Ahhh, I really wanted to love this but so many things made me.... cringe a bit. I wasn't able to finish. It makes me truly sad because ever since I saw the cover I was obsessed with it.

This was lovely. It always feels good when a book, with a lot of hype and highly anticipated, is about as great as you could have hoped for. The hype surrounding this romance is definitely real. The dynamic of this friendship group was so wonderful and felt so realistic. This story is about a lot of things but ultimately the driving force behind everything is romance. It's an absolute MUST read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Sizzle Reel explores identity and self-searching in the most touching and hilarious way! We follow Luna and her existencial crisis as well as coming to terms with her sexuality- we love a good bi disaster. She is navigating through her new adult life: out of collage, stuck in a job that she does not really like, she is planning to move forward, but also she is so realatable in so many ways. Messy, realistic, sometimes hopeless and disapponting life experiences, the excitement of exploring relationships - all well written! I loved how the story explored the fault of the film industry, token diversity representation at the workplace!

Sizzle Reel is a non-traditional coming of age, love story,with the importance of family, platonic relationships delivered in a funny and heartfelt way.

Read it for:
- friends to lovers
- sapphic love
- film industry
- chaotic friends vibe
- spicey romance!!

Thank you so much for Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Vintage and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

Omggg. This was great! I didn’t read the blurb about it just loved the cover and was so pleasantly surprised with the premise and the characters. I love a bi disaster. Luna is flawed but in such a relatable way. I love the issues that the book covered. Honestly I loved all the characters in their messiness. Lovely descriptions of LA and so much queer joy.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an eARC.

I had high hopes for this, it being a highly anticipated sapphic romance, but I could tell right off the bat I wasn't going to enjoy this, so I decided to DNF. My first issue was a horrifically ableist comment regarding personality disorders about the MC's boss. I didn't want to DNF over one comment, so I decided to give it another chance, but I really didn't like the writing. It felt like every scene was used as a teaching moment, with characters preaching to each other, and it was exhausting to read.

This was such a good book! If you love a coming of age story then you’ll love this one. I really enjoyed Val and Romy

This was such a cute and fun read! The characters felt very real and genuine. I was rooting for the friends-to-lovers relationship the entire time.

Sizzle Reel is a queer rom com. It's not my usual go to genre, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one! Luna is working on LA with dreams of being a cinematographers. She's been working hard for a boss who is a bit psycho and doesn't appreciate Luna's hard work and isn't giving Luna a break.
In her personal life, Luna is starting the journey of coming out as bi, her best friend Romy is supportive of her, which is encouraging for Luna.
Luna meets movie star Val and they become instant friends and have an undeniable chemistry. Will Luna obtain a career as a cinematographer? Will she feel comfortable with coming out as the person she truly is?

The characters are witty and fun, the old lady in me wants to be friends with Luna as she discovers her true self and all the ups, downs, and obstacles in her journey. This was a fun, quick read. I look forward to reading more by this author!

True rating: 3.5⭐️

Sizzle Reel is a super cute and messy story about identify, friendship, family, and life. I automatically had to like it for the Florence Pugh cameo because I love her, but I really liked the story as well. She didn’t end up with who I wanted her to end up with and I felt like it just needed a bit more, hence the 3.5 rating but I still enjoyed myself reading this book. Thank you to NetGalley for the ebook ARC! I was so excited to get this early 😊

Sizzle Reel sounded like it was right up my ally. And it was, the story was lovely, I enjoyed the characters, but I felt like it could have been a little more fleshed out. I felt like the story was lacking a bit of substance, which didn't exactly take away from my enjoyment of reading but maybe from it becoming a favourite.

Luna is such a wonderful main character because she isn't perfect and she knows it. Her journey, both as a newly out queer person and as a post-grad young person trying to find their place in the world, was super realistic in a way that I really appreciated. There were no mistakes she made that weren't realistic and the reactions of the people in her life were appropriate. All that to say, I appreciated the realness of this book. I loved the characters and the romance and I think it's a super relatable and helpful book for people who come out, whether it's just to themselves or others, later in life.

I wanted to like this, I really, really did. I love stories set in the film industry, particularly queer rom-coms, but I just couldn't get into it. I tried off and on for weeks, and only made it about 60% of the way before my copy time ran out. I don't know if it's just that I'm in a reading slump, but I was just having a really hard time connecting with Luna. It seemed obvious that Romy was into her, and Val(eria) likewise. I really liked them both, neither seemed like the stereotypical red herring love interest who was secretly an asshole, and maybe it's that I didn't want to deal with some kind of stale love triangle? If this turned into a polyamory thing, maybe that would have been better. I'm not sure if there actually ever ended up being any sizzle with any of the characters because by the point I got to, Luna was still making a mess of asking Val out on a date, and couldn't see at all Romy's feelings.

