Honestly, this book wasn't for me. I was really enthralled by the concept and that's why I requested the arc, but I just couldn't get in to it. I felt the characters and the story were a little bland for my liking, but that's not to say that others would not enjoy it, or that it didn't get better, as I never finished.
Maybe I'll try again one day.

The Last First Date is a lighthearted romantic comedy which follows the story of 31 year old Helen Pines, who hasn't been lucky in the dating department for a while now, and spends an inordinate amount of time scrolling on Instagram and looking at pictures of her happily-engaged ex. She finally decides to try finding a date online, and to her surprise, actually makes a connection with someone. Unfortunately, all her data in the app disappears after a sitewide error the next day. How is Helen supposed to find her last first date?

This book was reminiscent of Sophie Kinsella's standalone novels back in the early days. We have a heroine with potential who somehow gets wrapped up around the idea of happily ever after too much, and almost misses out on the good things in life, which she already has.

Reading this in this day and age, it might seem almost commonplace to have heroines who scroll non-stop on social media apps, and who are not out of place in the world of online dating. But it's scary at the same time to see how accurately this reflects the real world, and makes you think about what you're really doing with your life.

I give this book 3 stars. It was fun, but it could have been so much more.

Thank you to Netgalley and HQ for the e-arc!

I give this book 3 stars.

Synopsis: Helen wants to find love. In fact, Helen wants to find swoonworthy, head over heels romantic love, kind of like her grandmother had as a little girl. After an amazing first date, Helen thinks she's found it. That is, until her dating app crashes and she loses his information. On a hunt to find her true love, Helen ends up finding herself.

I give this book three stars. I feel like the third act was a bit rushed and I wish that more time was spent getting to know the love interest. As always, my two stars and a wish...


Star: I really enjoyed the antics that Helen went on to find her love. It was fun punctuated with seriousness.

Star: I loved her relationship with her grandma. Grandparents are actually the best and don't get enough attention for it.

Wish: I wish that Helen hadn't spent so much time obsessing over Brody. It got a bit past the point of fun for me and even though her actions were later justified, it still didn't seem good enough. I feel like therapy would be a good idea for Helen.

Overall, a book that tackles ideas of love, life, and expectation vs reality.

when Helen Pines decides to download a dating app to help get over her ex once & for all, she comes across Brody, who’s gorgeous, charming, and hardworking. they agree to meet, and Brody declares his desire to go on his “last first date”. the rest of the evening goes perfectly, and Helen finds herself already dreaming of their second date: until the dating app crashes and everyone’s data vanishes, leaving Helen with no way to get in contact with Brody.

Helen spends the rest of the story searching for her ‘one that got away’. she uses the help of technology and social media, along with the support of her friends, to find Brody. throughout this journey, Helen takes the time to reflect on her future and what she hopes it will entail, whether it be with this mystery man or somebody else entirely.

this book was cute, but it wasn’t anything super noteworthy. it was heartwarming in the sense that our main character really ends up finding herself while on this hunt for a man whom she thought would fulfill all her needs. she learns a lot about herself in the process, which was great, but it was just so incredibly predictable…like 1000% could be a hallmark movie (and I love me some hallmark movies so this isn’t a bad thing by any means)!

the other thing that bothered me was the logistics with the date itself. I was in the dating app world once, and I never went on a date with someone without exchanging numbers first??? that was so off to me!! also, my friends could’ve probably found this man in 5 minutes honestly 😂 but I understand the conflict for the sake of the story.

overall, not my fave, but a cute feel-good read! thanks to @netgalley for my advanced reader’s copy!

Hayley Quinn knocked it out of the park with this book! It gives you all the butterflies and second hand embarrassment that will have you cheesy smiling behind the cover! Great summer read!

When Helen our FMC finds herself single after her ex boyfriend cheats on her, she downloads a dating app to see what her options are (Hands up if you agree dating apps can be the WORST). A match and first date with MMC Brody seems too good to be true! What happens when the app loses their profiles and conversation? Helen is determined to try and find him and see if they can get their happy ending.

