I enjoyed this book. I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to, but I enjoyed it and think that a lot of people out there will love it. It uses Much Ado About Nothing as inspiration, and while it is in no way a definitive retelling, one can definitely match up the plot points and character types to the play.

This book was equal parts what I expected it to be and not at all what I thought it would be. I know, that sounds contradictory. But I swear, it’s the truth!

What I expected:
• A cute enemies-to-lovers romance à la Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing

What I did not expect:
• So much friend group drama! Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and also see how it connects to Much Ado About Nothing. But. I just didn’t expect it because of the synopsis.

Other things I loved: Emma’s cat, Lady Catulet. Emma’s parents and their love of HGTV.
If you can’t tell, I preferred Emma over Sophia, but Sophia definitely grew on me by the end of the book once she opened up.

If you’re a movie lover looking for a feel good, enemies-to-lovers, sapphic romcom where both main characters explicitly state their sexualities (bisexual and lesbian), then this is for you!

Huge thank you to Netgalley and Underlined for the ARC!

This was cute but very slow and I lost interest about half way through becuase I could already tell where this was going. Some may really enjoy this but I didn’t love it.

We need more fun books for LGBTQIAP+ readers and this book definitely aims for that. However, the heterosexual romantic pairing gets more attention and development than the main character's relationship with another girl. It's a let down given how the novel is positioned.

I like that this was a rom-com where the character makes a rom-com movie, cute idea!
Emma is a romantic, her parents have a great relationship and she's on the lookout for her own meet cute. Sophia doesn't believe in love after her parent's relationship imploded and her mom remarried, leaving Sophia behind. Each girl has her own idea for a short film and the constant arguing creates a rift in their friend group. This starts off rumors of crushes, some sabotage, and two girls finding love.

This was really easy to dive into, it has a cute plot, fun characters, and great pacing. I liked the alternating points of view of Emma and Sophia and watching the girls overcome fears and open up to love. Their friends made good side characters and I especially liked Kate and Tom's relationship. I do wish the films had a bigger part, but Emma's movie was sort of her real life so it's okay.

The ending was well done, I thought the film contest played out just as it should have. I'm glad I had a chance to read this adorable LGBTQ romance!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a cute story! It absolutely delivered on the rom-com shenanigans front, and there were some really nice slightly-meta (but very natural in the story) moments about how rom-coms as a whole are very straight, and how important representation is.

As generally light and happy as this book is, its biggest strengths were its more serious moments. Two major subplots are Emma considering coming out to her parents and Sophie dealing with the aftermath of her parents' divorce. Both were done beautifully, and each had some heartwarming moments that really hit home.

The main thing that I wanted a bit more from was the development of the supporting characters. Emma and Sophie's friends play a large part in the book, but they're all fairly one-dimensional.

I think that this would be a lot of fun for someone who was more familiar with Much Ado About Nothing. I know enough about it to be able to draw some parallels, but I'm sure there's plenty of things that I missed!

Final verdict: if you're a fan of sapphic books, rom-coms, Shakespeare retellings, enemies-to-lovers, and/or movies, pick this one up!

This was a sweet, breezy read about family, friendship and first loves. I liked the exploration of the relationships (good and bad) between the core group of friends, and their respective romances.

Emma believes in big romantic love, Sophia believes that love is fake and only ends in heartbreak. They hate each other. This story is about Sophia coming home from a year abroad and entering into a friend group that has lived on without her. To make it worse, her relationship with Emma is just as strained and bitter as ever. Emma who finds out about a film competition through her school that could help with her film career, rallies her friends to join her. Until Sophia comes in and ruins it all. With a healthy dose of matchmaking and scheming, I Think I Love you contains wonderful amounts of romcom tropes and while the relationships and action might be predictable, it doesn’t change how cute and heartwarming it is. I loved that the friends’ lives were not dropped off or forgotten, I love that the parents had a prominent role, and I love that it was messy and cute just like love is. I think there is a good use of setting examples of good and bad behavior and how to confront people, and I think this book addresses a lot of things that young readers are experiencing. But I think the most special thing about this book is that it’s for the queer kids who just want to see themselves reflected in the media they consume. A book about a proud bisexual girl is unbelievably amazing and it deserves to be read by all of the out, in, and questioning people.

