Major pros for this book having a queer Jewish protagonist. It does a good job of exploring all the nuances and issues of coming out, figuring out who you are, and how hard it can be to be queer and bisexual in today's society. The angst and back and forth of Luna's thoughts made the book drag a little for me, but was a really good demonstration of how much Luna was struggling internally. A somewhat predictable end, but I think everyone ended up where they needed to be even though the author left the main romance somewhat underdeveloped and rushed.

in sizzle reel, the story explores the challenges of self-discovery and ambition. the author’s writing style is witty and perfectly encapsulates the protagonist’s journey. it makes readers root for the characters!

i read it a while ago but forgot to give the review so here it is. tbh it was nothing stellar i wouldnt say it was a waste of time but it wasnt the best thing ive read either

In Sizzle Reel, Luna is the assistant of a boutique talent manager in LA, and she recently concluded that she's bi. She came out to her therapist and best friends, but she can't imagine taking that step with her family. This is a single-POV romance that lends itself to a story about growing into your identity and maybe even growing up in general.

It's a love triangle situation, though Luna is largely oblivious to its full existence. She develops her first girl crush on Valeria, an actress she meets at work. They talk about art, and Luna's blown away. She ends up applying for a job as a production assistant on the film that will be Valeria's directorial debut. It's one step closer to her cinematographer dream. The problem is that now her romantic interest in Valeria is wrapped up in their professional relationship. Meanwhile, as Luna navigates being queer for the first time, she relies heavily on her roommate/best friend, Romy, for support. Romy's a non-binary sapphic who welcomes Luna into the community with open arms. As she reassures Luna and offers advice, it's clear (to only the reader, I should note) that she might have buried some feelings for Luna that until now didn't have a viable outlet. Luna has a passing awareness that she finds Romy cute, too, but she has 0 idea that the feeling could be reciprocated. She's so wrapped up in her crush and everything's so new to her in general that she doesn't look into those feelings any further.

The nature of the romance is that we spend most of the book focused on one love story (with Valeria), even though another one (with Romy) is endgame. I've seen that pulled off really well before, but I've also seen instances where it kills some of the romance factor. I think it's the latter in this case. It makes sense when you consider that this is primarily a story about Luna-- coming out to herself, learning what that means for her, and navigating new options for relationships. That's the story, more than a sweeping romance (cool, but also boooo).

It's also worth noting that Luna is on a quest that Romy tries to break her of and then Valeria is confused by, which is the heteronormative concern with having penetrative sex. Luna's very wound up about still technically being a virgin (by this very narrow but widely held definition), and she doesn't give that up even when expanding her dating horizons to include people with different biology at hand. I get that we're on Luna's journey of self-improvement, here, but even once everything's resolved, I wasn't fully satisfied. When we arrive at the moment where Luna kind of gets the error of her ways, we've been to hell and back, and I still don't think she grasps the broader, internalized sexism and homophobia implied in her mindset. Nor do I think she considers how she's been hurting herself. She just kind of vaguely acknowledges that it didn't make sense in the face of her experiences.

Even when you're expecting a shitstorm in the final act, it sure ain't fun when it shows up. Luna has been getting a lot of warnings (to be fair, from people with their own agendas) about mixing her professional and personal goals, especially when there's a power dynamic at play. And for reasons involving "life is hard," Luna doesn't want to give up on this new dream to have it all. This was the cherry on top (of doom) for my reading experience. I'd been frustrated with the love triangle, Luna's obliviousness and self-absorption, and the focus on a romance that won't work out (may I remind you of the genre), and then this final drama hit involving paparazzi, some bullshit Hollywood people, and a confusing kiss. There IS something very wholesome and queer, however, about asking both your straight ex and queer best friend for advice about dating a queer woman and then turning around to ask your now ex but still friend for advice about getting with your best friend who was once the advice-giver, though. Of all the ways for love triangles to wind up, it's one of the better options. It's a whirlwind, it's still not terribly romantic in my view, but it's sweet.

This is such a weird review to write. I signed up for a good, sapphic time with a bi lead, and what I got was only partially that. There were too many issues that kept me distracted, whether it was about the romance or Luna herself. I appreciate that Luna brings to the page some important identities: she's bi, Jewish, and anxious in a world that makes all three of those things difficult. I think maybe her youth worked against her here, bringing out some of those more immature aspects of being that I, for one, am so relieved to have outgrown. Thanks to Vintage for my copy to read and review!

I always enjoy it when a romance balances character development and conflict with the developing relationship. It makes them feel more realistic and memorable. I think Sizzle Reel does that well and it's one of the main reasons I enjoyed the novel!

