Disclaimer: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, but it doesn’t influence my opinion of the book nor the contents of this review in any way.

First of all, I fell in love with the idea of this book! I discovered it shortly after going on an academia/women in STEM TBR binge after reading The Love Hypothesis... and may have even found this book on Ali Hazelwood's TBR before requesting it the ARC. I love academic stories set in grad school or residency and I love reading about women in STEM! I'm not a STEM person at all, hello strategic communications and marketing major here, but I do enjoy reading about the passion for science-y subjects. I was excited, in the beginning. Here we have a Type-A (and anxious) female main character (in STEM - a dentist) who crashes into an attractive guy her same age but in his first year to her senior. She vows to help him recreate the project they annihilated and they become the closest of friends!! who secretly want more ✨

This sounds like such a promising recipe, it had all my favorite ingredients. I love that Mazey Eddings is a neurodivergent author committed to writing stories for every brain, not just neurotypicals. Unfortunately, all of this couldn't make me fall in love with the book itself. It tried a lot of things that a I respect and had very important conversations around grief, love, family and mental health... but I just hated the romance, and that generally spoiled it for me. Here's more specifics what I liked and didn't like...

What I Liked...
• The #ownvoices rep in this book with regard to mental illness. I don't know to what full extent, only that Harper is diagnosed with particular acronyms and that Mazey shares at least some of them, including anxiety. The Author's Note was beautiful 💛
• The passion for dentistry was real. I read that Mazey Eddings was a dentist, so it all makes sense 😂 I still laugh when I think of Harper's tattoo of a canine tooth because it's "sharp and strong" and rooted, though. But the surgery and the technicals, and I have to say Harper seduced me when she held Dan's face and gently named all his facial bones.
• The conversation surrounding Judaism and religion was very touching. I wish we saw more of this throughout the book and not just a poignant conversation and then one outing in the beginning, though.
I learned so many new things in this book! Honey mushrooms (a wonderful analogy for anxiety and a fungi that's 3 square miles... horrifying) and Maine Coon cats, which are huuuuge.
• The feminism and women-in-STEM rah-rah! Harper is a powerful human and I loved this scene.
The scene at the end with Dan's mom. It was healing and it felt real, and I appreciated this representation of loving someone who treats you badly. I just wish it was MORE than one scene and him ignoring her calls the rest of the book.

There are a lot of great things in this book! Little pieces that I loved and that propelled me through the rest of the book. I wish we had more of those things and less of... these.

What I didn't like
First, this book did my least favorite trope in the world. The woman gets drunk and is all "but don't you want meee 🥺" after traumatic happenings and a few hours after explicitly saying she doesn't want to sleep with the guy (she's lying but that doesn't matter). He's trying to valiantly be a good guy and she strips off her clothes drunkenly. NO. NO. NO. PSA: this is NOT character development. A guy who doesn't sleep with an intoxicated women isn't a "good guy," it's not proof of his character or valor or whatever. THIS IS HUMAN DECENCY. The regularity with which I read this scene pisses me off. Drinking happens, boundaries lower, things get reconsidered, but do the scene right or don't do it at all.

• The quirky group of friends. Harper was in a friend group of three other girls who were all clearly very close knit (Thu, Lizzie and Indira - who I believe are all getting their own book in this Untitled series) and I love them in theory. But something just didn't click with me on them. They were outrageous and supportive and crossed boundaries with Harper's happiness in mind, just like best friends do. But are we seriously pretending that they wouldn't notice or know that Harper has such Chronic anxiety and is claustrophobic? I think the writing did them an injustice. They were only there to do something specific to the plot and were otherwise tossed aside.
Harper and Dan's relationship....... I got tired, okay. Harper's hot-and-cold "I like you but we can't, but let's kiss, but we can't, I love you but we can't..." became annoying and I cheered when Dan made it clear he couldn't be a pawn in her games and indecision anymore.

• Dan just got shuffled around. He was at Dental school because his mom asked him to be to help her with her practice (something that never made sense, as help wouldn't come until four years of dental school and then residency was completed) and he hated it, and then he was liberated when his mom did an about-face. It was inevitable that he would quit, but he only did so at someone else' behest. All his struggles started because he gave up his freedom out of a sense of duty, and then had his agency returned to him by that someone else later on. This doesn't necessarily feel healthy; he needed to grow and evolve and make these decisions/realizations himself.

