Heartbreak for Hire - Sonia Hartl

Everything I loved ❤️
👠 The professional heartbreaker concept. It’s such a unique and new idea for a book and I was livin’ for it!
👠 Cute enemies to lovers / work romance - these are always my FAVE.
👠 The chemistry between Mark & Brinkley 💥 steamy romance scenes.

10/10 recommend this super quick read, especially if you are fans of Christiana Lauren.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley & Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm sad that I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. The characters felt a bit bland and I didn't feel invested enough in the story to keep reading.

I feel like the relationship between the two characters got lost in the chaos of everything else that was going on and it felt a little unnecessary.

A hate-to-love romance awaits in Heartbreak for Hire, the newest release from author Sonia Hartl. This rom-com touches on cheaters and revolves around revenge which leads to some hilarious missteps and misguided intentions.

Brinkley is a Heartbreaker, hired by women who have been cheated on, lied to, emotionally torn down, or had their careers jeopardized by egotistical men. It’s Brinkley’s job to embarrass and humiliate these men, sometimes recording their incriminating behavior, basically she tears down their egos. For two years, she’s been happy with her line of revenge work until her latest target turns out to be a genuinely nice guy. She finds herself attracted to him in all the wrong ways, and ultimately fails in her task. Imagine her surprise when her boss announces that they are no longer just a woman’s organization and are hiring men and one of those men was her nice guy.

I really like Mark. He’s not at all what Brinkley expected. He’s an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago, and despite everything Brinkley has experienced in academia, Mark is the opposite of her expectations. Their attraction to one another oozes off the pages, making them easy to root for.

Romances are usually pretty straightforward: meet-cute, some kind of problem keeping them apart, and then an HEA. It’s how the author executes those things that make a book. While I really enjoyed how this process in the book, Mark and Brinkley really are fun, I had a hard time with the company they are working for. The revenge plot felt slimy to me. While I get that it was how the author got them to meet, it made me cringe, even if I’ll admit I did laugh at a few of their assignments.

Overall, I enjoyed Heartbreak for Hire. Brinkley and Mark’s witty banter and their on-page chemistry drove the story. If you are looking for an out-of-the-box, hate-to-love rom-com, I recommend you check this one out.

Really enjoyed Sonia Hartl's first adult romance! It has a unique concept and characters that fly off the page! Witty banter, sexy scenes, and a journey that makes the book unputdownable!

Loved the story and the ending! It was so cute I could t put it down! The romance was adorable and I couldn’t wait to see what happened.

Heartbreak for Hire is the first and definitely won’t be the last book that I read by Sonia Hartl. I loved the characters and going on their journey!

I voluntarily reviewed this book.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy!

Unfortunately, this was not a book I could get into. It felt a bit cheesy and fluffy. However, since requesting this book, I have decided romance is just not my genre so take my review with a grain of salt.

I hate to type these words but... this was forgettable. The plot seemed flimsy at times, the romance was sometimes hot and then sometimes pretty meh, and I felt like the characters all needed a little bit more, especially Margot. Not enough consequences were placed within the story.

I did like the academic setting, although I feel like it was painted a little too ruthlessly for my taste and within my experiences (my parents are professors like Brinkley's mom). The portrayal of therapy is always a plus. The scenes where Brinkley works for H4H were entertaining. The hate to love trope was well executed and Brinkley's relationship with her mother was interesting.

If only the resolution and characters were stronger.

TW: toxic relationship with parent, cheating ex, gaslighting

I received a free copy in exchange for a review. All reviews are my own.

Heartbreak for hire really broke my heart!

This story has very little romance or comedy but is full of lust, anger, revenge, and misunderstanding.

The main character, Brinkley is very short-tempered, judgemental, and always on other's throats.
Even though the couple is closed to their 30s, they acted like kindergartners.

I could not feel the romance between the couple but only the lust and angst. I liked the authors' writing style, but Overall, this was a miss for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

This book was just not for me. I was expecting it to be lighter, but it really should have come with all sorts of TWs. The only POV you get is Brinkley's, and I did not find her to be a likeable character. For someone who says she still goes to therapy on a regular basis, she has not figured out any good ways to cope with her issues or move past any of them. She's really kind of a jerk.

In the end, the whole premise of the Heartbreak for Hire business made me feel pretty gross. And then Markus using Brinkley to further his career? That sucked, too.

I did enjoy Emma and Brinkley's friendship, Winnie the angry cat, and the fantastic chemistry between Brinkley and Mark. But overall, this is not a story I would want to become a series.

Brinkley Saunders crushes the egos of the Chicago's douchiest men and gets paid to do it. Working for Heartbreak 4 Hire (H4H), it's Brinkley's job to mete out revenge on the men who have wronged women whether in relationships or the workplace. As part of an all-female team, Brinkley feels secure in her job and life - even if she hasn't been on a real date in over two years and continually puts off her dream of owning her own art gallery. Enter Mark, a H4H target turned employee, not to mention the man that Brinkley can't stop thinking about. What began as a love/hate relationship, quickly turns complicated as Brinkley must show Mark the ropes and keep her heart from becoming involved.

