I enjoyed much of this book. It was my first Kate Clayborn, and author that I've heard raves about. I was intrigued by the idea that one of the MCs was in a place in her life where she needed to figure out who she was and what she wanted. So this book was about more than just the central love story. As it turns out, both MCs have a little bit of figuring out to do. I loved that Georgie thought she wanted certain things (and a certain person) when she was young, but what she really wants most ultimately turns out to be so different. I liked Liam and I liked his backstory. My only critique is that when Georgie finally figured out who she was, it was a little less than I pictured. But this was a super sweet story and I enjoyed the romance, the characters, and the setting overall.

First of all, many thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review. I am truly grateful.

When I first started reading this story, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. It took me a while to warm up to the two main characters, especially the heroine. However, about a third of the way through, I really started enjoying it and my enjoyment just increased in leaps and bounds as the love story and each of the MCs personal growth journeys developed.

I'm actually hoping there's a sequel so we can find out what happens with Levi's brother and sister.

A scattering of F-bombs and graphic sex.

We follow Georgie as she moves back to her hometown to housesit for her parents and help her best friend who is very pregnant with her first child. She is feeling lost after losing her job and is trying to figure out her life. She finds her old high school notebook/bucket list and suddenly has a plan. The surprise was Levi Fanning walking in her door. This charming story hits so many tropes- grumpy sunshine, forced proximity, found family, and much more. The characters were unforgettable, and the plot was unique. It won't publish until January 24, 2023, but I highly recommended putting this one on your calendar. Thank you to NetGalley for the early look in return for an honest review.

I'm a big Kate Clayborn fan and thoroughly enjoyed this story about a girl starting over by returning home. The quirky characters are what really made this book for me, and the romance had a surprising amount of depth. Highly recommend!

Georgie is coming home after a glamorous career. Levi is coming home to try to repair his reputation after a series of failures. A chance meeting pushes them together and over time, they find they have more in common than they would have thought. I loved the depth of these characters. I also loved Georgie's relationship with her childhood best friend, Bel, and her husband, Evan. I loved that, in the resolution of the story, George is still empowered to be herself.

First of all I have to say thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the arc 🥰 I was VERY pleasantly surprised by how much I loved this book and the connection I felt to Georgie.

Georgie goes back home to fulfill the emptiness she feels and have time to figure herself out after getting laid off from her fast paced job in California. Once she’s there, she finds something from her childhood that she thinks has the answers to it all.

The journey of self discovery Georgie has throughout this book is exactly one of the reasons I love it so much. You go along with Georgie through it all. Levi (MMC) has his own self discovery along the way as well. The go with the flow personality of Georgie is hard not to love as her decisions and needs bring us to some of my favorite scenes. I cannot pin point any time in this novel where I wanted to actually put it down. I had to force myself to actually stop and save some for later 😂

A few other reasons i loved it so much include dual POV, a grumpy/sunshine relationship, forced proximity, smallish town feel, crazy and lovable side characters and found family.

I'm a reformed small-town girl. As such, I have a love-hate relationship with small town romances. Most of the time, they're not for me. Small American towns are (in my jaded opinion) far too romanticized, especially in the romance genre. But still. Every so often, one comes around and I wish I could live there.

And surprisingly, Georgie, All Along is one of them. I think it's because Clayborn doesn't shy away from the crappy things about small towns–the exclusiveness, the way your reputation follows you no matter what. And yet she manages to get the things that matter right: the feeling of family, the "safe place" to land, so to speak.

Georgie and Levi are also great characters. I kept waiting for someone to "diagnose" them (e.g. "ahah! You have ADHD!" [or other ND label, etc]) but Clayborn resisted doing that and I LOVED it. I have a huge problem with how ND labels and other disabilities have been used lately in contemporary romance (see some of my other reviews) and I really appreciated that while some of the characters had aspects of ND and you could certainly argue one way or another for them, it wasn't A THING. I am fist pumping furiously for that.

So. Go out. Read this. Get it. Yes. All the yes.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for the ebook ARC. All opinions are mine alone.

Disclaimer: I received the first three chapters from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The cover and title is what made me choose this book. I was hoping to read the whole story, but they just gave me an ARC with the first three chapters.

So these are my thoughts:

▪︎In general, I liked the main character, Georgie. She is funny and relatable.

▪︎I had some trouble connecting with the story, especially in the first chapter. Perhaps because there were too many descriptions and internal dialogue for my liking. I enjoyed the scene in the store where she realized she didn't have any money to pay, though.

▪︎It was also nice when she found her notebook with all her stories. But then she spent a lot of time talking about how her life used to be.