Giving this a middle of the road 3 stars. I might give this another try when the book actually publishes, but for now, meh, did not finish.

I wanted to love this one as a bi coming out story. Perhaps it is because I am not the intended age range and also my acceptance of my own sexuality was never a game of maybe I am or maybe I’m not/proving to myself my thoughts.

There wasn’t a connection to any of the characters either, sadly.

There is likely someone I would recommend this to buy it would be a very specific someone I think and not just general widespread rec.

I am giving this three stars rounded up from 2.5 because while I do appreciate both the Jewish bisexual representation and some of the things I think the author was trying to do here, unfortunately the book just doesn't succeed in doing those things. As a rule I try to write nicer reviews than this one will be, but look: I'm tired. The truth is that I didn't enjoy having to spend an entire book dealing with this level of internalized biphobia for a payoff that's supposedly all about queer joy, when nothing about it felt earned or relatable to me by the time we got there. The fundamental problem with this book is that it is shallow--or more accurately, it's dealing with issues that need to be explored with more depth, and failing at doing so (which can be worse than a shallow but successfully executed book, and in this case definitely is).

First, I simply didn't believe that the main character, who is a supposedly intelligent *24 year old* living and working in Hollywood with a nonbinary lesbian best friend, wouldn't have, I don't know, ever read a Teen Vogue article or the equivalent about any of the things to do with virginity, queerness, and gender that she seems more clueless about than actual *14 year olds I know in real life*. (And that's before her therapist, best friend, and love interest all keep patiently trying to explain this stuff to her!)

Second, I understand that not everyone's coming out experience is the same, but there are interesting ways the book could have explored Luna's anxiety and her issues around her family and sexual orientation and identity in general, including the aforementioned biphobia and her fixation on and issues with penetrative sex, and and grounded everything more in her unique individual history and character. However, it instead spends a lot of time paying lip service to exploring all of this without actually *doing* it; the book is so careful not to really engage with any of her family drama or the problematic parts of her relationship with Romy, the nonbinary lesbian BFF and eventual love interest, or much of anything else that would make this the more complex book it's so clearly trying to be (and is being marketed as). Especially the relationship with Romy, who has been secretly in love with the oblivious heroine for like five years and *living with her* that entire time, while also struggling with her own journey in coming out as nonbinary--and that's not supposed to be seen as maybe just SLIGHTLY unhealthy? Which I am fine with! In fact I like it when characters are chaotic disaster queers, as long as they and the story are hot and compelling. These characters and story could have been, but don't manage to pull it off.

The whole book is like that, honestly. Even the parts about the characters' struggles as queer female/nonbinary artists trying to make it in the entertainment industry, which are good, except that then every professional setback they run into gets fixed almost immediately which robs the reader of the chance to feel the impact of them. Or how Luna constantly mentions that she's Jewish but we never get any sense on how that contributes to who she is as a person other than in the most passing stereotypical ways (not celebrating Christmas and talking about how her parents want her to marry a nice Jewish boy). And the emphasis on inclusive language, which I usually appreciate, feels at times like it's been written by a tenderqueer sensitivity reader chatbot.

Again, I truly do get that people are different and that not everyone likes the same kinds of sex in books or in real life, and I wouldn't want them to; likewise, I think that communication, intimacy, and boundaries are all great and important elements of healthy sexuality. But that said, reading the sex the heroine eventually gets to have as part of her HEA relationship described as "physical encounters [that] have been tender and slow and filled with communication, preparation, and boundaries" after the climactic sex scene which is *set to a Halsey soundtrack,* was the kind of cliche that actively makes me want to never have anything to do with sex or women ever again. It's not even that I want this book to be edgier--although that would be my personal preference taste-wise--because not every romance I enjoy needs to be. Still, I would never have imagined a book pitched as a Hollywood romance where a bisexual heroine coming to terms with her sexuality hooks up with a semi-closeted A-list actress could bore and annoy me so much.

For readers looking for contemporary sapphic Hollywood romances, I will skip recommending this title, and continue to steer them to other books such as I Kissed a Girl by Jennet Alexander, Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler, We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman, and Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner.

