Grace bursts on the scene with a pack of dogs that seem to rather walk her than the other way around. She bumps in to a really cute surfer guy, but she quickly has to return the dogs and heads off to another job (she has multiple jobs to make ends meet). Grace is a student who recently inherited an old house on the beach from her grandparents. She has grand pans to renovate, but she soon learns someone else is out to get her house...and it is none other than cute surfer guy!

Noah has a history he is not proud of. He has gotten out from under his father's image and trying to make a better one for himself. As a real estate developer, he buys a fixer upper and wants the house next door to expand. Turns out, it belongs to Grace. What starts out as a seemingly war of the neighbors quickly turns in a fun and playful "make love not war" story.

How to Love Your Neighbor was a quick, fun and sweet read. I highly recommend it to all!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sharing this digital ARC with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

I love this author and all of her novels. This sweet contemporary romance will instantly grab you and keep you reading and smiling throughout.

I received a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for fair and honest review.

YES YES YES!!! Loved this book. It is a heartwarming and funny romcom that takes place in California. It is a wonderful story about relationships as well as a great enemies to lovers book. Noah and Grace have wonderful chemistry and their storyline was engaging and fun. This was a great book to start the year on a happy note.

If you are looking for something light-hearted and fun in the closed door romance, this is definitely a book you should pick up, especially if you enjoyed the first book in this series. You get to see the previous characters in a large capacity, however, it can be read as a standalone. With hints of HGTV, I really enjoyed the home renovation parts of the book. The sparring neighbors gave me Trading Spaces vibes, with fun banter and sexual tension.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, so I was really looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, this one fell a little flat for me. There wasn't anything in particular that I disliked about the book, but the story and the characters just didn't really grab my attention. There was conflict and struggles between the main characters, but their relationship and chemistry felt almost forced and too quick, at times.

How to Love Your Neighbor
by Sophie Sullivan

Thank you to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my #gifted copy in exchange for my review.

Are you an HGTV or Magnolia Network fan? Hooked on the design and reno shows? I am, and this book gave me the remodeling and decor idea vibes that I love!

Grace Travis is an interior design student, top of her design class at Cal Tech. She’s nearing the big 3-0 🎂 and her life has not been a smooth ride. She’s worked hard for everything. Leaving her home in her narcissistic mom’s trailer at 18, she set out for California. When Grace inherits a small beach cabin from the grandparents she never knew, she’s ready to fix it up and find a place to belong. When she moves in, her neighbor with the large property next door, Noah Jansen, makes it clear he wants to buy her land, and raze her cabin to put in a pool. But Grace is stubborn and determined. So is Noah. What develops is a meet cute/enemies to friends to lovers romance that rom com fans will enjoy.

I enjoyed this one, but it seemed to drag at about 75%. I think I would have liked it more if it was a little shorter, without as many side plots. This is definitely a closed door romance, heat scale = mild jalapeño. The “Grace is klutzy” theme got a little tiresome, too. Overall, I ended up ranking it a 3 ⭐️ on Goodreads, which I’d round up to 3 1/2. Overall, it’s a fun romance with deeper family and personal issues to explore and resolve for both characters.

Recommend 👍🏻 and ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Pub date: Next Tuesday, January 18th

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I’m not going to repeat the premise of the story, but after a slow start we get to see the characters insecurities, their love for helping people, a fun and quirky side to both of them and being brave to face the haters in their lives.

Grace and Noah had some moments where they lost me during the story. But the HGTV magazine vibes, the friends, the bit of added drama and the renovations filled this book and made it a great read.

This was such an enjoyable read! Equal parts warm and entertaining. I found it easy to connect to the characters. The banter and chemistry was great.