I wanted to love this one. I was so excited about this one. And then I started reading it and it was actually painful. I couldn't get through the rest of the book because I simply wanted it to be over rather than caring to see it through, to see if it gets better. I feel like this need more time to cook and it would have been a lot better.

Thank you to NetGalley, author, and the publisher for a copy of this book. This has not affected my thoughts on this book or my review whatsoever.

This book was definitely not what I thought it was going to be about. I'm actually a little frustrated by this.

This jokes about being asexual -- mocking asexuality as a whole -- that came out of nowhere made me incredibly uncomfortable, as did the constant use of the word "groin" during sex scenes. "He's short, extremely tan -- like to the point that it seems like he's trying to seem ambiguously POC." is also an INSANE line to include, and the FMC has such a disturbing obsession with heteronormative sex that she forces on the people around her which is a character point that drastically contradicts her "woke" (for lack of a better term here) POVs on literally anything else. This book's approach to sex and sexuality was definitely not my favorite.

Okay, first of all, I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for the e-ARC of the book. I also want to say: sorry for publishing this review so late, but it was hard for me to get into the book.

I was so excited when I saw this book on NetGalley. A queer sapphic Hollywood romance? Like, sign me up. But this was one of my biggest disappointments. Let's start with what I liked.
- Valeria: I loved her. She is the best character in the whole book, but she is not the main character. Also, the writing was pretty simple (sometimes it even felt more YA than NA), so it was a pretty fast read. I've read it in six days, all the while working an exhaustive job. But all the rest... I really disliked it.

I didn't know that this book was a best friend-to-lovers, but since I'm a sucker for this trope why not. But I felt like the characters didn't have either the chemistry to be lovers or even the build-up. It was a bit easy to see for one of them, but it felt... meh.
Speaking of the characters, I hated (most of the time) Luna. She needs to listen to people, and she is so entitled. People in the book forgive her way too easily. Most of the time I wanted to slap her. And here is why:
- She is the kind of MC who says "I'm not in a straight/lesbian couple I'm bi"
- Her best friend for years is a non-binary lesbian, and yet she has such a het way of thinking about sex and virginity. For her, you need to be penetrated to lose her virginity. And a big part of the book is her quest to lose this virginity. I mean, being a late bloomer sucks, but come on...
- As soon as I closed the book, I forgot her name.

The book felt cringe too at some point. First I felt like I was reading twitter discourse. Who even says "sapphic sex" and not gay/lesbian sex. I am a sapphic, a non-binary lesbian, and I say gay/lesbian sex. Why did they say "relationship with a non-man" when Val is a cis woman. It's okay to say woman.
Also, Unnecessary acephobia + the Sex scenes are not even that good

PS: Val is better than me because of the wrap party. I would have been so mad

This book was requested by a previous Lesbrary reviewer who did not finish or review it. In order to keep my Netgalley feedback up to date, I am submitting this review marking it as a DNF, though it was another reviewer who requested this.

This did not work for me. The main character was absolutely obsessed with losing her virginity. She didn't care that everyone told her it was a stupid concept, she wanted someone to take her virginity. And since she just came out as bi, she wanted a woman to take her virginity and she set her sight on a maybe gay actress. She figured she'd do the job. But even after they had sex, she didn't think it was sex? Idk she was annoying as hell. This entire plot line was and that's a lot of the book. I really didn't like the main character at all. The love interest for most of the book could have been interesting but everyone who wasn't the main character... doormats. I won't even start about the best friend or the other friend the main character used to date who outed her at work... It all annoyed me... I honestly don't know why I finished it... This was a big miss for me.

TW// biphobia, public outing, brief aphobia

Sizzle Reel sounded like a perfect book to me when I read the synopsis, but I became disappointed by the story rather quickly.

My main issue is the relationship between Luna and Valeria. I personally wasn’t a fan of their relationship because I never saw it as more than Luna having an infatuation with Valeria. However, their relationship has a lot of problems that don’t involve me just not liking the two characters together. Luna comes off way younger than she’s supposed to be, which made the relationship between her and a woman five years older than her feel like it had a huge age gap. Furthermore, Valeria held somewhat of an idol position to Luna and she was Luna’s higher up at work. This made it so that there were some uncomfortable power dynamics at play in their relationship. The book starts to address these power dynamics at a couple points throughout the story, but the power difference is never fully addressed because a character would bring it up then Luna and Valeria would get intimate and all concerns for power dyanmics were ignored until another side character brought it up again later.