Omg this book is SO SO SO good! It was a five star read for me, no questions asked. There was so much pining and angst and awkward moments and just overall loveliness. I loved all the characters, especially Luna, and all the open, tough conversations and character development she had. I can’t say enough good things about this book, and I’ll definitely be buying a physical copy when it comes out!

5 HIGHLY DESERVED STARS HOLY SHIT. I loved this book so much! The characters, the growth, the story, the representation, the acceptance. It had it all. And I really couldn't get enough eventually. I really don't understand myself, why I did SO LONG over this book. Because MAN. It was so good. I am so glad I pushed through, even through a slump, and never dnf'ed it. Because I would've missed out on the most AMAZING story. I feel so seen and heard by this story. It has it all. And I can not get enough🩷

thank you to NetGalley and Vintage for providing me with an eARC of this book for an honest review!

1/5 stars

this book was entirely so disappointing :( im always looking for a new adult sapphic novel, and I was really excited to read this one! however, I think this book was trying so hard to do too many things at the same time.

the story follows our MC Luna Roth who has recently come to the realization that she is bisexual (yay!) and is navigating her sexuality and what this means to her. i know discovering you’re queer can be a complex process, so i tried to cut her some slack during the book for this reason, but there were so many instances where she drove me insane. for some reason, this book delved into becoming a sexuality quest, one where for the majority of the book, she kept pushing these misguided notions of what virginity is. she does finally realize that everyone, including her best friend (and later love interest), are right and that virginity is in fact a construct. while i recognize that this journey is a convoluted one, it felt so out of place in the storyline and just became a point of frustration for me.

aside from this, she develops a bit of a love triangle with her best friend, Romy, and famous actress Valeria Sullivan. the majority of the book is spent developing her interest in Valeria and their connection. but, she ultimately ends up with Romy. Luna and Romy are sweet, but there was SO much time wasted developing the connection between Luna and Valeria that Romy and Luna felt anticlimactic. this entire story might’ve been slightly salvageable if it was a friends-to-lovers type thing with Romy and Luna, and maybe Valeria as a friend and point of guidance for Luna as she becomes at the end. i really would’ve enjoyed some flashbacks to Romy and Luna meeting for the first time, some of those intimate moments in college, etc. to make their relationship feel plausible and not just like something that was thrown in for the sake of giving a different ending. their romance should’ve been more developed and just felt sloppy to me, making it so I struggled to root for them.

i also just had to check and see if the author was white, and ah-ha! they were, and it made so many things clear to me. white queer people (usually) tend to fit sexuality into such rigid roles, using stereotypes to continuously define what the queer experience is. and yes, there are similarities but stuffing queer people into these roles is just keeping up rigid binaries, which is against the very definition of queerness!!!!!! there was one part of the book where Luna was with Valeria and insinuated that Valeria driving was a “top” thing, and that they fit into their “roles” so quickly. things like this make me so infuriated because it continues to enforce heteropatriarchal stereotypes about gender roles that queerness works to subvert. dear authors writing queer characters, why do you feel like it is okay to do this!!!! queer people don't all listen to the same stuff or wear the same clothes or behave in the same way and that is okay!!! we are not a monolith, stop treating us like one.

overall, i didn’t really enjoy this book and found myself frustrated at the MC and the writing. the book tried really hard to use inclusive language and to be progressive but it really fell short and just ended up relying on queer stereotypes. it was immensely disappointing

Sizzle in the title is correct! The sex scenes in this book are absolute fire. On top of Luna figuring out her newly discovered bisexuality, landing a job in her early 20's, and dating a movie star, this book has best friends to lovers, and is a love letter to LA.

This book is great and I will look forward to more from this author!

I think this story was genuinely trying to be too many things. Throughout the course of the book, it became a coming out and sexual awakening story, a story about career development and aspirations, and a couple different romances. While this story’s many identities were fine, I feel like the story would be even better if more attention were paid to these elements individually.
In general, I thought the story was “okay”. I HATED that they spent the majority of the book teasing a romance that never came to be-seemed like a waste of time where the efforts could’ve been focused on beefing up the other parts of the story.

I was given an ARC by NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor. All opinions are my own.

Loved Sizzle Reel! The more I read, the more I related to Luna. It was like reading my own coming out story. From waiting until after college, to asking advice from a gay friend, to trying to figure out if my girl crush was gay, to realizing I’m crushing on my best friend and my girl crush was just a distraction. I would love a follow up book of Luna & Romy’s relationship!