She Gets the Girl is a total delight. Its sweet, funny and very real when it needs to be. Its a romance that doesn't shy away from the hard stuff and I really appreciate that. So much of this worked for me and I think it will work for tons of YA readers.

The first thing I appreciated was the college setting. Not enough mainstream YA takes place at college, so this already had points in my book for that. This book is honest about how daunting starting school can be, but it also shows all the good stuff. We spend time at common room game nights, coffee shops, and most importantly, giant libraries. I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for my own college years, the good and the bad.

Another great part of this story was the relationships these girls had with their mothers. One was way too codependent, the other was trying to take care of her alcoholic mother. I thought both were done well, and honestly. I deeply related to Molly, and I was very touched by Alex. I loved seeing Alex create her own little chosen family with Molly, and her food truck boss, Jim. These girls were able to bond over their maternal issues while helping each other through them, and it was so sweet and at times, heartbreaking.

Lastly, we have to talk about the super sweet romance at the center of this. I loved. These two fit together perfectly as friends at first, which is a great setup for a romance. I love how understanding they are of each other's flaws, and how they learn to take care of each other. Also, it was a great slow burn. I rooted for them every step of the way.

An absolute delight of a romance--poignant, fun, and queer. I loved the dual POV and the voices were so clear. What more could we ask for?

This book was super cute. I absolutely love the expansion of the YA genre that includes college age and to see that with a queer story is something that's definitely needed and valued. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone!!

Content Warning: alcohol abuse,toxic relationships and racism
Truly this is a beautiful love story ; the ending was a bit predictable but in the best way. This is the way I hoped it would end and in the back of my head I predicted it around the 5th chapter but I love a predictable book. Watching these characters grow in themselves and with each other is an amazing journey. Even though I'm very different from all of them I see parts of myself in them. They're very recognizable and relatable. I didn't want it to be over ; I wanted to see that flash forward to the lunch date with Molly's mom and I wanted to see them go back to Noah's to tell him what happened. I was so happy to see them confront their issues and grow together. I hope there is a sequel very soon.

This book is incredibly charming! I had so much fun with the characters, even laughing out loud at some parts.

My favorite thing about this book is the age of the characters. I’ve read so few YA novels that take place in college and often they end up skewing younger or older. This one really works though as the characters actually feel college-aged.

The one negative is that this book has side plots about some heavier topics that don’t feel fully fleshed out. The authors were trying to make the story more well-rounded and make the characters feel more dynamic. However, I think some things feel a bit shoe-horned in.

I would say to go in expecting a cute, light-hearted lesbian romance! I enjoyed this book immensely despite its flaws and genuinely didn’t want it to end!

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book! Where to begin? This was an incredibly sweet story, full of humor but also full of emotion. I love each character and seeing them grow throughout the book. I definitely want to purchase this for my collection at home!

3.5 stars.

Stick with the story even if you find yourself frustrated with Molly’s pining and Alex’s “girlfriend” (not each other).

Molly Parker (18, half-Korean, lesbian) has crushed on the very cool Cora Myers for the longest time. Now they’re both in college, and what better time for Molly to make a move than now? With Alex Blackwood (~18, lesbian) seeking to prove to her sort-of girlfriend Natalie Ramirez that she doesn’t flirt with all the girls she meets, Alex offers to help Molly get the girl. But will Molly end up getting Cora?

I have to be honest that the book and I got off on the wrong foot. Maybe my initial hopes for this were too high. Sapphic YA written by wives? Sign me up!

While I generally cannot picture characters, I can see the settings and the characters do things clearly. This might be an advanced copy issues, but in the first few chapters, there were so many confusing things: how did Noah open the door with one hand holding a pizza and the other a bottle of honey? were Alex walking to the bus stop while Cora talked about her major or were they already at the bus stop? etc. Yes, these are very minor details that are completely unimportant to the story, but they left me confused. But as Molly and Alex spend more time together, I found myself starting to enjoy the story. The buildup was nice so SHE GETS THE GIRL ended up being an enjoyable read.

Molly and Alex are so cute together! I would say it is a *very* slow-burn romance as they spent about 98% of the story (not exaggerating) dating someone else. Despite this, they have a lot of cute meet-ups that felt like dates in a sort-of-platonic sense.

I love the side plot about alcoholism: Alex’s absent mother and the sober food truck owner Jim, who is awesome. There is also the struggle of heritage on Molly’s mother’s side. It touches upon being a Korean adoptee in a white household. Also, while Molly and her mother are very close, like best-friends-close, there are also times Molly needed space and I think those were well-done details, too.

I read this as an ebook and have not listened to the audio version, but it is narrated by Natalie Naudus and Valentina Ortiz, and I would recommend checking it out.