• I love that the hero failed at something without first overcoming it. He was never meant to be in dentistry! I just wish he'd had these realizations for himself

• Dan, while being incredibly consistent throughout the rest of the book, also had these strange Alpha-Protector moments with the heroine. Every other page he was a calm female supporter in every way, but he'd occasionally decide to throw feminism away and be a shouting white knight on her behalf, even when she didn't want it. This was terribly inconsistent with who he was. He was also just a constant bubble of support and friendship and flirting, but really didn't have his own personality. He was just so... lackluster. This is the perfect #bookboyfriend syndrome, where he's just so obsessed with the heroine and so perfect that you forget to give him a personality.

• I... didn't ship the couple. Dan forgave Harper farrrr too easily. She was awful to him, a couple times, and it was largely just brushed off. He was putting in all this effort and it was not being reciprocated. I genuinely didn't understand what he found SO attractive about Harper that he was willing to brush everything else away. I thought they were great friends and had a great time together, but I didn't get that sense of more from him about her like I did the reciprocal.

• I found Harper incredibly difficult. I appreciated her mental health journey and thought it was a fairly accurate representation of anxiety. Of course, as a disclaimer to my next few points, I realize that if Harper had everything figured out this book wouldn't exist. There had to be a learning curve somewhere. But I didn't like how hot-and-cold Harper was, constantly. Even outside her mental health, she was *all about Dan* and then would do absolutely no schoolwork for two or three days, and then it would trigger an episode. She never had any balance at all, it was either Dan or academics. I couldn't help but feel that if she'd had a planner, triggers would have been avoided. It's not that I felt her mental health journey was annoying or trite, but I find it doubtful that Harper, someone so strict on her rules, wouldn't have some of these systems in place. A lot of it just felt forced to trigger an attack. And why was she blaming Dan??? With how shamed she was, I feel it would have been more on brand for her to shove all that inward and just push him away, but she was literally screaming at him in fury and blame.

• Mostly I just didn't connect with the pacing. The beginning was funny, I connected with the characters, they had interesting conversations... and then it all just flatlined for the rest of the book with this constant back-and-forth. I read four books in the middle before deciding to pick it up again to complete my review.

Overall...
I didn't like this book much. But it suffered a lot of first-book syndrome, and I haven't written the author off at all and do see myself picking one up again, just after some time. I was definitely in the minority for disliking this book, though. I felt similarly to this book as I did to the Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams (specifically book two, Undercover Bromance!), so if you liked those you'd probably like this one. Namely that it tries a lot of good things that I respect, but with moderate success.

4.25 stars

This was a cute, funny, and intriguing little story. I loved that the characters were smart and hard-working, and, as difficult as it can be to experience in a book, I loved the depictions of anxiety and panic disorders. Scary, for sure, but also accurate and meaningful inclusion. I also liked that the protagonist was managing her anxiety in a variety of ways by the end of the book but was still herself and wasn’t magically “fixed” or “cured” of her mental illness. This was a sweet romance that caught my attention pretty much from the first lines. I’ll be looking forward to more fun reads from this writer in the future.

A charming romance with fantastic mental health rep. I'm not sure Eddings convinced me that dentistry can be sexy, but she had a wonderful way of writing about anxiety and grief.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. MartinRomance for the ARC of Mazey Edding’s awesome debut, A BRUSH WITH LOVE.

Harper Horowitz has a big brain filled with lots of things: general dental knowledge, oral surgery techniques, Dave Matthews Band songs, and maybe most of all, anxiety that really knows no bounds. Anxiety over getting placed into an oral surgery residency. Anxiety over competing for the number one spot in her class. Anxiety over whether she’ll need to talk to someone new at any given moment. Harper feels like she’s keeping it all cool, calm(ish), collected and controlled. She has a routine; supportive, hilarious friends; a dog-sized cat named Judy. Her life is going perfectly according to plan until she quite literally crashes and has charming first year dental student Dan fall into her lap (or more accurately, her boobs). Riddled with guilt over wrecking Dan’s impression model (the idea of which will give many brace-wearers horrible orthodontic flashbacks guaranteed to trigger our collective gag reflexes), Harper is determined to make it right by helping Dan and taking him under her wing of wisdom. Dan is more than just eye candy and love interest though. Like Harper, he’s a fully fleshed out and realized character who just happens to be incredibly charming and an easy to fall in love with book boyfriend, the latter of which comes to Harper’s dismay; in her final months of dental school, she can’t afford to let her guard down, and the idea of letting anyone have an inside view to her anxiety is enough to make her break out in hives. Together, the two will navigate collective familial troubles and expectations (or lack thereof), the extreme pressure of a competitive graduate program, and the constant millennial struggles of imposter syndrome in order to have their chance at love.

