I received a copy from NetGalley, but the review is my own. “Booked on a Feeling” is not a very good title for this very good rom-com novel. Our heroine, Lizzy (yes, no doubt in reference to every romance reader’s favourite heroine, Elizabeth Bennet), is a burnt-out lawyer who takes a leave of absence in small-town California where her best friend, Jack, lives. I usually prefer enemies-to-lovers to friends-to-lovers / second-chance romances, but this was a cute story of two people trying to figure themselves out while realizing their love for each other. While many modern romance novels seem to have an element of self-optimization (everyone always lands their dream job, and before 30 too!), this felt real, perhaps as family pressure and expectations was an important plot element. Lots of yummy food, set in a book store, with a refreshing lack of some of the worst tropes in romance books (while still having some standard romance scenes, like the karaoke bar), made this an enjoyable, recommendable read. 3.5/5

Cute friends-to-lovers book! This was a breezy read, I loved the characters of Lizzy and Jack, and I liked their shared experience of helping with the bookstore. It was a bit of a stretch for me to believe that Lizzy would just take a leave and move to Jack's city for several weeks without having any feelings for him... but once I got over it I loved the story.
If you think it's getting a bit boring, stick around - the end was very satisfying!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a free eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

This book was sweet, fluffy, and a whole lot of pining. I’m a huge fan of friends to lovers so I really enjoyed the romance in this book.

I gave this book 3 stars because I thought there are so many unnecessary descriptions and some parts are repetitive. I also wanted to know more about Lizzy and Jack but there’s not much back story about them other than Lizzy is an attorney and Jack is part of a brewery. There are some parts where the transition of the story is a bit off but I still enjoyed it. It’s toothachingly sweet but still cute!

I recommend this if you are looking for a quick fluffy read! Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review 🫶🏼

Friends-to-lovers is my favorite trope, by far! This is a great follow-up to the first two books. Caught up with those original characters and got to see Jack and Lizzy’s story. (Don’t need to read the other two books first, but it’s fun to read them in order.)

Lizzy is dealing with overwhelming stress and anxiety and needs to take some time for herself. So she heads to the small town where she spent summers growing up to spend time with her best friend. She helps out at the local bookstore since she has a lot of free time and ropes Jack into helping too. I love a good love story set in a bookstore ❤️

And I’m just throwing this out there… Alex and Shannon? Could that be book #4 in the series? ;-)

This is a fun tale that fellow bibliophiles will love. The romance was entertaining and if you find yourself spending a lot of time in bookstores, then this may be the story for you.

really, really wanted to love this book and while i know a lot of romance books are repetitive, this one felt like i've read it before, so it fell a little flat. i'd definitely read more from this author and it was super cute -- definitely not the book's fault. i'd re-read it after taking a break from romance, i think, and my mind could change!

synopsis

Lizzy "Overachiever" Chung, Esq. has her life mapped out neatly:
* Become a lawyer. Check.
* Join a prestigious law firm. Check.
* Make partner. In progress.

If all goes to plan, she will check off that last box in a couple years, make her parents proud, and live a successful, fulfilled life in L.A. What was not in her plans was passing out from a panic attack during a pivotal moment in her career. A few deep breaths and a four hour drive later, Lizzy is in Weldon for three weeks to shed the burnout and figure out what went wrong. And what better place to recharge than the small California town where she spent her childhood summers with her best friend, Jack Park.

Jack Park didn't expect to see Lizzy back in Weldon, but now he's got three weeks to spend with the girl of his dreams. Except she doesn't know of his decades-long crush on her--and he intends to keep it that way. She's a high-powered attorney who lives in L.A. and he's a bookkeeper at his family's brewery who never left his hometown. He can't risk their friendship on a long shot. Can he? When Lizzy decides that the local bookstore needs a little revamp, of course, Jack is going to help her bring it back to life. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to ignore there might be more than just friendship among the dusty shelves and books...

Sometimes the path to the rest of your life has been in front of you all along.

The premise was cute, and I liked Jack, but Lizzy’s character was frustrating and underdeveloped. It was hard to support their relationship, when it did feel like she took advantage of Jack so often.

this story was a lot of fun. It has Lizzy working her way up to become partner in the law firm she works for, but after a taxing trial, she takes some time off to regroup. Where else would she go but to visit in the town her best friend lives. Jack works at his siblings' brewery, but he feels he isn't utilizing his potential.
The friends-to-lovers part of this is sweet. Lizzy and Jack are fireworks together, but of course there are some crossed wires. Both of them need to figure out where their work passion is before they can try to make their relationship work.