[content warnings: absent parent, manipulation, abusive relationship, alcohol abuse, recovering alcoholic, recovering drug addict, internalized racism, underage drinking, dui, vehicular accident, anxiety, ableist language]

Okay, the title says it all on this one. She gets the girl! It's a really sweet sapphic romance. While Alex and Molly start out enemies, they soon move on to frenemies and, eventually, friends, and then - well, let’s just say it has a happy ending. (Come on, it’s literally in the book title).

At the beginning of the book, both girls had major character flaws that made it a bit difficult to like either one of them. Alex’s fear of attachment leads her to have a pretty toxic personality. She’s had to grow up quickly in order to parent her alcoholic mother. Molly is painfully introverted and shy and lives in the shadow of her mother’s internalized racism. But these characters are not one-dimensional or static. Through the alternating voices of the authors (who are married to each other!), the reader is taken on a journey of growth and self-discovery. In the end, you will be rooting for them both.

Alex and Molly join forces in order for each to “get the girl”. Alex is trying to help Molly so her rockstar girlfriend sees that Alex isn’t self-absorbed. Molly hopes to finally date the girl she’s been crushing on for years. Alex convinces Molly that her five-step plan will help Molly wins her crush’s heart. As they work Alex’s plan, they both realize that reality doesn’t live up to the fantasy. As they grow individually and navigate evolving relationships with their mothers, Alex and Molly become friends and then realize that they are meant to be so much more.

It definitely starts out with the classic bad girl-good girl dichotomy, but these girls are both far more complex than that and this book sees them growing into self-actualization through each other’s support. Hard subjects are dealt with thoughtfully - alcoholism, parental neglect and abandonment, bullying, and toxic relationships. This was a very enjoyable read, well balanced between lighthearted and heavy, with a blooming romance to tie it all together.

This book was fun and playful, delivering lots of heartwarming charm. I loved both of our leading ladies, and enjoyed watching their friendship blossom. I think there was potential to go a bit deeper into some of the heavy issues presented, but overall I found this to be a lighthearted and entertaining read. Thanks so much to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to review!

She Gets the Girl is a book about being vulnerable. It's about having the bravery to be who we are and to find who that person is. This book is seriously swoony. With dual POVs it's normally easy for me to have a favorite, but with She Gets the Girl it's impossible. I loved Alex's giving and protected heart and her desperation to make things work. At the same time, I deeply related to Molly being unable to confess her crush, but also her difficult feelings towards her identity.

Their character development is superb. I loved witnessing their friendship bloom. The ways that this starts as a mutually beneficial deal, but turns into two people, against odds, finding a friend. Just the banter alone is enough to rocket this to my fave list. And I loved how emotional and thoughtful this book is. We can get so fixated on someone, we realize that the person we saw, might not be the person they are. How we can take on the problems of those around us, just to not feel helpless.

Starting college is a whole new, and rough, ballgame. When socially awkward Molly arrives to Pitt and finds out she was assigned a single instead of a traditional dorm with a roommate, she fears the worst. By chance, she ends up at a college party with the girl she pined for all through high school, Cora, and new to town flirt, Alex. With classes together and social circles coming together, Alex gives Molly lessons on love and how to get the girl. Why is Alex giving free love advice? She has something to prove to her ex: that she can indeed be friends with other girls without falling for them or flirting with them. Is it all possible? Can Alex be a friend and save her relationship? Can Molly score her high school crush? Find out in "She Gets the Girl" by co-authors and wives, Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick.

This book has the classic awkward-and-helpless-at-love-pining-after-someone teams up with the flirts-too-much-and-is-too-good-at-love-for-their-own-good trope and I ate it up. It was so well done and enhanced by the dual perspectives and co-authorship nature of the writing style. Did I have ideas of what would happen in the end? Yes, but I was reading on because the "how will they end up together" was so exciting. There were heart gushing moments and times where I wanted so badly to reach through the pages and smack some sense into the characters to come to their senses sooner.