Told from both Harper and Dan’s perspective, the witty banter abounds. The chemistry comes off the page easily, and it’s hard to put the book down. Eddings paints a realistic portrait not only of her two leads who are trying to figure out what the heck their life is “supposed to be,” but also includes a diverse cast of secondary characters that readers quickly become invested in. As with all debuts, there are some speed bumps, particularly with the pacing between acts 3 and 4, but this could be because I just wanted more of Harper and Dan!

Collectively, it’s an impressive debut; it’s made even more impressive when readers know that Eddings herself wrote this novel while actually in a doctoral dental program. A BRUSH WITH LOVE promises to leave readers with a sweet but not cavity inducing story that captures an honest snapshot of living with panic, anxiety, and expectations.

3.5 Stars. The romance aspect in this book was quite sweet, charming and adorable. I really loved Harper's character and how hard she worked for everything she had. The anxiety aspect felt very hard to read at time, but it felt honest and I think it's important to have a well written, honest character like that. I did not love Dan's character as much. I loved how forgiving he was, but it didn't always feel realistic to me. Overall, I enjoyed the story. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

A Brush with Love by Mazey Eddings is a lovely romance about dental students, and a slow-burn romance that I won’t soon forget. These two main characters have a lot of their own issues to resolve and neither are ready for a romance, but, sometimes it’s when you least expect it, you fall in love.

Harper is a dental student who is all about studying hard so she can get into a dental surgery residency. And Dan is the son of two overachieving dentists who expect him to follow in their footsteps. When Harper literally bumps into Dan, there is mutual attraction, but Harper doesn’t have time for a relationship so they decide to just be friends.

This was a fascinating look into the lives of dental students and the various pressures they are under. It’s clear that the author knows what she is talking about, and if you read her bio, she is a dentist, and she shows off her knowledge in the book. I found the number of details about the life of a dental student fascinating, however, sometimes all the details of their life slowed the book down just a bit.

I enjoyed the romance between Harper and Dan, I felt it was realistic and I enjoyed both these characters. They both have issues with their parents, in very different ways, and it’s how they reconcile these issues while they fall in love that makes such a great story.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves contemporary romance. I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

A Brush With Love is bound to be a hit in 2022. This book is so much fun and super sweet, filled with relatable characters and deep topics. What I loved is how there was no knight in shining armor, and mental health issues weren’t swept aside or magically fixed, but grappled with them in a realistic way. The characters were fun and the dynamic between the two main ones were absolutely everything. Albeit a little cheesy at times and with sudden romantic feelings with minimal build up is not particularly my favorite, the book was good enough that I let those usual critiques of mine slide. I cannot wait for this author to come out with more books!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for providing the ARC.

I kept hearing about this book from other people and authors so I opted to give it a try. But it didn't quite hit the spot for me.

I appreciated Eddings' approach to GAD, and how truly awful it is when it is untreated. I had GAD for years before I was diagnosed and medicated, and some parts of this story were hard to read due to my own experiences. I wish that Eddings had spent more time on Harper's healing, at least as much as she did on her meltdown. But I felt like it got wrapped up in too neat a bow in the last 10% of the book.

Additionally, Dan was a bit lackluster as the love interest. There was nothing about him that really stuck out as particularly noteworthy. But he seemed to be a strong, stable friend for Harper, so at least she had that in him.

Not the strongest read, but I still enjoyed myself.