▪︎The third chapter ended without me knowing where exactly this story was heading. Maybe in the next chapters it will become clear, but it would have been great if it happened at the beginning.

Damnit, I don't know how she does it.
I know know how kate manages to write a book that feels familiar. Books that feel like the romances I gre up reading, and yet also feel completely new and different. In Georgie, All Along you will find a small town romance at its best. But instead of too many kooky characters you have an incredible and important portrayal of female friendship. You also have the full scope of complicated family relationships and how our childhood selves inform our decisions for good or ill into our adulthood.

This book felt fun and sweet but also did work like a really excellent therapy session. I walked away from this book full of joy, but also feeling maybe just a little changed. Kate has a way of making a book feel like a small town romance and also a book of poetry, just for you. I loved the experience of reading this book, just like i've loved all the rest.

An achingly romantic and beautifully realized treatize on the power of the past to mold our futures. Clayborn doesn't just write romance, she uses the genre to hold up a mirror to our own vulnerable experiences as she excavates the all-too human emotions of loss, regret and vulnerability --- always through two complicated and exceedingly likeable people who meet at the apex of the past and future and ensure each other is stronger with the connection.


From the very first sentence of a Clayborn novel ( and I have now read every one of her published works), you are given the most confident sense that ah! yes, this is the voice I missed. I am going to turn these pages a better human, my empathy will be tested, my smile will widen. Evoking a marvellous sense of place and playing with the second chance trope, Georgie returns home after a stretch of over-worked life as a hollywood assistant to find herself with an unexpected roommate: town outcast Levi Fanning, who also happens to the be the brother of a high school crush. This is poignant because Georgie's return home is also a return to a fanfic list of experiences she never pursue: always letting life arrive for other people, her pregnant and married friend Bel, her LA boss, Nadia while shelving her own wants and desires. And yet she is hardly forlorn: she is a winsome, warm character and the perfect antidote to Levi's brooding and cuddly grumpiness. You know he has a heart of gold, you know she has a sprightly and unexpected side and together they cross off Georgie's past list while crafting a brand new narrative of common experience.


A Clayborn book is a hug or a cup of tea, it is the type of thing that acts as a medicinal balm and makes you forget the world. It's too easy to say this will appeal to readers of Emily Henry ( it will) and to Ali Hazelwood ( definitely) or that it sews up the emotional depth of Christina Lauren (yep) but what strikes me is that even though she is well-matched by some of my other favourites in the genre, there is something so distinctively Clayborn that she is on a shelf of her own.

She evokes a marvellous sense of place and positions a tale of hopeful yearning. You're not sure why your heart is tugged as he makes pizza over the grill or she sips cider to off-set the adverse effects of a horror film; but you do.

There's a sigh of regret and relief when your heart is your own after Clayborn commands it for so many pages. You want to write hearts around your notebook and carve her characters' initials into a tree all because you can't always express WHY or WHAT you are feeling in her competent word-world, just that you ARE and then some.


I loved this book but I always love Clayborn's books and I highly recommend you find yourself some soul-balm and grab at the chance to learn and love and lose with a story that is not about romantic love alone; but familial love, friendship love and love of self.

A perfect blend of self-realization and letting go.



(also shared on GR, Twitter, FB and Insta)

When was the last time I stayed up hours past my bedtime to read a book? It was actually last night when I was reading as much of <i>Georgie, All Along</i> as my eyeballs could transmit to my brain before my eyelids shut that down. Before that, though, it had been ages. I can't be surprised it's a Kate Clayborn book that finally did that for me. I've made no secret about how much I love her writing (Luck of the Draw remains tied for my favorite romance novel ever), and her style, sensitivity, and heart are on full display here.

I struggle with how to write a review for this book because reviews put me in an analytical mind but Kate Clayborn books make me FEEL things. I feel what the characters feel: Georgie's unsettledness as she grasps for purpose and meaning when she returns to her hometown after being unexpectedly laid off from her job. Levi's fear of who he'd be outside of the unassuming, "stable" life he's made for himself. Georgie's thrill in having that feeling of wanting something, and that the wanting is to be with Levi. Levi's hope that being with Georgie means he really can be the "stable" guy he's always wanted everyone to see he can be. The vulnerability, sadness, and ultimately joy they both feel in learning to live by their own expectations and not for anyone else's. The warmth that comes with watching them understand they get to do that <i>with</i> someone who loves them and not <i>because</i> of that person.

I wouldn't call this Clayborn's angstiest book or a perfect one. I had some issues with the low moment (mostly that I could see it coming miles off and didn't *completely* buy it) that weakened the ending for me. I would have loved to see the aftermath of the low moment include both MCs going to therapy because they have a LOT to unpack. However, the ultimate resolution did satisfy me and the small meaningful gift included in the big gesture was <i>soo</i> sweet.