I really wanted to love this book, but it fell flat for me. I got to a point where i didn’t care if the main characters got together and the sex scenes were a bit off putting. I’ve liked other books from this author so this was disappointing!

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

Booked on a Feeling follows two childhood best friends named Lizzy and Jack. Lizzy feels overwhelmed at her job as a big-city attorney, so she goes to Jack's small town for a nice vacation. While there, she gets the inspiration to help a struggling independent bookstore with a much-needed makeover.

I want to start my review by talking about how funny this book was. There was so much sexual tension, and don't get me wrong, it was amazing, but I couldn't stop laughing. Lizzy had to fan herself every time Jack so much as touched a power tool - I can relate.

I loved their dynamic. These two have been friends for two decades now, so they know each other pretty well. All the misread signs and old banter added amazing depth to this romance. It was also amazing to watch their relationship through the eyes of the side characters.

This is the third book in the Sweet Mess series. I have read the first two (Sweet Mess and the Dating Dare) and loved them both. You do not need to read the first two to love Booked on a Feeling, but I recommend it.

This is a super sweet childhood-friends-to-lovers story, complete with career dread and familial issues. I absolutely loved it. Be sure to check out Booked on a Feeling by Jayci Lee when it releases July 26.

"Booked on a Feeling" was a very enjoyable read. It was cute, and fun, and entertaining and pretty much everything a romcom book needs to be for me.

This is a friends to lovers romcom style romance and I really enjoyed it.

I appreciated how the author went about and included anxiety, family issues, and character growth.

The two main characters Lizzy and Jack were so cute and sweet. This was a total “feel good” read. 😌🤍

Neither character seems truly happy doing what they’re doing career wise so they team up and try something new!

The characters were both stubborn and wasted time by not sharing their feelings towards each other but in the end I fell for both characters. 🤗

This ARC was provided to me by NetGalley & the publishers, however, all opinions are solely mine and how I honestly feel about the book provided.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book... You know how some books are over way too fast & some books have you continually checking your progress because it doesn't feel like you're making any progress. Well I felt the latter for the majority of this book. It took me forever to get through and I could not stop looking to see how much I had left.

I loved Jack and I think his feelings for Lizzy were justified but I think Lizzy just caught her "feelings" out of nowhere. To me it felt more like lust and loneliness, I mean all she thought about for the longest time was sex. That doesn't really equate to love in my book. And I wish we could've got a little more back story on how their friendship started when they were ten and how that progressed throughout the years. Maybe that would've given me a little more insight into Lizzy's feelings/her character. Even though she wasn't my favorite, I'm really glad Lizzy found her "purpose" in the end and was finally doing something she loved.

I might give Tara's book a try though just because I loved her in this book even though she was a minor character.

Thank you NetGalley & St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book!

DNF @ 44%.

The main premise is that a lawyer climbing the ranks at her firm has a panic attack before her first case and decides to visit the hometown of her longtime friend, who is secretly crushing on her. This book has everything I look for, so I was excited to receive an ARC copy.

However, I feel like nothing really happened between the characters. Their entire internal monologue is about how much they’re attracted to the other person, but there’s no cute moments. I also thought the book was entirely too long. I read over 300 pages (1/2 the book), and couldn’t believe there was still so much to go!

I really liked this one! Booked on a Feeling follows type-A lawyer Lizzy who is experiencing a “quarter-life crisis” – overwhelmed and unsatisfied with her career and life in LA, she decides to take a long-overdue vacation in the small town where her childhood best friend, Jack, lives. She rents a second-floor apartment over a struggling bookstore and immediately throws herself into projects to revive the store to its fullest potential. As she spends more time in the small town, she realizes that her original path to happiness - well-paying jobs, big city life - is not what she wants in life. And she can’t deny her feelings when she spends more and more time with her lifelong best friend.

I’m a sucker for the childhood friends to lovers, “I can’t tell her how I feel because it will ruin the friendship” trope. And the whole, let’s work on this project together so we can spend more time together “as friends” trope. What was missing for me was more about their past/backstory on their friendship and how they got to this current point, especially since they were living in different cities. Also because I’m a total fool, the whole time I was reading thinking, “Wow these characters would make for great spinoff stories!” without realizing that this was the third book in a series and, in fact, they all do have their own books. That said, this book really does hold up well as a stand-alone because I didn’t need to know the side character’s stories for context in this book.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
#netgalley #stmartinspress #bookedonafeeling #jaycilee

Unfortunately, Booked on a Feeling was ultimately disappointing. I actually considered DNFing around the 20% mark, because I was flat out bored. I should have just stopped reading then. Obviously, it goes without saying that it took me quite a while to care about the characters. Lizzy and Jack were interesting for about maybe a third of the novel, and then boredom came rushing back in.