Looks like I may be in the minority for this one. The whole book gave me anxiety. I was anxious for Dan hating dental school and giving up on his dream for familial values. I was always anxious for Harper. The romance was cute with nice chemistry but I was still riddled with anxiety! They each had issues but Harper’s were severe. Dan handled it well enough but feel like they should’ve been a bit more… grown up about their romance? Do a better job of scheduling when to study and when to hang out since it meant so much to Harper’s mental health. I think it may ring very true to those that struggle with anxiety and how that feels, I just didn’t love it.

Maybe falling down the stairs isn’t the cutest of meet-cutes, but Harper’s fall was the beginning of something incredible with Dan.

There was a lot of love in here, but mostly, I loved Dan and Harper. Both of them won my heart, and I adored them together.

Harper was a dental superstar, but she had to wage a constant battle with her anxiety. She experienced these moments of utter calm in Dan’s presence, but she had to fight an inner battle with herself and her worries that a relationship would derail her life plan.

Both Dan and Harper had some major baggage to unpack, and it was great to see them dealing with the scars and pain of their past. It was kind of heartbreaking at times, actually, but these two had each other and a great group of people to walk beside them as they worked through their issues.

And, wow, Dan. What a man! He was so gentle and supportive. A perfect sweet cinnamon roll of boyfriend perfection. Even during the most dramatic part of the story, he was making decisions that would be in Harper’s best interest. Funny, sexy, and supportive – clone that man!

I mentioned how great all the characters were, and they really were the kind of people to surround yourself with. Harper had a tight-knit circle of friends who were wonderful, sassy, and hilarious. A bunch of total girl-bosses. The dynamic in their group was great, and most of all, you could tell they all mattered to each other so much. A strong female friendship will always win extra points from me, but I also thought Dan and his roommate shared something special as well. I adored them all, including Judy the cat, who owned me.

Overall: A sweet and thoughtful romance made even better by a zany friend group and an enormous cat.

This book was the cutest thing ever! Loved the characters and the writing and how it talks a lot about grief, anxiety and normalizing getting help if needed. Super easy read and am so glad Net Gallery sent me an Arc!!

Oh. My. God. This book! This book gave me alllll the feelings! I’m not sure I can even put together a coherent sentence with my thoughts on this book. (I literally just sat staring at the wall for three minutes attempting to put my thoughts into words. It’s not possible). Read this book. Love this book. Allow Harper and Dan (and Thu and Lizzie and Indira and Alex and Judy) to work their way into your hearts. You won’t regret it.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

4.5/5
CW: death of a parent, mental illness, misogyny, tooth talk (not sure how to phrase this one lol, there are just some pretty graphic descriptions of tooth stuff bc, well, they're gonna be dentists)

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

A Brush with Love was so, so, SO cute and charming! It's an insta love-adjacent story that follows Harper, an uber-talented dental student, and Dan, a first-year student following his family's legacy, through dental school.

I normally don't enjoy insta love stories—I feel like I don't get enough time to get a sense of the characters' chemistry with one another before they get together, but this was done really well. It had an amazing cast of side characters, fantastic mental health (anxiety) rep, excellent banter, decent steam, and more. If you liked the academic setting and overall vibe of <I>The Love Hypothesis</i> but didn't love the power dynamic, you'll probably love this book.

At times, reading Harper's hesitations and lack of communication with Dan felt (pun fully intended) like pulling teeth—especially towards the end of the book. However, at the same time, reading about Harper's battles with anxiety resonated deeply with me. Also, this may just be me, but some of their interactions and dialogue felt a bit young (not immature, per se... just, like, undergrad vibes instead of post-grad med school vibes).

Eddings wrote her characters deftly with adequate depth while also doing an excellent job of incorporating humor and fun into the story. I laughed out loud multiple times, which doesn't happen often!

Overall, I loved this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it to my friends.

This story centers around Harper and Dan who are in their 4th and 1st year of dental school. They have an adorable meet cute and an instant attraction that had you feeling the chemistry between them. I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did! Literally within the first 5%, I had literally LOL'd multiple times - there is something amazing (playful) banter in this book! And while there were plenty of laughs, don't let that fool you -- this book touches on some very important topics that pulled at my heartstrings! Both Harper and Dan are battling their own demons and working to overcome them - the mental health rep in this book is fantastic - it felt so raw and real.