*Spoiler warning*

I was really looking forward to this one, and most of it was great. I mean, two girls who make short films? Sounds like the perfect book to me. And I related a lot to both of the narrators: I'm somehow both a never-been-kissed romantic like Emma and the bitter friend who has to see relationships all around me.
But there was too much to simply overlook. I guess I don't know what I was expecting from a book that's basically about rom-com movies, but there were SO many tropes that would never actually happen, and it ruined the otherwise cute story. First, Emma and Sophia only start to like each other because their friends lie to each of them about how the other one likes them. This would've been cute if they didn't react to the "reveal" in the way that they did. Both of them completely overreact, especially Emma, who is now 100% sure that Sophia never even liked her, even though it is obvious that she did. Anyone with half a brain cell could figure out the timeline of how their feelings developed, but Emma didn't even question it. Did I mention that this is their SECOND "fight" in the story? The first one is almost equally as overdone, with Emma and Sophia using each other's biggest insecurities. Maybe that would happen, because I have been in similar situations, but the second one would NEVER HAPPEN. People don't just run away before they can hear the other person's side. (Seriously, if I have to read the phrase "stormed off" one more time, I'm giving up on romance stories.) And Emma's friends didn't even try to help her later on. I could go on forever about this, but basically: It's 2020, almost 2021. Can we stop with romance plots that start with a secret, and can we PLEASE stop writing these completely unrealistic "misunderstandings?" There's even a line said by a character in this book that's something like, "Why does there have to be drama? Relationships with all this drama are never fun to be in." It was in the context of Emma's movie, and it was essentially self-aware.
The last book I read before this was Sunkissed by Kasie West, and I wrote in my review of that one how annoying it was to see the same plot structure over and over again. But at least in that book, THEY ACTUALLY WON THEIR COMPETITION.

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? We've got multiple misunderstandings, one character framing another for sabotaging the group, and they DIDN'T EVEN WIN THE FESTIVAL?
One of them says something about how it doesn't even matter, that the "experience" was what really mattered. REALLY? Emma wanted to win that with EVERYTHING she had. Film was her passion, and her parents didn't even think it was a good idea. I know that they still had two more years of high school left, so they could enter again next year, but I'm SO FUCKING TIRED of competition-related stories with a bullshit "we didn't win, but that doesn't matter" message. Especially with Emma's whole reasoning about why she made the movie: to see bi girls represented on screen. This is mentioned SO many times. And all of that was for nothing? What kind of a message is that- "important representation will never win?" She talks about how she wants to see happy endings, but this is nowhere near a happy ending? And don't come at me with any replies about how it was actually more "meaningful" for them not to win. IT WASN'T. IN ANY WAY. If anything, that was bad representation. (Not that Emma is bad representation, just the ending and how it went against all of her messages.) Having your characters not win is WAY more overdone than having them win.

It sounds like I totally hated this book, but I promise I didn't. I actually read a short story by this author in the anthology Together, Apart, and it was really cute and I'd definitely read more of her work. And the majority of the book, maybe a little over the first half, was really good, considering that it was a fairly slow-burn romance. And I really liked the main characters, even though I started with Emma as my favorite and ended with Sophia as my favorite. I guess most of my annoyances with romance books just spilled out into this review.

I Think I Love You was the sweet sapphic Rom-Com that I needed. It was one of my most anti it books and it did not disappoint. The characters were well written and so easy to root for.

This book wasn't entirely my thing, the friends in it were pretty bad for lying to the main leads about the others' feelings and I honestly couldn't let that fly by. However, it's still a pretty cute and nice book to read.