Was Heartbreak for Hire a work of literary genuis? No. Was it a delightful romp through the world of workplace romance with some steamy bits thrown in? Of course!

The plot of H4H is absolutely absurd and the situations that Brinkley finds herself in are even more so. But that's what makes this book so entertaining. Even though I predicted each plot twist and the ending, I nonetheless enjoyed this delightful little read. If you're looking for a book that you can read in a day and use as an escape from reality, this is the one.

Another slam dunk romance book. While I didn't really find Mark and Brinkley's story "believable" I don't know that I really care about that when judging how good a romance novel is. I usually like a more real-life example, but in this one, I still really loved the storyline. Also just a warning, this is a STEAMY one! Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for a copy of this book for an honest review.

While I don't usually gravitate toward the romance genre - I'm always a sucker for a book set in Chicago. The premise of this book is admittedly a bit silly - Brinkley works at a company that sells revenge. Women hire the company Heartbreak For Hire to exact revenge/public humiliation on men who have wronged them. After a bad breakup, Brinkley decides not to continue in her graduate program at Northwestern and takes this job in secret, banking most of her salary to someday start her dream job of owning and operating her own art gallery.

Brinkley hasn't dated anyone in two years - and is shocked when one of the men she is hired to humiliate actually seems like a decent and attractive man. Life ends up thrusting them together again and sparks fly between them. It's a little bit more graphic than I expected from the cover, but it fits within the genre.

Parts of the book - particularly in the beginning - felt very passive and it takes the book a little while to hit its stride. It's not exactly the most authentic-feeling Chicago read, but there are some parts that do ring especially true. Brinkley's character is sympathetic and while the company itself feels rather unbelievable;e, the romance itself carries the novel well. The ending isn't really as plausible and I think some of the family angle is quite predictable, but overall it just feels like too much is crammed in. Still, I pretty much read this in one sitting and it's a lighthearted and rather fun read!

I received Heartbreak for Hire for free in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed reading it. It was my first by this author and I look forward to reading more!

Thank you Gallery Books and @netgalley for a copy of the book. This one was tough for me. I struggled with Marc and Brinkley’s relationship. There was just so much going on with the story that there love story felt lost in the shuffle. I also did not care that H4H’s jobs could be detrimental to someone’s livelihood.

The description of the storyline drew me in, it was a premise I had not read before. Brinkley is angry and hurt and set for revenge. I understand why she is angry but at the same time I didn’t love the lying and smashing of egos. Then we meet Mark, not what I expected, nice and nerdy, and the tables get turned on Brinkley and instead he becomes a surprise at work. I like their banter back and forth so it was only a matter of time until something happened, even though it seemed like a slow moving train. I like both of these characters and would have loved a little more at the end, it was just an okay story. Thank you to Gallery and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

So fun and I loved the banter. Super cute book! I recommend bringing this somewhere where you can binge read the whole thing in only a setting or two:)

I really liked the premise of this book. The adversarial coworkers turned lovers sounded so good. Unfortunately this story didn't work for me. The sexual encounters were gratuitous and detracted from the story. Also, there was just too much going on and it got bogged down.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley. This is my honest review.

This was a cute book with a unique idea about hiring heartbreakers to get revenge for jilted lovers. I thought the author did a great job at creating the instant chemistry between Brinkley and Mark. The characters both have big dreams and through their workplace interactions, end up pushing each other toward them. It’s apparent that they care for each other even when they are “enemies” at work. I enjoyed reading this book and it held my attention for most of the book; sometimes the conflict at the end of the romance bores a little and this was the case here. Overall, romance fans should give this one a chance!

🥰liked || 🔥descriptive
🤟enemies to lovers, workplace, chemistry
📚Make Up Break Up, The Hating Game
🎶Blank Space by Taylor Swift

Heart Break for Hire is an undercover operation that specializes in a variety of revenge schemes for jilted loves, annoyed coworkers and frenemies. For a price of course. There were four woman working at heartbreakers each with their own speciality: Egos, Players, Cheaters, and Grifters.

Brinkley was in charge of the Egos. She was good at her job, never breaking a rule or crossing a line ... until Mark. He surprised her, first by not being like most of the guys she meets on her jobs, then by getting himself hired at Heartbreak for Hire. Brinkley finds herself falling for Mark, while teaching him the ropes of H4H. They both are struggling with who they are supposed to be, while trying to deny any feelings between them.

“I never would have admitted that’s what I really wanted if you hadn’t pushed me to face who I could be, not who I thought I was supposed to be.”

This book was good, and such a different premise. It was filled with a good frenemies to lovers theme, great banter between the two, and steam 🔥. This was the first book I had read by Sonia Hartl, but it won’t be the last.