I instantly fell in love with the characters in Sophie Sullivan’s How to Love Your Neighbor. This novel was filled with witty banter, sexaul chemistry and home made success stories from all sides. Grace’s dreams are finally coming true. She’s worked multiple odd jobs, put herself through interior design school and has inherited her grandparents cottage on the California coast. She could care less that it is dated and in need of a million repairs, she knows how to get it done. Her excitement is only slightly dampened when her neighbor turns out to be Noah. Noah’s super successful, he comes from a wealthy family and has left the East Coast to pave his own way to success on the West Coast. All he needs to make his own home dreams come true is to buy Grace’s property. I loved Noah and Grace’s personalities and felt their frustrations and tensions through the dialogue created by Sullivan. There are many paths and definitions of success and How to Love Your Neighbor explores what happens when two very different paths collide. How to Love Your Neighbor is the fun, enemy to lovers rom-com you need this cold winter.

A sincere thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A lovely, heart warming, and entertaining book!! It was super cute and classic Sunshine Meets Grump romance trope. There are multiple relationships that are explored in this book besides the main and that definitely kept the book interesting throughout!

Overall: HGTV vibes a plenty with compelling characters all-around and a romance you can’t help, but want to see the ending of.

Pros:
HGTV vibes. I love the home renovation plot-line.
Character Writing. Sophie Sullivan excels in making compelling characters that you want to root for, even in an enemies-to-lovers situation.
Romance. I am so glad this one is on my pros for this book. I couldn’t look away from what was happening between them.

Cons:
Pacing. I think the pacing was a little off in some sections, perhaps in order to demonstrate the enemies-to-lovers situation.

As an almost graduated interior design student, Grace is thrilled when she inherits a house that she intends to make her home. However, the first thing she is faced with while moving into her home is her neighbor, Noah, who immediately (and repeatedly) offers to buy her house so that he can expand his property. Though she and Noah get off on the wrong foot, they find themselves continually pulled together.

This was cute and there was a lot to like in it! I think the character growth was well done and the side characters were also delightful! The whole story was sweet.

Ultimately my main "issue" with the book was that neither Noah or Grace were particularly likeable to me in the beginning. I recognize that is a me problem however! Both characters definitely grew and improved but just not enough to fully redeem them in my mind. I also though that both of them oscillated between being nice and being mean to each other so much in the beginning that I got whiplash. I also thought the conflict with Grace's mom was pretty quickly resolved and didn't really create much tension. Also, I haven't read an adult romance that didn't have "spicy" scenes for quite some time, so if that's something you look for in an adult romance, I would advise you to look elsewhere.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars, rounded to 4

When I saw that How to Love Your Neighbor was enemies to lovers with home renovations mixed in, my HGTV-loving heart was so excited! But, I was disappointed when I learned this is connected to Sophie Sullivan’s first novel (Ten Rules for Faking It) because I really try to read books in order. It wasn’t a huge deal, but I feel like I would have felt more of a connection with some of the characters since they appeared in the first book too.

The first half of this book had some pacing problems - it felt like a slog to get through all of the setup to finally get to the point that I was invested in the characters.

Grace Travis is an interior design student who is working her tail off to make ends meet and set herself up for success after graduation. She inherits a beach bungalow from her grandparents who she never met and wants to make the house a home in order to feel some kind of connection to them. But her neighbor is obsessed with buying the house from her to expand his property, making her dig in her heels and work harder to make the space hers. She’s funny, charming and has big plans/ideas for her life, but she also struggles to make sure her life looks nothing like her mother’s, trying to avoid that trauma and do things on her own.

Noah Jansen is a real estate tycoon - buying, flipping and selling properties to make major profits, landing him on all kinds of business lists and making him a public figure. He’s handsome, charismatic, driven to be the best, new to the West Coast and he’s looking to make a name for himself outside of his father’s empire in New York City. Noah purchased a house to renovate and turn into his slice of paradise, but finds himself hiring people to make his vision come to life instead of doing any of the work himself. Grace, his stubborn neighbor, shows him that being invested in his properties can change so many things for him.