Cute bisexual girl and lesbian fall in love story? Sign me up. I have to say...all of their heterosexual friends kind of blended together for me, and there was way more of them in the story than I thought was needed. So many side stories. Also, I admit that I found both main characters to be annoying at times, but I do appreciate the opposites attract idea they went with. Overall, a fine, fun story where no wlw characters die or have awful endings, but it could have had more.

This book was...not what I was hoping.

The story follows high school students Emma and Sophia as they play matchmaker with their friends while each attempting to produce a short film for a competition. Despite their opposing views on love, they begin to realize that maybe the hate they felt for one another was just hiding the true feelings underneath.

There were a lot of things that irked me about this book. Characters threw around the word "love" with a level of casualness that real teenagers would never use. People who have literally just gone on their first date are not in love and no high school student would say that they are. Desombre used the phrase "my stomach bottomed out" enough times that it began to get on my nerves, and every character felt cartoonishly flat. Kate is sunshiny and nice, Matt is evil, Sophia hates love and is generally pessimistic, Emma is a hopeless romantic, Myrah is obsessed with Peter. The entire story just felt... underdeveloped.

That being said, I did enjoy a few parts of it - the process of making the movies reminded me a lot of film class in high school (especially how crappy the film ended up being) and many of the cute date scenes succeeded in being cute. But these things do not balance out the others.

There are so many other cute romcoms out there (and f/f ones to boot: I'd recommend The Falling in Love Montage or You Should See Me in a Crown for similarish books with way more depth of character and plot)

What a fun, diverse retelling—I'm a sucker for a new spin on Shakespeare, and this rivals-to-lovers romance did not disappoint!

As soon as I heard that this book had f/f rivals to lovers, I knew I wanted to read it. Who would’t? I Think I Love You was an heartwarming read that’ll leave you smiling.

Emma is a movie director in the making, and she wants to enter a film competition that would provide her with an amazing scholarship. The movie she has in mind is a f/f rom-com because, as a bisexual girl, she never gets to see herself represented in movies other than as stereotypes. Meanwhile, Sophia, her nemesis, is back in town after living in Paris for the past year. She joins Emma and their friends on the crew although they disagree on everything.

I really liked Emma’s reasons for directing a gay rom-com. Although she is bisexual, it means a lot to her that people recognize that while she could “end up” with a guy, she could still date girls, especially because she hasn’t come out to her parents.

Also, I enjoyed Emma and Sophia’s dynamic! Rivals-to-lovers is always so fun; I liked the tension between them. It’s also an opposites-attract situation: Emma is desperate for love while Sophia doesn’t believe in love. Their romance was so cute, and I wish we had gotten more of them.

Honestly though, this book focuses a lot on their friends Tom and Kate’s romance, considering they’re side characters. Most of the drama is actually drama from them, as opposed to drama directly involving the protagonists, so I thought this was a little weird. I just think some aspects of the plot wasn’t balanced as well as it could have been.

Overall, I Think I Love You was a quick, adorable read. The characters were great and I really enjoyed the romance. I recommend this book if you’re looking for a cute contemporary and/or f/f rivals-to-lovers!

This is everything I needed in a f/f rom-com! It had the enemies to lovers (which I'm a sucker for). It had me laughing, crying, fangirling. It was just beautiful!

I read this within one sitting. I loved the writing style so much. It was so captivating that I couldn't put it down! The characters were so well developed that it made me fall in love with them. I loved Emma and Sophia's relationship sooooo much. I thought they were the absolute cutest. The hand holding kept making me squeal!

I also loved the story line. It was so cute how they were making movies! I haven't read anything like that before, so it was super fun to read! Have you ever wished you could make a movie? After reading this, it has now been added to my bucket-list.

If you're ever in the mood for a f/f book or just a rom-com in general, then I would highly recommend this book!

[note: this review is set to be published on my blog on 2/16/21]
Disclaimer

I received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley. All my opinions are my own.

Background

Coming out March 2nd, 2020, I Think I Love You by Auriane Desombre is a YA rom-com published by Underlined, an imprint of Penguin Random House. It is the author’s debut novel though she has been featured in an anthology.