Then there’s the whole issue of how terribly Luna treated Romy because of her relationship with Valeria. Romy was without a doubt the best character in the story who deserved better than what this story gave her. She was always thinking of Luna’s best interests and treating Luna well, but Luna never treated Romy with the respect she deserved. This book should’ve spent a lot more time developing the relationship between Luna and Romy so that an inevitable apology would feel more realistic. Also, I’m not sure the whole “I was in love with my BFF the whole time even though I treated them terribly” is a trope that’s for me. This isn’t really that big of a spoiler considering the book makes it very clear from chapter one who the eventual endgame couple is. The one good thing this book did with Romy was her queer representation. She’s a nonbinary lesbian who uses she/her pronouns. This was handled really well in the story and I’m glad that there was a discussion of what her identity means in terms of language in the bedroom.

Speaking of characters, we have to address Wyatt. I don’t personally like his character arc and I don’t think any book should brush over how traumatic it is for someone to be publicly outed by one of their best friends. This book never took that leap into properly addressing how harmful his behavior was. There was no trigger warning at the start of this book and I was extremely triggered by the outing scene then by how quickly Luna forgave Wyatt. Besides the outing, Wyatt also reeks of biphobia and he says some gross things regarding women.

On another note, I found that a lot of the technical stuff about working behind the scenes on a film set went way over my head. I’m interested in film sets, so I think it was just the way things were written. I wasn’t a fan of this author’s writing style, so I think the combination of new film terminology and the writing made it so that the parts addressing the film stuff were challenging for me to get through.

There were some good conversations in this book about the definition of virginity and what it means for queer people. The conversations about it were a bit excessive at times, but I like that Carlyn Greenwald decided to start a discussion on what virginity means for people, especially queer people.

I’m really grateful I got a chance to read this book thanks to the publisher and NetGalley, but unfortunately Sizzle Reel wasn’t a good fit for me.

Well, was this book not what I expected it to be. I was so excited with the premise of it, I was very invested in the concept of a main character who is doing the hard work of figuring themselves out and just doing their best, especially at the age of 24. Not to say that is old by any means, I just think it is less talked about than teenage coming out experiences (again, not criticizing, both important in different ways!), but the book just failed a bit too short of being good at what it set out to do.

The book follows Luna, who is an aspiring cinematographer and is "only now" at 24 figuring out she's bisexual. She has a lot of support from her out and proud queer friend Romy, but things are more difficult than she expected. She is juggling thoughts about her sparse dating history, not wanting to come out to her parents, her career and so many other things weighing on her mind. Luna is very preoccupied with thoughts of relationships and losing her virginity, so when she meets an attractive actress Valeria Sullivan, she is immediately interested. However, the more Val reciprocates, the more complicated the whole situation becomes, and Luna's life begins to crumble from every side.

So, I am really disappointed in this book. It took me SO long to write this review because every time I would begin, I would just get too upset to continue and I just couldn't formulate proper sentences that conveyed what I was thinking. That being said, I will try to keep this concise to avoid ranting too much, but I am unsure how successful I will be (there is also strong possibility i will come back to edit this review in a bit).

I went into this book so excited, I fully expected to love this book based on the synopsis and how the story was setup, but the execution was so poor that I have no words to express my disappointment. As a bisexual who mostly dated men, I was excited to read about a person who is a "late bloomer" trying queer dating and experiences for the first time. It is established very early on that Luna, the protagonist, has "no sexual experiences to speak off" and that fact is something she is obviously very fixated on and even embarrassed about it. However, it becomes very clear (also very early on) that that is simply not true. Luna has had experiences with men but she simply doesn't count them because of her extremely archaic view of sex.

The biggest plot point of the story and my biggest issue with this book - Luna is so obsessed with her "lack of experience" because she counts only penetrative vaginal sex as sex. Now, I could go on explaining why this isn't the case but it feels ridiculous to me that the book centered on queer relationship focuses solely on one type of sex that erases a lot of nuance and different experiences within sapphic relationships. Luna is weirdly intense about being a virgin and even implies she is a double virgin as she is bisexual. I simply didn't agree with this and couldn't enjoy the vast majority of the book because Luna is SO hyperfocused on this. To give credit where its due, her friends do not enable her in this thinking, her "more experienced" queer friend tries communicating this to Luna several times but it is as she has no comprehension for what is being talked about, but it fully pertains to her. I have never been more frustrated than reading pages and pages of this (she does eventually realises she's wrong but many of the things she's thought still weigh heavy on the storyline).

Other things that bothered me are the scene of outing that happens in the book - Luna's friend just assumes she would be fine being out at her workplace (he assumes this without communicating with her in any way), and in my opinion it is never properly addressed, nor I think the character who did it took enough responsibility for that. There is a scene later on where Luna does something shitty to that person and she is made to feel as she is the only one that did something bad, as if that outing scene never happened (she did do something bad, but so did he, they are both at fault).