Some of the enemies to lovers stage of Grace and Noah’s relationship at the beginning felt forced, like I was getting a bit of whiplash trying to keep up with all of it. But, once they got out of their own way, I enjoyed them together. They had fun together, clearly had a lot of overlapping interests, shared some of their family drama and brought out some really great parts of each other that weren’t highlighted before. The one thing I didn’t enjoy? The black moment in their relationship. I could see it coming a mile away and knew it was going to be hard to read and it definitely was. After all the back and forth between these two, I felt like that was a little unnecessary since they’d already gotten through so many struggles along the way.

I really enjoyed the descriptions of all their home renovations and it just made me wish there were pictures to go along with it - I love me a good home renovation! Overall, I liked this book and it likely won’t be my last by Sophie Sullivan.

When the book opens, Grace is dog walking on the beach and trips in front of a handsome surfer who she just must put out of her mind. Observant readers assume he will re-appear as trouble in the very near future, and sure enough, he does. HOW TO LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR is the classic competitors to lovers tale, in this case surrounding real estate and design. Our neighbors/competitors/romantic partners create more than enough interest for the tale to move along quickly. The book is equal parts entertaining, funny and cute. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I love me a good home reno romance book and How to Love Your Neighbor has a lot of that! It almost felt as if Grace and Noah could’ve been on an actual reality show that I would definitely watch, about finding love will renovating their individual houses.

I love Grace! She is everything the name implies despite a less than ideal childhood. Although at first she comes off as maybe too serious, we see her funny and playful side come out as she gets to know Noah, making her all the more lovable. It took me a little longer to warm up to Noah- he came off at first as a spoiled rich boy who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted no matter who he hurt, but he definitely makes up for it at the end. I enjoyed the banter between these two as well as their group of friends and there were so many funny parts!

Although this is a bit of a slower moving book, it was still a sweet and cute story and the author has a heartwarming way of writing, if that makes sense. This is a closed door romance that starts with Noah and Grace as neighbors to sort of enemies to friends to lovers that is light on the angst and has a really great HEA!

This one is for all the HGTV lovers! Grace and Noah and new neighbors who get off on the wrong foot... and find they may have more in common then they expected. This one kept me interested throughout, I loved the design aspect and the main character's friends. I could've used a little bit more spice! Everything wrapped up well in the end, which I always appreciate.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Press for the chance to read an advanced copy of How to love your neighbor by Sophie Sullivan. I loved reading How to love your neighbor; it was funny and romantic, and the chemistry between Grace and Noah, was fantastic. I loved them betting against each other, and also the whole Trading places idea Grace came up with Noah and friends. I didnt realize there was a book before this one with Noah's brother, but it can be read as a stand alone.

This looks to be the year of the romance release.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for a copy of the novel.

How to Love Your Neighbor offers up a fun premise about two people trying to get what they want and learn about themselves along the way. Grace and Noah had some sweet interactions and situations, but overall, I wasn’t connected to either of them. There’s a lack of chemistry between the two and the story dragged a bit. I wish there was something else to anchor the story with good side characters.

I just liked this one.

It was a super slow burn & very low steam. The relationship between Grace and Noah build incrementally and has a few bumps along the way. I liked seeing how they interacted and changed their perceptions of how relationships can be. I also liked how they actually communicated and acknowledged the importance of it for a healthy relationship.

There was a lot of this book that felt a little slow and repetitive for me. And some things just never got resolved (the community center!).

This was fun and enjoyable, but just not my favorite.

Another branch out from my normal genres of reading.
This rom-com started out a bit slow, but once the story line started moving, I enjoyed spending a bit of time reading about Grace and Noah and their budding relationship. There were several spots that were quite hokey, but I glossed over those. 😏
If you enjoy romance and comedies, this one is for you!
Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in advance in exchange for a free and unbiased review.

Feuding neighbors turned lovers with an HG-TV twist. This book was cute but missing some features that I look for in a book. The banter was conversational but not witty, the chemistry was very subtle and lacks spice and the plot was a slow where I found myself rushing to the end. I was also hoping for more setting development around the inherited house. I think this would be a nice read for some, but not for me.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance reader of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.