ARC REVIEW

This book was very sweet and full of emotion. Mia and Noah had a connection that was well written and changed as you read the story. This story is major friends yo lovers trope, so if that’s your bag definitely read this when it comes out!

Mia was also unique in the sense that she had a rare kidney disease that she was working with, it left her guarded and stubborn.

Noah himself had some serious guilt and trauma from events you read about in the book, making him almost too protective and having more thought for others wants than his own.

The two of them definitely go through growth as they come together and figure out their lives and what they need and want from themselves and each other. It was seriously a very sweet story but it was also so emotional. Not like Nicholas Sparks emotional but they both are dealing with some serious things that have stopped them from living their lives to the fullest.

I did like their story, it was an easy read and had mild angst, no spice. The scenes are off the page. The only thing I realized when reading is that friends to lovers is always an emotional rollercoaster and I’m not really for it. That, however, is my only issue. Definitely would recommend to anyone who loves this trope!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
🌶.5/5

Fake marriage- friends to lovers tropes blended in extremely heartwarming, inspirational, genuine love story! You shouldn’t miss Mia and Noah’s amazing story!

From the first chapter both Mia and Noah made you root for them a lot. They have been friends since they were 7 and now they are sharing office space as Noah working on his dream job as aspiring architect at family company and Mia is administrative assistant.
They keep spending loon time, sharing wings on Thursday nights, pulling pranks on each other.

Noah barely restrains his feelings to stay friends as Mia deals with her chronic illness, waiting for kidney transplant. She also suffers from estranged relationship with her parents after learning the traumatic truth they hid from her for years.

She drops out college because of her health issues but now she finds out she has second chance for going back with full scholarship which will help her become pediatric dietitian.

If she decides to go back to the college, that will mean she has to quit her job, this also means she will lose her health insurance. But unfortunately she cannot afford to pay her medical expanses. So she has to give up!

But Noah finds a solution and makes an offer that makes her get shocked. If they get married, she can get benefited from his insurance and she can concentrate on her lessons at college. This means they will have to stay married for only 2 years.

Mia doesn’t want to be burden and she doesn’t want to hold Noah back to meet other people and chase his own happiness. But one thing she doesn’t know is Noah doesn’t want to date another woman. He has feelings for her and he’ll do everything to make her happy.

They finally decide to give a chance to marriage. But when they start to share the same household, the lines between friendship and true intimacy are getting blurrier.

Mia realizes she has unresolved feelings for Noah but how can she hold him back when she suffers from chronic illness and her health condition keeps deteriorating at each day?

Noah keeps dealing with his own baggage and suffering from grief which restraint him come clean about his feelings.

Will two friends find happiness in each other?

This is angsty, heartfelt, beautiful love story with two adorable MCs! I highly recommend you to read it!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/ MIRA for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Steam Level: 🔥🔥🔥 (one mildly descriptive sex scene)
Trigger Warning: death of a loved one, kidney disease

Mia and Noah have been friends since childhood and have secretly loved each other for years. They almost admitted their feelings in college but then tragedy struck: Mia was diagnosed with a rare kidney condition and Noah's brother was killed in a car accident. Now they're both still healing from the past and afraid to take a chance at being more than friends. When Mia is offered a scholarship to complete her degree, Noah suggests they get married so she can quit her job and be on his insurance. But living together and showing affection in public starts to blur the lines between friendship and love. Will these two finally take a chance and pursue a real relationship together?

Okay, get ready for an unpopular opinion on this one. I was really excited after seeing rave reviews about this book, but unfortunately it didn't live up to the hype for me. This honestly should have been a five star read just because of all the excellent tropes it contains: marriage of convenience, friends to lovers, only one bed, forced proximity, and caretaking. But the chemistry was missing something, and I never felt invested in Mia and Noah's relationship. Every time there was some tension or spark, the author left the moment and jumped ahead a few weeks. I wish we could have lingered in some of those moments more and seen them struggling with their feelings immediately after it happened. There was also a lot going on with the plot- Mia's estranged relationship with her parents, her guilt over her illness, Noah's guilt over his brother's death, his rival at work trying to blackmail him, and of course the marriage of convenience. I wish the author had narrowed it down to just one or two of these, because it felt like most things were resolved quickly or just glossed over. If you've been excited about this book, then I would still encourage you to try it out. There's many others who loved it, despite my opposing views.

Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Solid Friends To Lovers Romance. This is one of those books that takes a legitimately serious issue - insurance, insurance fraud, and organ transplants - and spins a charming and fun romance around it. Ashley manages to weave the ultra-serious in with the frivolous to great effect, enhancing both the seriousness and the fun while leaning more into the fun and romance. Overall a truly fun book, and a solid one for its end-of-summer release time frame. Very much recommended.

This was such a sweet read! This book made my heart happy! I.loved the characters who were easy to connect with. Enjoyed this sweet romantic book!

Such a good book! A very sweet story about friends, love and moving forward after a painful, life changing loss. Highly recommended!

Friends to lovers, marriage of convenience and a work place romance?! Why aren’t you running to get this one right now?! 😂

Noah and Mia have been best friends since they were kids. They went to college together. They even now work together. But when Mia gets the opportunity to go back to school, she knows she can’t quit her job because she needs the insurance until she’s able to get a kidney transplant. Noah steps in to marry her. He’s in love with her. And now she can go back to school. Everybody wins…right?

There’s some books where the chemistry and tension just jump off the pages, and that was this one for me. This book was precious. I liked the banter. I liked their friendship. I liked the side characters. I loved their love.

Though it did feel a bit repetitive at times, this book is full of heart and made me smile.

4.5 stars rounded up! This book was so sweet and unique. An incredibly deep storyline surrounding loss, grief and chronic illness. The friends to lovers was done so well (I’m a sucker for when the guy falls first) and I want to read so much more about Mia and Noah. My only downside was that I didn’t love the beginning. It felt rushed and not fleshed out, but since I read an arc it could potentially still be going through some edits. Either way the story was so special I hope the world reads and loves this book!

This book carried great set-ups, but the execution and payoff was lacking. At least, that was the conclusion I came to at the end. On one hand, the synopsis carries many story promises and emotional conflicts. On the other hand, the story failed to engage with those story promises. While the structure of a standard romance novel was present, the story was missing the emotional tension and engagement that truly makes a contemporary romance fun to read.

Mia and Noah both were standard romance characters. Outside of the character archetype, they both carried interests or careers that I haven’t seen in contemporary romance before. Noah was an architect, while Mia wanted to go back to school to be a pediatric dietitian. I did find it to be a missed opportunity that the narrative didn’t engage with those topics more; this story would have been a great place to teach the reader some interesting facts about those careers and it would have deepened the characterization of the two leads.

If there is one thing to know about me as a reader, it’s that I am focused on embellishing details. I am a reader who needs a fair showing of setting/imagery details, and any other details that strengthen characterization. In the case of this story, there was a missed opportunity when it came to embellishing details. We had Noah, who had a hobby of rock climbing and mountain climbing. There was Mia, who was suffering from kidney disease. I found myself craving more details about both topics. I wanted to feel just how difficult it was to scale a mountain while rock climbing; I wanted to know specifics about Mia’s disease, how awful the transplantation system is in the US, and how she was handling her condition emotionally. (There were other details I found myself wanting to engage more with, like their backstories and other relationship conflicts the two had in their lives. Everything felt skipped over or brushed under the rug once it had been acknowledged.) With the lack of details came a lack of connection to the characters and the problems they were juggling.

Trope wise, this story carried a collection of them. As always, I did enjoy seeing the angle of “the guy falls first” (which was later rejected by Mia, who claimed she had always been in love with him too? The detail consistency was an issue in this narrative), even though the romance was insta-lovey. I mean, by the 12% mark both characters were commenting on the attraction they were having toward each other. Other tropes included: just one bed, friends-to-lovers, and miscommunication.

Outside of the character development weaknesses, the plot was another story element I struggled with. Earlier on in this review, I stated that there were many set-ups but poor execution, and I do believe that to be true. We had set-ups for: Mia’s kidney disease, Mia’s estrangement from her parents, insurance fraud via marriage of convenience, Noah struggling with the death of his brother. Although those are only a few of the set-ups, none of them had satisfying payoffs. And a large part of that was due to the miscommunication trope. Noah and Mia hid things from each other, but they never had a prolonged or intense or angry falling-out over any of those issues. It truly felt like the characters and plots were going through the motions without ever doing the emotional work to develop the story.

This is a smaller note, but this novel carried too many time jumps considering the page length. At one point, nearly every other chapter was a time jump. Not only was that disorienting as a reader—as there were often no details pointing to the time of year—but it was a disservice to the character and plot development. The joy of a romance novel comes from experiencing the slow burn or seeing how the characters fight the chemistry (and their internal belief system) before giving in to the romantic relationship. This book could have leapt off the page if a slow burn was at work.

