at opposite sides, the rest of their friends figure out that they need to meddle in order to stop them from hating each other.. and while they lied, it worked and I loved every single moment after that. The flirtation was so freaking cute and I was living for it. The drama entertained me and it was a quick read, the perfect book for me at that time.


<i>(Thank you for letting me read and review an ARC via Netgalley)

Reasons to pick this book up:

- f/f Rivals to lovers trope
- Loads of scheming friends (for a good cause!)
- Romantic cynic falling for a rom-com fangirl
- Loads of snarks and witty comebacks

Review:

“This could be my chance to tell the gay rom-com story of my heart, the kind I’ve never seen on-screen before, despite the hours of my life I’ve spent glued to the Netflix romantic comedy section, falling in love with the idea of love even as I yearned to see myself in the stories about it. Just because the straights in Hollywood don’t know how to tell my story doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”

The premise of this book is so enticing. A romantic cynic and a rom-com fangirl being somewhat coerced into shooting a film together for a film festival that rewards the winner with some awesome perks in pursuing film-related jobs in their future? And their mutual friends scheming to get those enemies to fall in love so they’ll stop bickering? Alex, I’ll take “gimme it” for five hundred.

Also, I’m going to be really honest with you and tell you that I’ve never read Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (I suffered enough at Uni, okay, I’m tired), so the references or plotlines based on that went over my head, but it didn’t take away any of my enjoyment. Besides, there’s so much drama and scheming in this, you can just imagine Shakespeare guzzling it all up just like I did.

The entire book is focused on Sophia’s and Emma’s seeming incompatibility. You’d think that Sophia is the unlikable character because she’s a cynic and uses every opportunity to harp on romance and the idea of true love. I don’t know whether it’s me getting old, but I actually really saw where she was coming from. Sophia’s heart’s been broken when her parents – who were always the most disgustingly in love couple – got divorced. After seeing such a seemingly solid relationship break apart, it’s easy to think that love is dead. Even though Sophia comes with a lot of barbs and snark, you can tell that she’s been hurt by this separation more than she lets on and it clouds her judgement on other people’s relationships.

Then we have Emma, the girl who’s in love with love. Even though she’s never had an epic romance herself, Emma loves romcoms (even though they don’t include bisexual people and thus never represent her) and helping her friends get the love they deserve. Indeed, much scheming in this book is to get her best friends to confess their love for the guys they’ve been crushing on and it makes for some hilarious drama when things go different than expected. Beyond that, Emma also struggles with coming out to her parents and escaping her solipsism. I found the portrayal of Emma so nostalgic in a way as I can remember being that young and realising how often I talked about myself, my interests, my struggles and even though Emma is aware of it and wants to change this self-focus, she has a hard time actually doing something about it – and I think that was a really relatable struggle. It’s easy wanting to change, but far more difficult to enact that change. Her emotional development takes time and instead of glossing over that harrowing process, Desombre makes it a known factor in how Emma deals with rejection, crushes and academic endeavours.

Despite Emma’s struggles, she wants to be someone who changes things in the movie industry, someone who will be a pioneer for bisexual representation so everyone can see themselves and believe they’re worthy of love, which just made me emotional again and again. The book’s strongest selling point is definitely the overarching discussion about LGBTQIAP+—and bisexual in particular—representation in media. So often bisexual people are portrayed as flighty or greedy, and Desombre here takes care to showcase that all Emma wants is to be represented, to see herself in media without being denounced to a stereotype. It’s an emotional and important message that will certainly resonate with readers.

Beyond that, Sophia’s and Emma’s romance arc was a lot to handle in this novel, since they come from such different stances on what love is and isn’t. It was fun watching them try to see the other’s perspective. The only thing that didn’t completely work for me was how quickly both Sophia and Emma accept that the other is in love with them when they overhear their friends commenting on it. I needed a bit more convincing to understand why these two people who seemingly hate each other and what they stand for suddenly act like they can’t say anything that would hurt the other’s feelings, when that’s literally all they set out to do in most conversations. While I think Kate (Emma’s cousin) would immediately go into full-on polite, friendly mode, I didn’t quite buy Emma and Sophia going down that road without any struggles. Despite that though, watching their romance unfold was riveting and there were some really cute moments (outdoor movie screening and they share a blanket, enough said) that warmed my heart.

With heaps of snark and scheming friends, I Think I Love You is a sweet, funny debut that juxtaposes romance lovers with romance cynics and shows that love, against all odds, always prevails.

This book was so full of wit and humour, with a highly entertaining cast of characters. I loved watching Sophia and Emma's relationship evolve from antagonistic beginnings to a sweet budding romance. A necessary f/f romcom for young readers.

I thought I was going to love this. I was ready to love this! And I ended up DNFing at 25%. I could not get over the main characters and didn't want to waste my time. I know that YA isn't made for me, a woman pushing 30, but this was so juvenile.It should have been kids going into high school, not getting ready for the last year of high school. I could definitely tell that this was a debut.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.