This book needs another pass by with an editor, I think. The last like five percent of the novel needs to be reworked, because all it is is the ‘narrator’ telling us what’s happened. There is little to no showing going on. It’s just and Lizzy did this, and then she did that. And then she realized this, and Jack realized that. I actually ended up skimming several pages, because I was so bored my eyes wouldn’t focus. There’s so much back-and-forth (and not in a good way) in the later half of this novel. Jack wants to move to LA, Lizzy wants to move to Weldon. They switch, and Lizzy figures out that she doesn’t want to be in Weldon without Jack, etc, etc. It’s a whole thing.

This book had the potential to be cute, but it just fell completely flat. The characters had very, very little personality. In the rare instance they DID show some sort of personality, their chemistry shone. But these scenes were few and far between, when they SHOULD have been the entire focus of the novel!

And don’t even get me started on the epilogue. A surprise-honey-I’m-pregnant epilogue? When children hadn’t been mentioned by either character in the ENTIRE novel? Pass.

I won’t be picking up any of the other books in this series, if they’re all written like this one. Two and a half stars, and that’s me being quite generous.

"Jack was her best friend. For twenty years, he'd been her confidant, her cheerleader, and her sounding board. Her anchor. He was still all those things to her, but now there was something else."

This book was very cute and fun, and both main characters were so sweet. I love stories with dual POVs and lovable characters, and Jayci Lee definitely delivered. Still, the plot was a bit too slow paced for me. The first few chapters are pretty dense and don't have a lot of relevance to the rest of the book. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a light and fluffy friends-to-lovers story.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book was so so much fun!

I've said it before and ill say it again, childhood best friends to lovers is THE BEST trope! Take that trope but then have a small-town book store as the setting and there you go a recipe for the perfect book.

I absolutely fell in love with these characters. Jayci Lee put so much love into these characters to make them some of the sweetest characters I have ever read about. Jack was so loving, supportive, and gentle and Lizzy was smart, driven, and kind.

I love how well issues such as anxiety self growth, and familial issues were handled.
overall such a cute, fun, and quick-paced read. The romance was beautiful and the characters were amazing.

3/5 ☆

Thank you NetGalley & the publisher for the ARC!

I've been reading a lot of friends to lovers romances lately and I've grown to really appreciate them. Book on a Feeling being one of them!

The book follows Lizzy and Jack, who are childhood friends. Lizzy is an attorney out in LA while Jack runs a family business back in their home town with his siblings. Overworked and burnt out, Lizzy decides to take time off and returns home to Weldon to spend some time relaxing with Jack. Jack is over the moon that he gets to have Lizzy to himself for a month, but he also is nervous because he's been in love with her since they were 10 (give or take a few years).

Super cute and light-hearted book - I always love supporting Asian authors (especially since its AAPI heritage month). We get to see, what I think many children of immigrants go through - trying to fit in a mold your parents have sculpted out for you. Lizzy and Jack both struggle with this to the point where they feel unsatisfied with where they're at in their lives. I think this book does a really good job at displaying this dynamic and how frustrating POC parents can be in wanting the best for their children.

The biggest critique I have for this book is the ending - it felt all over the place with her moving and then moving back. Also the dialogue was eh between the characters. It felt lacking and awkward in terms of banter. The epilogue was super cute though! Overall a quick read and again, support your Asian authors!

Tropes:
-Best friends to lovers
-Small town romance
-Third POV
-MMC falls first
-Fade to black (with a few descriptions leading up to it)

Lizzy is a high-powered attorney in LA on her way to the top! Her best friends, Jack, handles all the bookkeeping for his family’s brewery in their hometown of Weldon. After suffering a panic attack in the biggest case of her career, Lizzy ends up back home trying to decompress from the stress of her job.

This is a book that involves one of my favorite things: bookstores. And Lizzy, like me, loves books and has a TBR list a mile long. When she decides to fix up the local bookstore, Jack offers to help her even though he is worried he won’t be able to hide his feelings any longer.

This is a great rom/com with a friends-to-lovers storyline. It’s an easy, light hearted read that I’m glad I picked up. Even though it’s book 3 in a series, it can definitely be a stand alone book. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of this book.