Overall, this was a surface-level story. With every turn of the page, the characters skimmed along the top of what could have been meaningful character development. Instead, the story carried all of the benchmarks of a contemporary romance without any of the tension or punch that truly makes it gut-wrenching and breathtaking to read.

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, MIRA, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Would You Rather was a very solid romance, which definitely put me through many emotions while reading. It features Noah and Mia, best friends since childhood, who decide to fake a marriage in order to allow Mia to have the health insurance coverage she needs. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, this book was angsty at times; however, the relationship between Noah and Mia was very cute and they had great banter. I really enjoyed seeing the two characters work through their feelings, not only for each other, but also their feelings about themselves and their respective roles in Mia's battle with her illness. All in all, I thought this was a solid friends-to-lovers book and it is one that will leave a mark on me for some time.

This was so so cute. I read this in one sitting (on a plane!) I loved the chronic illness rep. I felt connected to the characters and it was just a cute peachy little read that made my heart happy.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review

I LOVED this one!!! Super sweet friends to lovers romance, and Allison Ashley executed it perfectly! I loved the dual perspective too. While it had heavier topics (grief/loss of a sibling, chronic illness, adoption/abandonment) intertwined in the story, they were written with care and never felt too overpowering. Will definitely be reading more from Ashley!

This book was incredible! I loved the depth of feeling while being a super funny romance! I'm quite of those two things combined in one book!
Friends to lovers and marriage of convenience, yes please!!!
The characters are so fantastic where you love them yet they also have flaws! Noah and Mia are BFFs and their life is about to be rocked. Out of their desire to help each other and their untold love of each other, they have to figure out how to make a marriage look real enough to pass.
I am so tempted to say so much more, but I don't want to ruin this book! Just know I HIGHLY suggest you read it!

Closed door romance... but does get slightly graphic and many mentions of sex.

4.5 ⭐️! this book! Mia and Noah have been best friends forever. When Mia wins a scholarship to go back to school to have a chance at the life she dreamed of, one thing is holding her back— she desperately needs insurance due to her health problems. Her best friend has the perfect solution- get married so she can get on his insurance, quit her job, and become a full time student.

Friends to lovers?!?!? Fake marriage?!?!? Say no more!! Mia and Noah both felt so real, and I adored their relationship. I genuinely laughed out loud at one point, and was crying at another. I definitely recommend this book!
A big shout out to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC! Pick this book when it comes out August 23rd!

Goodreads review:
This book was beautiful and heart wrenching and I could not put it down! The chemistry was flawless, the characters were perfect, the emotions and pain were immaculate!!! An absolute must read, this book was flawless and I do not say that lightly!

Synopsis: Mia and Noah have been best friends since they were kids. Now in their early 30s, they work at the same architecture firm where Noah is an architect and Mia is an administrative assistant. They spend time together outside of work too, always there for each other. There had been a moment back in college where it seemed like they might move from friends to something more, but one night changed everything - Mia was hospitalized with what turned out to be a chronic kidney disease, and Noah's brother died in a car accident. They needed to rely on each other as friends at the time and have kept their relationship strictly platonic since then, both dealing with their own trauma and burdens that resulted from that night.

However, things change when Mia is offered a scholarship to go back and finish her degree to become a dietician. She desperately wants to take this opportunity but would need to quit her job, which she can't do since she needs the insurance coverage for her chronic illness as she waits for a kidney transplant to become available. Noah suggests that they get married so she can quit and be on his insurance, and after some convincing, Mia agrees, although she is worried about the insurance fraud they'll be committing.

Now living together and having to pretend that they're in a real relationship and marriage, they are both confronted with the feelings for each other that they have been repressing for pretty much all of their adulthood, though they both desperately try to ignore them since they think they don't deserve one another. Mia doesn't want to be a burden on Noah or anyone else, not seeing the distinction between doing something out of love and doing it out of obligation. Noah has a lot of issues related to his brother's death - he blames himself because he was rushing them home from a camping trip so he could get to Mia in the hospital, and he feels like he doesn't deserve to be happy when his brother and his brother's fiancée didn't have their happy ending. He also is now terrified of leaving Mia for more than a couple days because of the terror he felt that night and the fear of losing someone else he loves, reinforcing her feelings that she's holding him back and is a detriment to his life. These issues all come to a head as they can't keep fighting their feelings for each other but also can't move on from the past dragging them down. One thing is certain, whether they stay together or not their friendship has been irreparably changed and so have they.