This was your typical romance book - the right amount of cheese and drama. It can be a bit difficult to adapt to the writing styles at times but overall I did enjoy this book! The storyline and characters were believable and likable and you find yourselves rooting for them!

When I first saw the title I was excited to see and what the book would be about and having got the e-ARC of the book here is my review of it.

The book revolves around Helen, a single Cornish women in London who is a blogger. She is in her late twenties and early thirties (honestly that is a period of panic for anyone I guess I wouldn't know in still 21 but hey I am guessing). All her friends have great careers, are getting engaged or married and moving while she is still there. Her ex whom she dated for a while and pulls her down, which leads to self esteem issues and questioning if she was not worth it or if she was the problem. Finally she creates a dating profile and his on a date with a guy who she feels is the kind of person she wants to be with but then life takes a turn. The dating website crashes, she loses contact and our girl here goes stalkerish...

This book is about realisation, adult relationships, loneliness, the stigma around it and how people make deadlines according the societal standards. The book had a great potential because it opened a topic which not many times we talk about in the bookish community but I personally found it hard to get myself to read the book because, one, the narrators POV or the 3rd person POV can be difficult if it is not done right. Second, the author makes her look desperate, needy, many, insecure all through out the book while she is not. Third, I felt there was alot of disconnect and jump and too many things happening which just confused me.

I gave this book a two is because it was difficult for me to even get halfway through but somehow I managed to finish it. To be honest, I loved how the book shows a realistic picture of adult life and adult relationships and how lonliness, the fear for lack accomplishments and anxiety in relationships can effect a person and the people around. That being said the character could have had character development which did not happen how expected for it to happen. This book had great potential and could have used all the space available but unfortunately it didn't.

This is my opinion... I will still suggest for people to read and make an opinion of their own!

Helen's ex-boyfriend - who barely committed to her during their two years together - has just gotten engaged and she's in a tailspin of "I'll be alone forever" so her grandmother encourages her to join a dating app.

She matches with the "perfect" guy and after one great date, the app crashes and she loses all contact with Brody. With only his name and the vaguest bits of info to go on, Helen goes on a desperate hunt for a man she barely knows in a novel I wish I DNF'ed.

I really wanted to like this one but it was painfully, painfully bad. Helen's character is shallow as a puddle, the writing is choppy and awkward, the side characters are so cringe! Elle is the typecast Latina, being loud and randomly adding Spanish words into conversations for no reason?! Who actually does that in real life?

Helen's constant self-deprecation and that the entire novel revolves around finding a man bored me to tears.

The author describes Helen - and the entire novel - in one line when she writes: "She was bored with herself. Her neediness. Her desperation". And that pretty much sums it up, tbh.

It's a NOPE from me.

When she sees her ex announcing his engagement on Instagram, Helen is convinced that she has to do something to move her life on. With a bit of a push from her Nan, Helen joins a dating app.
She has what she thinks is a great first date with a local business owner, Brody. They get on well, but the next day the app has lost all contact details and Helen has no way of getting in touch with her date.
From the outset she is prone to overthinking. She doesn’t rate herself highly, and her two best friends try to give a boost - though they are both infuriating. Rather than chalk it up as something tried and not to be, Helen starts trying to track down her mystery guy.
At the same time as doing this, Helen finds herself making friends with YouTube star Ish (who happens to save her one night). While we can see he’s likely to be a good guy, Helen takes longer to recognise what’s staring her in the face!
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this. It was light and reasonably entertaining, though there were parts that frustrated me no end.

For all the single ladies this is about your dilemmas, fear and manifestations.

A not so famous baking instagrammer on a journey to find her Mr. Perfect guy from her first date falls in love with herself in the end. A journey from singlehood to mingling with the guy friend.

This novel is all about singlehood and it's struggles.

This was not my favorite! I thought the premise was cute, but I didn't feel that there was a lot of character development and/or the characters lacked depth. I had a hard time sticking with this one; It was just ok for me.

