A Guide to Being Just Friends is the third book in the Jansen Brothers series by Sophie Sullivan. This time around the story focuses on Hailey Sharp and Wes Jansen, both of whom don’t really prioritize anything that is related to their love lives or connections with other people that may meet as they go. This is when their meet-cute happens, add to that a little bit of disaster and at the end of the day, they go back their separate ways not expecting to become friends soon after that.

This story was cute to say the least, I for one always enjoy friends-to-lovers, and when it’s done in a good way I have nothing to complain about. But be aware, that there’s also the slow-burn aspect to it since both main characters change a lot when it comes to their personalities and ideas in order to be on the same page and end up together as a couple.

*ARC kindly provided by St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book three in this fun series and I was happy to see Wes take his turn at love. After a disastrous meet cute Wes and Hailey start off rocky but it doesn’t last long. They vow to be friends and this gives strong When Harry Met Sally vibes.
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I love the dynamic of the brothers and it was fun to revisit characters. Also, if there’s food involved in books I’m Instantly hungry. This may be the first time I was craving something like a salad but let me tell you I wish there was a salad shop like this by my house!
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A salad store owner and a millionaire! Hello!!!

Thank you the publisher for the eArc as well as the audio advanced copy. I listened to this mainly in audio.

To be honest, I just wasn't as into this one as the others in this series. I enjoyed the characters friendship, and their romance was cute but I wasn't vibing.

Overall it was fine.

This book was such a sweet and comforting read. I really enjoyed the characters and the style that Sophie uses when writing. The characters are delightful and so adorable. This was such a fun book!

This cover definitely matches its tone.

A Guide to Being Just Friends drew me in right away with a charming beginning. It's not going to blow your socks off, but it's an enjoyable read!

A cute story but I hadn't read the first two books so I did feel like I was missing a little something. The story is a stand-alone but still, I wish I'd known this was part of a series before I picked it up, but that's on me.

A Guide to Being Just Friends ~ Sophie Sullivan

Hailey Sharp has her priorities in order. She’s intent on getting her salad shop up and running and isn’t about to let anything get in her way. Enter Wes Jansen. Their first meet-up doesn’t amount to much but when they see each other again, a friendship blossoms. A story for the age-old question - can men and women really be “just friends?”

A highly anticipated romance this one is being described as “When Harry Met Sally meets 500 Days of Summer” - “Sophie Sullivan crafts a warm, sweet-as-brownies love story in A Guide to Being Just Friends: with found family, a hopeful, determined heroine, a starchy hero, and the risky question ‘What if adding romance to our already-great relationship makes it even better? What if it makes us fall apart?’”

I love friends to lovers and think that Wes and Hailey had a lot of potential for me to like them but it just fell flat. The friend group seemed very large for the length of the book so it seemed like lots of extra side stories.

I also didn’t read the second book in this series yet so I felt like I was missing some context especially with how much Noah and Grace were in this book.

Sadly this one dragged for me and just wasn’t it. A good book but not my favorite.

Thank you to Netgalley, Sophie Sullivan, and St. Martin's Press for this ARC of A Guide to Being Just Friends in exchange for an honest review!!

Description:
Hailey is a new business owner who has a chance (and embarrassing) encounter with Wes. Wes is a handsome and rich business man who doesn't want anything to do with love. Hailey is the exact opposite. She just went through a bad breakup but is still hopeful that she will eventually find true love. Through friend connections and their chance encounter, they become great friends.

Review:
I'll start by saying that I did not read the previous books in this series. However, I still was able to follow along with the story and didn't feel like I was missing any key parts. I do think I would have had a deeper connection with the other characters in the book, including Wes' brothers if I had read the previous books.
A Guide to Being Just Friends had my favorite trope ever! Friends to Lovers. So, I really enjoyed this one. It is a slow burn and is a closed door romance. I would have liked for the book to pick up a little bit more. It seemed to take a really really long time for them to finally cross those lines of friendship, but it also gives us time to get to know Wes and Hailey as friends. I would have also loved a little more spice.
I loved the salad business idea and thought it was so unique! I also really enjoyed the grand gesture aspect of the book. It made me think of some of my favorite scenes in movies! All in all, I really enjoyed this one and would recommend it!

Thanks so much to the author, St. Martin's Griffin, and Netgalley for the gifted advanced e-copy of this book, and thanks as well to Macmillan Audio for the gifted advanced audiobook, in exchange for my honest thoughts. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my blog at tacklingtbr.home.blog

I love the Jansen Brothers Series! I have read each of these books as they've come out, and honestly each one has been a monthly reading highlight for me. They are sweet, and charming, with just a small dash of spice, and I just adore them.

Keep in mind if you're reading that this is the third book in this series. They can all easily be read and enjoyed as standalone stories, but these second and third installments include lots of scenes with the characters from the previous books, this one even more so than How to Love Your Neighbor. So, while I don't think that you necessarily need to read them in order or that you absolutely need to read the others before enjoying this one, I think that knowing the characters and their backstories going in really adds to the enjoyment of this book.

Let's jump into these characters. Obviously as I said above I'm already a big fan of the three Jansen brothers, Everly and Grace from the first two books, and the cast of characters from each of their lives that we're already familiar with in the series - and I think that Hailey is such a fun addition! She is so different from both Grace and Everly, which makes me happy, but she and her friends also fit in really well with the existing group of them. I could see these groups of people all getting together and being friends in real life, and it makes the love story of it all so much sweeter in my opinion.