Review: This book gave me ALL of the feels. The chemistry between Mia and Noah was so beautiful and came across so perfectly, I really felt the depth of their friendship and the feelings they had for one another. The PINING was just so perfectly bittersweet - I was rooting for them right from the start and I think the dual POV really helped this, I loved being able to see both of their emotions. Mia's chronic illness was handled really well and I understood why she was so afraid of letting people help her, and the issues that Noah was facing due to the trauma of his brother's passing and how he was letting that moment cripple him with the fear of losing someone else, especially Mia. This book was just so emotional, so full of love and pain. The depth was amazing. It's a closed door romance, I typically love more spice but I think it wasn't needed here because the book was just so good. I have not a single critique or bad thing to say, this book was perfect. Absolutely recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my honest review! Would You Rather is out August 23, 2022!

Instagram Post:
Add this one to your TBR! I adored everything about this book - it was beautiful and heart wrenching and there was such good chemistry, this book was FLAWLESS!

Book 📚: Would You Rather by @authorallisonashley
Genre 💖: contemporary romance
Rating ⭐️: 5/5
Spice 🌶: Closed door

Synopsis: Mia and Noah have been best friends since they were kids. Now in their early 30s, they work together and spend their time outside of work together too. There had been a moment back in college where it seemed like they could be something more, but one night changed everything - Mia was hospitalized with what turned out to be a chronic kidney disease, and Noah’s brother died in a car accident. They needed to rely on each other as friends and have kept things platonic since then, both dealing with their own trauma from that night.

But, things change when they agree to enter into a marriage of convenience so Mia can go back to school and be on Noah’s health insurance. Now living together and having to pretend to everyone they’re in a real relationship, they are both confronted with the feelings they’ve been repressing for years, though they don’t think they deserve one another. The issues they’ve both been carrying around since that night come to a head as they can’t keep fighting their feelings but also can’t move on from the past that’s holding them back.

Review: This book gave me ALL the feels! The chemistry between Mia and Noah came across so perfectly, I felt the depth of their bond and the feelings they have for each other. The pining was just so bittersweet and the dual POV helped it a lot. I think the issues both characters had felt so real and were handled really well. I have not a single critique of this book, you have to read it!!

Thank you to @netgalley and @_mira_books_ @harlequinbooks for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. Would You Rather is out on August 23!

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I flew through this book in less than a day! It was a great and simple rom-com sprinkled with friends-to-lovers and fake-dating/marriage. There is a ton of forced proximity and tension was steadily built up.

Mia and Noah are both stubborn main characters that are too scared to let themselves enjoy a relationship. Both have trauma from chronic illness and loss respectively. Not everything is perfect but they each grow was people. I love when character growth it tied into friends-to-lovers stories. It shows that just because they are friends from childhood, does not mean that they are the same people when they get together.

One thing to note is that the fake-marriage insurance “fraud” scheme is a little unbelievable. An insurance would not care. They are legitimately married (and I assume they pay their premiums). In regards to the “fraud”, the only thing they do wrong is lie to their friends and family. An insurance company would care less. If you can get past the “insurance fraud”, I would highly recommend this book!

Plot: 3/5
Characters: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

Tropes: friends to lover, marriage of convenience, guy falls first, slow burn

This book was so good you guys! It kept my attention from the first chapter and I never felt the urge to give up on it.

Noah and Mia are best friends that get married in order for Mia to keep her health benefits so she can go back to college.
Mia is independent, outgoing, kind and strong. She suffers from a kidney disease but never lets it get her down.
Noah is caring, driven and selfless (and hot).
I loved their banter and how much they care for one another. Noah wants to take care of Mia however he can and Mia wants Noah to achieve all of his dreams.

Definitely recommend to fellow romance lovers!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was an instant start and finish in one day book for me. Allison Ashley did such a great job at taking some of my favorite romance tropes and making them feel so real and deep. I throughly enjoyed that the she allowed there to be space for the main characters to mend their own traumas along the way to their happily ever after. Allison also did a wonderful job with the dual POV in this book.

A friends to lovers sweet romance with a boatload of complications arising. Mia has a serious health problem requiring the medical insurance she has with her work. She is awarded a full scholarship to return to college, her dream. Full time college equals quitting her job and losing her insurance. Noah, her best friend, offers to marry her to solve the problem. A bumpy road lies ahead for this couple.

This was a cute and quick friend to lovers romance. You feel the history and chemistry between Noah and Mia, but I wish we got to see more of the interactions. The story uses a lot of mini time jumps that bypass relationship development and moments. I also think the ending was a touch rushed. I still highly recommend this - the clear love and esteem the two hold for each other is evident.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.