The info-dumping introduction of Romy - we receive a whole paragraph of Luna thinking about Romy's gender and sexuality and it sounds so unnatural and weird. No person ever just randomly thinks about their friends identity in a way that sounds like a weird preachy twitter thread. (That introduction aside, I like the inclusion of a nonbinary person using she/her pronouns!)

The only positive aspect of the book was Valeria, and I maintain she deserved so much more than Luna gave her. She was the only interesting, normal human character and she is the only reason this book was not a one-star read for me. She was mature and interesting and I actually enjoyed the scenes she was in.

Now, to be fair, Luna does eventually realises she's been wrong to be this obsessed with her virginity, and she also realises she was in love with Romy the entire time. Both of these things are super obvious to everyone but her for the entire duration of the story, and it was extremely annoying waiting for her to catch up, as a lot of times it felt like she was purposefully being ignorant. It was also very clear Romy was in love with Luna, and that Romy was extremely jealous Luna was going out with Val - to the point she was giving her shitty advice on purpose. The story focused more on this jealousy than showing us their actual relationship, present and past, and making us fully understand WHY they like each other.

I would love to end this on a positive note, however besides Val and the very end of the book, there is very very little I enjoyed in this novel. I feel like the story was misrepresented and mismarketed, and I simply couldn't enjoy it because of it. As always, this is just my opinion, but I think there are good ways to tell such a story, and this novel is not a good example of it, unfortunately.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review!

I was really looking forward to this one as the first reviews were glowing. Took my time before I started reading it and I'm left a little disappointed.

Luna is in her twenties but reads much younger. She's self-absorbed and a little theatrical. Her focus on her sexuality and sexual journey seems like an unhealthy obsession. I tried reading between the lines but there were no likeable qualities for me so I had to DNF.

This romcom of a book follows a young woman in her 20’s who figuring out her life and finding love.. this story had me entertained so much I finished it within a weekend. With that said I gave this story 4 stars

This book was just okay. I feel like it had a lot of potential but didn't quite meet it. The main character, though 24, honestly read more like a teenager than an adult. It was very repetitive at times and I have to agree with another reviewer about the last half of the book wrapping up like a 90s teen romance movie. It was fast and cookie cutter and could be seen coming a mile away. Also, the word 'sapphic' is way overused to the point that it became annoying. Overall, it wasn't terrible but I wouldn't read it again.

I know that I am not the intended audience for this book - it read very juvenile and poorly written to me. I know that is because it is a young adult novel, but it was hard for me to read so it was a DNF pretty early on.

"Sizzle Reel" is definitely a fun ride with a lot of laughs along the way. Carlyn Greenwald has a knack for creating characters who are a complete mess in the most relatable way. It's refreshing to see characters who don't have it all figured out, making their journey feel genuine and authentic. However, the book hits a few bumps when it dives into gender and sexuality. While the effort to be inclusive is clear and appreciated, some parts feel a bit off, especially with a major nonbinary character in the mix. At times, it seems the story might be skewing too much towards a cisgender perspective, which made me pause and question a few things.

That said, there are plenty of moments where the story flows beautifully without these hiccups. Greenwald's style is honest and hilarious, and when the story isn't tangled in the details of identity politics, it really takes off. I liked "Sizzle Reel" for its humor and heart. It's a book many will enjoy for its fun vibe and real-talk about life's messiness.

DNF at 25%

I’m sorry to say, but this book was a total disaster.
I tried my best to give it a fair chance, but the more I read the more disappointed I was.
It’s a book about adult people, but it felt absolutely juvenile.
The way main character acted reminded me a teenage girl who has a celebrity crush.
The repetitiveness of the plot was annoying to say the least. I don’t know how many times it was said, that our protagonist us a virgin, even though she wasn’t. And that is the other issue- the inconsistency of the story.
The idea of the book is great, but it was underdeveloped.

Ugh. This book had a good idea, and potential, and flubbed it. It could have been great - instead it was "hmm. I'm bi. BEWBS." Like...no? I don't know. It could have been great, it wasn't, the end.

What I appreciated:
- everyone’s relationship with their sexuality is different
- the main character’s insecurities regarding her sexuality
- There are some good discussions regarding boundaries, consent, and preferences
- the MCs friends are really supportive

What I didn’t like:
- the main character figured out she’s bi and within a few days is acting like a sex crazed teenager that just saw boobs for the first time.
- the main character’s quest to lose her virginity to feel valid in her sexuality
- miscommunication and the MC is really self involved.