While this started out as a 5 star read for me, the pacing of the story (plot and relationship arc) was a bit off for me and I found myself a little annoyed with Harper at different times. That being said, I really did love her and Dan together!

Can't believe this is Mazey's debut novel - I will definitely be reading more from her!

Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Harper and Dan are both dental students. She is an incredible student in her fourth year, waiting to learn where she matches. He is in his first year and less excited to pursue dentistry.

Their meet cute is so delightful that even her friends comment that it's straight out of a rom-com. Indeed, I loved Thu and Harper's other friends as much as Harper and Dan.

The couple had immediate chemistry. It was a mix of a slow burn with lots of steam. I found their relationship quite believable. Their tough patches made me want to scream, but were simultaneously relatable.

The book incorporated nice Jewish representation in Harper's character. I also really appreciated the Author's Note. She wrote about sensitive content with such care, and that flowed into the book. Most notably, she pointed out generalized anxiety disorder, sexism, and ableist language.

I started while I was on the train. I laughed so much that I got quite strange looks from the other commuters. I look forward to reading more from Mazey Eddings.

Thank you to SMP Romance and NetGalley for the advanced copy. These opinions are my own.

This book was such a joy literally from the beginning. Not to mention it had an absolutely hilarious meet cute (they fall down the stairs and land with his head pillowed by her boobs— it’s great). A Brush With Love is filled with hilarious moments, swoon worthy lines and definitely a half dozen or so scenes that had me tearing up. It’s just one of those books that touches your heart in every way that counts.

Both of the main characters are dealing with some pretty heavy issues. Dan with the loss of his father and all that that entails and Harper with her anxiety. Both of their struggles and journeys really touched me! I feel like Mazey did an excellent job with the two of them.

AND THEIR ROMANCE. I would like my own Dan to win me over with some absolutely amazing lines. I mean, the dude was smooth and I can’t wait for everyone to fall in love with him and the two of them together like I did!

Overall, this was a blast and I cannot wait to read everything else that Mazey writes!! Definitely a new favourite author!

4/5⭐️

3.5.
Things I liked about this book:
- I thought the way the author wrote about anxiety and grief accompanied by untraditional family dynamics was great
- The writing was funny at times, and overall was of good quality
- I'm a sucker for a will-they-won't-they scenario
- The dialogue felt natural

Things I didn't like:
- The pacing was a bit off kilter, and the book was hard to push through at times; had this not been a review opportunity I definitely would've DNF'd sometime in the middle to third act.
- The male love interest insulted Andrew Garfield and I'm being so serious when I say biggest turn off lmao. Like literally threw the book across the room. This will not bode well in this economy.
- The writing/plot felt kindaaa generic. I don't think I'll remember much about this book when I look back on it 6 months later.

While "romance set at dental school" didn't sound like it was going to be one of the best debut romances I've read in age, it turned out that this story was exactly that. There were some wonderful laugh out loud moments (especially some of the conversations between main character Harper and her friends), and then there were moments that brought me to tears. Harper's anxiety is a major part of the story, and while anxiety might manifest differently for some people than others, I hope that fellow readers with anxiety find this as truthful and tender a portrayal as I did. Dan comes into the story with things he's carrying, too, and there is a lot that they are going to have to work through. This was truly a (dentist approved) treat to read.

Adorable romcom. A bit predictable and I wasn’t obsessed with MC Harper. I liked the nod towards mental health importance.
The chemistry between the two characters was wonderful. I enjoyed the moments between them. Harper’s friends were supportive and sweet. I can definitely see a branch series for these two.

I've been hearing rave reviews for this debut dual perspective, slow burn romance that revolves around two dental surgeon students, Dan and Harper, and it did not disappoint! The mental health rep in this book is fantastic! Harper has anxiety and is dealing with a lot of self-imposed pressure to perform well in school, while also dealing with grief over the loss of her mother in a car crash. Dan is also under a lot of pressure to live up to his parental expectations.

The two bond over shared connections and the mental health journey Harper goes on is wonderful to witness. Raw, real and so relatable. This book was a win for me. I loved the supportive found family and the open door scenes and just how normalized therapy for mental health is handled. Highly recommended for fans of Weather girl or Must love books. Much thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my advance review copy.

TW: grief, death of a parent, car crash, cancer, anxiety, mental health