I have so much to say about She Gets the Girl that it's honestly difficult to decide where to begin. First off, I absolutely loved it. I thought it was one of the most adorable, cute, wholesome books I have ever read, and yet it was still also deeply emotional and complex? There were characters that I loved, and they still had some negative aspects to them that made them full people. Incredible. I am so happy I got an ARC of this book and I highly encourage everyone to get around to reading it.
She gets the Girl is a dual perspective book written by a married couple, and I'm under the impression that each of them wrote a different perspective. There's Molly, a Korean nerd who is highly anxious and didn't have any friends in high school, and Alex, a white blonde canonically very hot party girl who sleeps around and stays emotionally distant from everyone. The novel opens with the two of them starting college, and they become fast enemies at their first party. That's right, this is an epic enemies to lovers slow burn. And it's gay. And it's new adult genre. I literally could not ask for anything more.
Although Molly and Alex are set up as opposites (and in the beginning, they believe they are) Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick (the writers) do a great job of showing us as readers their similarities right off the bat. We don't have to wonder why these girls are going to become friends (or more????) because we can see how they fit into each other's lives. That being said, the "enemies" part still felt very real and I never felt like they were just forcing an enemies thing to make the book more interesting. This book was just so well executed I cannot stop gushing.
The one thing I was a little iffy on in this book would be that I felt that in the very very beginning, Alex was a bit inconsistently paced. It became obvious pretty quickly what they were going for, but the first two Alex chapters felt a bit like character inconsistencies. All of these inconsistencies got resolved over the course of the novel, because they weren't really inconsistent at all, but when I first started reading that was how I felt.
If you are going into this book expecting all sunshine and rainbows, that just was not the case. Lippincott and Derrick gave their characters complex backstories that allowed them to be so much more than just the stereotypes that other people saw them as. Alex's parents are divorced, and her mother is a major alcoholic that left Alex to take care of both of them for years. Alex has hid that from literally everyone except her maybe-girlfriend Natalie, and because of that she feels like Natalie is the only one who will ever understand her. For Molly, her issues were a lot more relatable to me personally. She's super socially anxious to the point where her best friend in high school was her mom, and she has a crush on a girl from her high school (and now college), Cora, from afar.
In fact, that's how Alex and Molly start hanging out- alex decides to help Molly "get the girl", the girl being Cora.
Molly also has some family issues to work out. Her mother is clingy and doesn't want to let go of her going to college, and her Korean mother is also dealing with a LOT of internalized homophobia that Molly is just trying to avoid. She's also trying to hide that part of herself, and it makes for some cute revelations between the pair!
The story was well paced; it moved fast but we had so much time for introspection on the part of the characters, and their growth felt genuine. I wish I had a book like this to read when I was in high school, and I'm super grateful that I got to read it now!

(I will edit with links later when the review goes live)

This book was beyond cute! Dare I say the best book I’ve ever read! The characters were relatable, lovable and funny!
It’s been a while since I laughed so much.
Don’t get me started on the writing style because it had a great flow and the words/sentences just made perfect sense (I’ve used more tabs than I can count).

While this was marketed to me as a light-hearted YA romcom, the beginning pages don't feel that way. All that said, the book comes together in a nice way.

I LOVED this with my entire heart. If you have ever watched Set it Up on Netflix and wanted a book that felt like that...read this. I am BEGGING you. It's like gay college Set it Up.

It's funny because I've read so many adult romances that I forgot the third act of a YA romance book (or in the least a slow burn) isn't a break-up, but instead when the character gets with the wrong person or misses their shot and the end scene is when they get together for the FIRST time. Like a rom com movie!! Don't get me wrong, I love a good adult romance book, but something hits different when they don't bang first and then fall in love. I love the slow burn, mutual pining, missed chances, and running back to find each other bits. That's my favorite part of a romance—the culmination of it all.

And this book gets it so, so right.

I just adored this book so much. I loved the complicated relationship both girls had with their moms, how it explored their own personal lives and coming of age alongside their love story. I love how Molly realized she didn't have to be someone she was not, just more herself. While there's a classic romcom "makeover" scene in this, I loved that it was more about Molly dressing the way she's always wanted to instead of how someone else wants her to. I think that's the scene where it hit me just how much I am Molly because I think I'd look entirely different if I really were myself (and honestly...I think I've gotten a lot closer to the real me over the last year or two, finally broken up with the version of myself that wanted to please everyone but herself. But anyway...). Molly is just like a carbon copy of me, but that said, I really adore Alex and I relate to her too, in a different way. While I've never gone through the same experiences, I have been in a toxic relationship (friendship?) that I convinced myself was right for me until I realized too late that I was making a mistake.

Anyway, I just love how this was told. It has the same classic rom com feel but with queer characters who NEVER have to fight for their sexuality (love seeing that, it's so refreshing), with really heart-wrenching side plots, and so much love and joy.

10/10 recommend for a good time.

I could not set down this incredible romance. She gets a girl is an amazing story about love and really finding yourself and who you are.

Alex and Molly are both going to college to start over, but for different reasons. Molly wants to meet more friends and Alex is trying to get separation from her alcoholic mom. When Alex notices Molly longing after Cora, she decides to step in with her 5 step plan and become a love guru while also proving to Alex’s, sorta, girlfriend that she can be dependable. As they begin to hang out more, Alex realizes that Molly is actually the person she wants to open up to and Molly realizes she’s her true self with Alex.