Helen Pines is a hopeless romantic, with emphasis on hopeless. Scrolling through social media, she finds out her ex-boyfriend is now engaged and — rather than let herself become a bottomless pit of self-loathing and Ben and Jerry’s — she plots to go on her last first date. She then meets Brody, goes on an unbelievably good date with him and…loses his contact details.

What follows is a wild game of cat-and-mouse as Helen, aided by her well-meaning friend and eccentric but lovely Nan, tries to track down her mystery man…and ends up finding more than she bargained for.

Helen was a bit hit-and-miss as a character for me. I appreciated her growth and journey, but I did spend most of the book frustrated with her and her actions. I think she redeems herself towards the end, though, which I was happy with.

It wasn’t the most groundbreaking romance by any means but it was an easy read.

The Last First Date is cute and fun! It was lacking some depth and I wasn't completely convinced by the romantic connection by the end. I found the MCs to be hard to relate to and a little bit bland, and overall the story fell sort of flat for me. Although it was a quick and easy read.

A comfortable read. Just perfect for when you don’t need to think too deeply and enjoy a romantic read. I liked the main character, but not so much her pals. I really liked her man at the end.

The main idea and the story revolving around the book really hit my eye but, however, this just wasn’t a read for me.

Even though, I still could enjoy most of it. I didn’t fall for the main female character but Nanny G really did steal my heart.

The author’s writing style is pretty simple, maybe a little too much for my taste and sometimes I felt the narration was going nowhere.

Being a native Spanish speaker, a few of the awful translations made my eyes roll more than once but if you don’t speak the language, you won’t even notice. That’s just a personal thing.

It’s such a light romance book that can be easily read but that, unfortunately, fell short for me. I was turning pages hoping I would get to the point where I couldn’t put it down but it just never happened. I didn’t feel the need to continue reading.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and HarperCollins for giving me the chance to read an ARC copy in exchange of my honest opinion.

I've still got 2 languishing hours to go. I am truly fighting to make it through this book. The main character has zero redeeming qualities- absolutely unlikable with the personality of a warm SnackPack. I very rarely quit books, but I think this is going to be one of them. Do not recommend (sorry).

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley, however the opinions are my own.

This one was a lovely read. I really enjoyed reading this one. I just love this kind of books.
3.5 stars read for me

One date...

Helen goes on one date but then looses her way to contact him aftewards. She then obsessively stalks him in oftentimes cringy ways. I think she became fixated on a dream and could not see what was right in front of her as she searches for Brody (the why of it is a bit of a stretch). There's not much romancing but a lot of Helen feeling less than and playing catch up to her age group.

This book initially intrigued me but soon became an obsessive journey where the main character is fixated on a first date. It becomes clear her stalking "finding" him might not end up in her favour but luckily she has another guy who follows her on this search and that's when it becomes a bit more complicated. Had moments but overall wanted her to snap out of it too early in that I lost some interest.
Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read and give my honest opinion.

Ya know how you pick up a book and you think it’s going to be one thing and it turns into something completely different? That was this one for me.

Single and striving to meet the man of her dreams, Helen gets onto a dating app after much push from her friends to meet the perfect man. And she does! But after Helen and Brody’s first date and no exchange of phone numbers, the website crashes and all data is lost. Now she’s on the hunt to find Brody, the man of her dreams. But along the way she meets someone else that catches her off guard.

I definitely would not classify this book as a romance. It’s more of a self-development/finding who you are kind of book. There were definitely some cringe worthy moments in here (the train scene 🫣) and a lot of moments when I was like what the heckkkkk but it still kept me going and wanting to read the rest.

There’s a character that we get introduced to (in a very strange way) named Ish and I was reallllllly hoping to see more of him in the book! And I really loved Helen’s best friend Elle! She was on it and knew who she was through and through! In all fairness, I did like the book. I just didn’t love it.

If you’re looking for something easy to read and if you enjoy watching people embarrass themselves 😬😬, this is the book!