And as far as the love story goes, I thought that our two leads had a good amount of chemistry and compatibility. They start off as friends, which I love, so there is that base level of compatibility there where you can understand why these people have the other in their life. I didn't necessarily feel a big bolt of chemistry from the beginning, but since it is a friends to lovers story I didn't mind that much - it felt like it left room to grow throughout the rest of the story.

Overall I would definitely recommend this book, and this series as a whole, to my friends and fellow readers. I find myself wishing more siblings could appear out of the background, so that we could keep getting some more books, because I'm not sure I'll be satisfied when they're done. I think the perfect way to read this book is with a HUGE piece of chocolate cake, since I've been craving one since about chapter two anyway.

This is a slow burn friends to lovers story. I found it a little too slow in the beginning! The two main characters spend a lot of time debating and defining their friendship and the fact that it can’t cross over into a romantic relationship. A little longer than necessary I think but overall the book is very enjoyable. This is the third book in a series and can be read as a standalone although I would like to go back and read the backstory on some of the characters as I haven’t read the other books. I liked the two main characters and their relationship seemed authentic. Once the book progresses past the slow beginning it is more engaging and I enjoyed the story. Definitely an interesting and entertaining read that I would recommend.

This is a cute romance book, but not one that will stick with me for a long time to come. Hailey needs a fresh start and moves to San Verde, where she meets Wes and develops a friendship with him. The story follows their friendship, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit, into their romance - which fell flat for me. It is a slow burn, so I ended up really enjoying their dynamic as friends, but when it switches to a romantic relationship, I felt it was rushed. The cast of secondary characters is quite fun. I found out that this book is the last one of a series that follows Wes and his brothers, but you can definitely read it as a standalone. I would have never guessed it was part of a series if I hadn't looked up the author's other works.

The audiobook was great and kept me engaged. I really enjoyed listening to the narrators.


Thank you, NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and MacMillan Audio for an e-ARC and audiobook.

This was such a sweet, friends to lovers slow burn romance. I adored both Hailey and Wes, and I loved the growth and change of both characters thoroughtout the book. My biggest complaint was that it was a little too slow and at times nothing was happening. I felt that there was no connection until the last minute...I needed more.

This is one of those books where I appreciate the story and the effort of the writer but I just didn't fall in love. There were a lot of weird time jumps that threw me off and then the flow of the story just wouldn't let me get super invested. I kept reading because there were enough moments when my heart swelled or I made ridiculous facial expressions based on things the characters said or did.

By now means is this an OMG amazing and groundbreaking book, but it’s a pleasant read and a good second o third round purchase for most libraries.

This book has been a favorite of the month!

I loved Book 2 of this series (I have yet to read book 1) and I couldn’t wait to read this one. I hope Sullivan finds a way to continue this series because I am not ready for it it end!

What I loved:
📝 I loved the realness and honestly in the relationship between Hailey and Wes. This book felt like a real relationship with the good, the bad, and the screw ups.
📝 I loved the closed door romance but didn’t leave me longing for more.
📝 I loved the independence Hailey had in this book and kept going back to. She was ready to empower herself!

I would recommend this books to all my light romance friends. Although this is part of a series, it could be read as a standalone. The other books in this series just makes you fall in love with the Jansen family a little bit more.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Rating: 4.5/5 🌟

Thank you St. Martin’s Press, Sophie Sullivan, and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This book was SO cute! I haven’t read the other two books in the series, but that didn’t deter me from enjoying this one since it could be a standalone novel. I loved the banter, character development, and chemistry between Hailey and Wes ! Though it took a bit for me to get into the book initially, and I didn’t love Wes and Hailey’s meet-cute, the book got so much better as it progressed. This was a really slow-burn but it was well-worth it when they finally got together. I liked the dual-POVs and seeing how both characters saw the same situation. One thing I didn’t love was the timeline jumping, as it left some loose ends. The slow-burn helps realistically show the progression of how Wes and Hailey built a solid foundation being friends before becoming more. All of the characters in the novel were fun to read about and added to the story.

If you love slow-burns, friends-to-lovers, and a cute read, this one is great read!

I liked this but I didn’t love it, which is kind of a bummer because I expected to. It sounded so cute and the cover is equally cute, but I just took forever to get into it and once I did get into the story… I just had so many reservations about Wes. I did like the writing style and I loved the other Jansen brothers, plus all the other side characters. Time to go back to the first book and read from there!

This was a very fun book. I do enjoyed the friends to lovers storyline and I found this one did that very well. I enjoyed the business aspects of this book and found that they worked well with the rest of the story.
This was my first book in the series so I wasn't acquainted with the other side characters, but I didn't find it that hard to figure out what was going on with them.
I really enjoyed the love story between the characters and found it very believable. I was rooting for them from the beginning and really enjoyed this story.

Sophie Sullivan’s newest book, and the last book in The Jansen Brothers Series, comes out on January 17th and the title pretty much sums up what the book is about! A Guide To Being Just Friends showcases the epitome of the friends-to-lovers trope and how trust and friendship can lead to something more.

This book was a cute read and friends-to-lovers romances are always adorable if you ask me. That being said, I kind of felt like the romance got dragged out a bit too long (too many descriptions of salads maybe?) and the third act break up was a bit abrupt in my opinion. However, I still enjoyed this book. I just think I liked the previous one better!

Besides that, Hailey’s determination to be successful in her small business and Wes’s drive to be impactful in his community were both fun journeys to read about. I just wish they would’ve accepted their feelings for one another a little sooner!

If you liked closed door romances, then this is a good book to read, but it wasn’t my favorite of the series.

*I received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press in exchange for my honest opinion.