I seriously loved Alex and Molly. They were such a cute couple and seeing them grow together was incredible. They were really each other’s yin to the other’s yang. and I loved reading through both of their eyes. I really enjoyed seeing them slowly open up to each other.

She Gets the Girl made me burst out laughing and also had me crying. It was just an all around wonderful story and I’m so glad I read it. I highly encourage everyone to give this one a go!

4.5 stars

This was such a fun read, a modern Cyrano de Bergerac, and I love that it was co-written by Rachael Lippincott and her wife. Alex was a real mess from the outside, and I totally saw her girlfriend's point of view, but after really getting to know Alex, I started pulling for her all the way. I also loved her love of books and how the library was a place of safety and peace. Molly was also kind of a mess, and I loved seeing her come out of her shell. She was not quite as interesting as Alex for me, although I did like how they included her mom's issues (both good and bad) and how it may or may not have contributed to her own anxieties. Her brother was also really cool. Alex and Molly's relationship kind of took a long time to develop and then it was slightly rushed at the end, but having married my best friend in college, I was kind of able to identify with that. I do love that they really identified with each other as best friends first. If there's one thing that could have been done better, I would say it was the pacing. But I was thoroughly entertained and I ended up tearing through the book pretty quickly. And honestly, Lippincott has a way of writing characters that I get to really like so I was definitely shedding tears at the end, not just with Alex and Molly, but also with Alex and her boss and her mom. I really enjoyed reading this ARC, but I wouldn't mind listening to it again in the future on audio.

One other thing I wanted to add is that I love the cover and it refers to one of my favorite scenes in the book.

I received an advance review copy from NetGalley for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

4.5/5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐️✨
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Thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for giving me a copy of this book! This is my honest review, all views are my own.
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She Gets the Girl is a super cute sapphic college romance involving Molly, who’s inexperienced with love and hopelessly pining after her high school crush, and Alex, who’s trying to prove to her girlfriend that she can be a good person. Alex realizes she can help set up Molly and her crush while earning brownie points, and she hatches a five step plan for Molly to follow—with coaching from Alex herself, of course! What could possibly go wrong?
In complete and utter honesty: this book reads as though the authors made a self-insert college-AU. And that’s because they did. HOWEVER. This is not a bad thing!! In contrast, it makes it all the more adorable—I mean, who wouldn’t want to write about themselves falling in love with their college sweetheart all over again (but this time, adding some fun plot magic)? Setting that relevant detail aside, the book itself was very fun, what with the college setting and the main characters trying to help each other get their respective girls… while simultaneously falling for each other. The plot was fast-paced and I liked how it distanced the different important scenes… although, I wish we got an epilogue or some bonus chapter to really tie things up with some tooth-rotting fluff. That’s the romantic in me, I suppose! Speaking of the romance, I loved both Alex and Molly. They were very distinct characters and I loved seeing their interactions. Despite the fact that I relate to Molly a tad bit more (it’s the anxiety and overthinking for me), I definitely could understand Alex’s point of view, and I was rooting for the both of them the whole way through. They certainly come with their own issues and baggage, but ultimately the couple fits in really well. In reference to the supporting cast: I’m glad that the authors show the characters’ respective “dream girls” as flawed, but not blatantly so. For example, Cora is a sweet girl, but by the end of the book, it becomes very apparent that she is simply not the right fit for Molly. This is, of course, sprinkled throughout the book, but that’s the audience’s perspective with the knowledge of who is the end-goal couple, so obviously Molly doesn’t know that until— well, you’ll see! The rest of the supporting cast also does its job well, including the family and family figures. My one gripe comes from the aforementioned desire for an epilogue as well as a minimizing of pop culture content (I’m a fan only when in moderation; there’s a couple of heavy-handed references that I didn’t love, like the reference to BookTok).
She Gets the Girl is a lighthearted college romance that should definitely be more normalized in the publishing industry—the New Adult / college-aged demographic is in high demand! I loved the “how to get the girl” coaching spin, kind-of-fake dating scenario, and it really adds to this book’s appeal. And to top it all off, we love the lesbian representation!! Adorable, 4.5 stars.

This ended up being a DNF for me at 34%. The writing is good, the characters are well-developed, but I just didn't connect with the voice. I also found myself rooting for the main characters to get together with the the girls they're in love with at the beginning of the book, rather than with each other. It's a good book but not for me.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC of this book. This was a fun and edgy college romance with love triangles and an unlikely friends to lovers vibe. The characters had depth and felt whole. While the romance was fun and fresh, some of the race issues seemed forced and poorly handled. Still a fun read.