Synopsis

From the publisher’s website, “A YA contemporary rom com about two girls who start as rivals but after a twist of events, end up falling for one another--at least they think so. A pitch perfect queer romance--and it's a paperback original!

Arch-nemeses Emma, a die-hard romantic, and more-practical minded Sophia find themselves competing against one another for a coveted first-prize trip to a film festival in Los Angeles . . . what happens if their rivalry turns into a romance? For fans of Becky Albertalli's Leah on the Offbeat, full of laugh-out-loud humor and make-your-heart-melt moments.” (link)

Relationships

A big issue I had with this book was the main romantic relationship. This is a rivals to lovers romance, a trope I tend to adore. However there are some very pivotal ways that it, or any other flavor of hate to love in a contemporary, can go wrong. One of those ways is when one of the characters treats the other so much worse than the character treats them. I don’t mean being mean or rude, I mean treating their love interest legitimately terribly while the love interest is just a bit rude. This is what happened here.

Emma, one of the love interests, constantly went straight to personal attacks when talking to Sophia. Sophia once critiqued the idea that Emma had for the movie and instead of rebuking her argument or really just saying any valid critique of Sophia’s own lack of ideas, Emma jumps straight to childish ad hominem attacks about how Sophia is anti-love and that makes her a terrible person. Later in the same scene Emma calls Sophia unprovoked. Their level of animosity towards each other just didn’t really compare and it didn’t work for me.

I am not saying Sophia is entirely innocent here because she does say some bitter and unnecessary comments about love to a girl she knows is obsessed with it but her comments never read to be as needlessly cruel like Emma’s do.

Another issue I had was the very basis of the relationship. Their friends lied to them and convinced Emma that Sophia was in love with her and Sophia that Emma was in love with her. Which. Just. What the fuck? That is so messed up and kept me from ever actually rooting from the relationship and made me absolutely despise the friends.

Now a typical plot point in books like this is that the characters were actually always in love with each other. For a while I thought that the book was going to subvert that expectation because there were no hints that they liked each other and there was no romantic tension between them at the start. But no. Apparently there were always supposed to be in love and that just didn’t come across whatsoever.

Characters

For me a large part of the appeal is that hate to love for me is to see the characters grow and change. However there is very little actual character development in the book.

Emma remains stagnant, her toxic qualities are ignored. She does not become less self-centered, she doesn’t ever begin to see Sophia’s point of view, and the person she was at the start of the novel is not very different from who she is in the end. There’s never a moment where she stops and reflects about how poorly she treated Sophia even once they are finally friendly.

There were also points where she was very very obviously wrong but the narrative treats her as if she didn’t do anything wrong and it just… left me very frustrated.
I wouldn’t even say she has a more realistic view of love because she doesn't, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, especially for a rom-com, but nothing else about her changes either.

Sophia is the more nuanced character here. We get a better look into her personal life than we do Emma’s and it’s generally more interesting. She also has character growth. At the start she is very much anti-love due to her parents divorce and her mom moving away to Paris but she learns to accept love and understand it.
And she isn’t perfect by any means. She is petty and insecure but growth happens there and her flaws just grated on me less than Emma’s did. Which I am almost surely biased here because I did relate more to Sophia than I did Emma.

Plot

The plot was a mess. It wasn’t strictly a very messy plot but it didn’t work for a romance book, not one bit. Two much time was focused away from the main couple for it to ever really feel like a romance book.

A subplot about a heterosexual couple took up a lot of the page time. Maybe this came from Much Ado About Nothing but I wouldn’t know and, frankly, it should have been dropped even if it was. We get so much time spent on getting these two heterosexual characters together, and on the drama between them to the point where the low point of the book is reliant on them. And I simply did not care about them.

It also took so much time away from the main couple. The narrative never lingers on them, never really gives us more than one or two scenes of them together, because of all the time that has to be dedicated to the heterosexual couple. I love to see the antagonistic flirting, the cute fluffiness, and everything else about the relationship and its development. But here we only got the tiniest morsel of a taste of that.