There's the usual strong female friendships I've come to expect from KC and one of my favorite fictional dogs I can remember reading for a while. I also freaking loved Georgie's parents, who remind me a little of my own parents (in spirit and life philosophy, though my mother is far too organized to forget she double-booked a housesitter).

Bottom line: it's a Kate Clayborn novel. I loved it.

A soft, romantic, delightful book! Kate Clayborn never disappoints. This book has just the right level of intrigue and angst, without being too much.

This book made my heart so freaking happy! It had such great characters with amazing depth and growth. There were so many dynamics and relationships that were explored in wonderful ways. And Levi and Georgie had one of the best romantic relationships I’ve read in a long time.

I don’t want to say too much and give anything away, so I’ll just say read it and you won’t be disappointed!

Wow, this was a perfect book.

Georgie is the kind of believable chaos and sunshine that comes from being firmly grounded in parents and a best friend who support you, no matter what. Levi is the kind of closed off and grumpy that comes from being hurt by the people you needed to love you the most. Of course their paths intersect and of course they're going to fall in love and of course they're both going to be the better for it.

This book is so <i>tender</i> in every sense of the word, in the way that Georgie's parents make you feel seen and loved when they're seeing and loving her, and in the way where Levi's worries about being enough for anyone, let alone expansive Georgie, prick at your heart just as much as they do his. Every character here is nuanced and imperfect and so much more lovable for it and it's such a joy to watch everyone figure themselves out.

It's a perfect read, particularly for anyone who's a little adrift or off-balance, knowing that something's got to change but not knowing exactly what that is. If you love the wickedly funny banter and deep emotions of an Emily Henry read but mourned that she writes single POV, this is the book for you.

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn

RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
SPICE: 2.5/5
REVIEW:
Georgie's been working in LA for several years when she moves back home to be there for her best friend who about to have a baby!

Georgie need to figure out her life and what she wants out of it. While with her best friend, they stumble on an old notebook from when they were kids and it lights a fire inside her.

I loved how both Georgie and Levi were kind of outcasts in their home town but doing their best to build a life they loved. I loved the dual point of view and how Levi speaks of Georgie.

Reading this brought me back to late middle school and early high school years creating a bucket list and dreaming big with my best friend. All the plans we made and how differently our lives are to how we'd imagined them when we were young.

This is my first e-ARC that I cannot wait to buy a physical copy of! I loved it and binge read (is that a thing) it.

Georgie and Levi

I love love Levi! I just want to hug him and hold him. He’s so hard on himself and I’m so proud of how far he stretched himself. And Georgie. Georgie is on her own mission to discover her mission. She do chaotically wonderful. I love their story. Kate Clayborn does it again.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for a fair review.

Kay Clayborn does it again. I love a good return to her hometown trope and Kate manages to do the trope justice and also make it her own. Georgie was a standout protagonist, but it was really Levi that stole the book. His chapters are incredibly well written - soft and vulnerable. My only complaint is that we didn’t get more of his chapters. Kate is truly romance canon, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next!

All of the stars for this absolutely exquisite romance! Kate Clayborn writes romance like no other. I also have to say that the title of the book is simply perfect.

Georgie movies back home to see her parents and help out her friend Bel who is expecting her first baby. She is lost at this point and trying to figure out her life. She and Bel find an old notebook from high school, and Georgie sees a plan. What she wasn’t expecting was Levi Fanning.

Kate Clayborn writes characters that are so deep and human that they jump off of the page. I loved Georgie and her quirks. Her journey is heartwarming. But Levi stole my heart. His story and journey throughout this book is incredible. This isn’t a cookie-cutter romance. These characters are deep and you will be invested in short order. Like the book “Love Lettering” by this author, you are in for unique characters with a truly original story. I adored this book, and highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the digital advanced reader copy of this book. It releases in January of 2023. Preorder it now.

My goodness this book was such a great time. I had SO much fun reading this delightful read. I found Georgia to be so engaging, and watching her find her voice was so rewarding, I thought the romance was INCREDIBLY swoony and I loved every minute.

Highly recommend!!!

This book is such a treat. Georgie is hilarious and strong. As she muddles through her reinvention in her hometown, her sunshine is a bright contrast to Levi's grumpy. The love of Levi for his dog made me smile, too. Georgie's genuine friendship with Bel, especially when it comes to their love for the friendfic, was also poignant. It is wonderful to see female friendship that transcends time yet gains strength. This book made me stay up all night to finish it but I smiled the entire time. Thank you for the ARC! I cannot wait to buy this book for all of my friends.