Representation

This book is important. It has important representation. It’s a book about two sapphic girls and they have a happy ending. It’s a book that has a bi character that avoids a lot of the major stereotypes about bi people. And it has some incredibly meaningful conversations about the importance of representation that I loved. And I am so very sad that I didn’t love this book more.

Conclusion

While more things about this book annoyed me, I am going to end here because my criticisms get increasingly more nitpicky and less meaningful.

I think a lot of people are going to love this book. I think it’s a very, very important book. But it simply wasn’t for me. Maybe it’s time for me to say goodbye to YA contemporaries like this.

“For all our faults, we’re pretty good matchmakers.”

Emma’s dream is to attend film school, and entering the summer NYC-LA Film Festival for high school students with her friends is how she plans on getting her foot in the industry’s door. She dreams of filming the gay rom-com of her heart because she’s never seen herself represented in the movies she loves to watch. Emma’s plans go awry when Sophia, Emma’s rival and the only other out queer girl at their school, returns from a year in Paris. Filled with meddling friends and lots of scheming, I Think I Love You is a sapphic retelling of Much Ado About Nothing set in modern-day New York City.

While there’s plenty of angst to go around between Emma and Sophia’s film rivalry and their opposing views about love, moments of sweet romance and flirty banter are in the majority. There’s room for further development of certain themes, such as Emma’s fear of coming out as bisexual to her parents and Sophia’s issues with her mother, but all of the subplot threads are neatly tied up by the end of the story. The characters feel authentically adolescent, and the atmosphere of the city shines through the setting. Overall, Auriane Desombre’s debut novel is a fun and lightweight sapphic romantic comedy.

PRR Writer, Caroline Ross

Quarantine may still be happening in our day-to-day lives, but books like I Think I Love You gives us the opportunity to live a life that isn't our own. I Think I Love You is pure escapism at its finest and will definitely give readers something to talk, and swoon, about this summer. If you are looking for something with quirks and humor and a glimmer of a good romance then look no further than Auriane Desombre's phenomenal novel.

With the publishing world finally catching onto the need for diversity, I've spent the better part of the last decade anticipating more releases like this one. I Think I Love You is a book that marks a great beginning and hopefully signals more and more books that feature the varied types of romances necessary in our modern times. We've still got a long ways to go, but I'm so thankful for the growth we've seen the last few years.

I Think I Love You is the type of indulgent, swoon-worthy, yet heartfelt and humorous, read that I flew through in one sitting. Cute and lively in its fast-pace, Desombre has a way with her writing that sparks interest almost instantly. It is breezy, thoughtful, and undeniably charismatic.

There was something about I Think I Love You that compelled me from the very first few pages and didn't want to put it down until I'd finished. Desombre pulls all the right moves when it comes to this slow-burning romance and I think, for me, this is what kept me glued to my seat and all but turned the pages on its own. Slow-burn romances are great because of the potential of tension and banter--for me, it makes the development and story all the more addictive.

Packed with engaging characters, Indie L.A. locations and a growing romantic entanglement that only gets more and more indulgent with time, I Think I Love You is truly a fun read.

This was a rivals-to-lovers YA novel that had a playful edge. The dialogue was believable. Sophia and Emma are determined not to like each other. Despite the fact that they both trying to win top prize in a film competition, they start falling deeper for the other person. I will say that the confessions were more of the ones you find in the classic teenage love films, which is what the author was going for. I'd rate this a 4/5.

I was a couple of chapters into this before I began to suspect that it was a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing and a few more before I was certain. Even before that, the general direction of the plot is pretty obvious, given that it's a romance. We expect a pair in conflict to be covering for mutual attraction, complicated by misunderstandings and assumptions. The plot follows the events of the play fairly well but doesn't do much when it comes to assigning motivations. We get only the vaguest explanations for why people act in destructive ways. Stronger motivations would do a lot to make this a more compelling read.