A quick, fun read. Sizzle Reel was a relatable (sometimes uncomfortably so) look into navigating your first conscious queer attraction. There was a time when I thought I wanted to go into movie-making, and now I satisfy that part of myself by reading Hollywood-set stories.

Our story starts with Luna, a brutal talent-manger's assistant, just coming out as bisexual. Her best friend and roommate, Romy (a non-binary lesbian) is thrilled and super supportive, even when it feels like no one else in Luna's life is. At the talent-manger's office, her ex and friend Wyatt also works for another talent-manger, who's new client is none other than Valeria Sullivan- Luna's famous new girl crush. Luna and Valeria quickly form a friendship, and when Valeria is looking for a "diverse hire" for her new production assistant, Wyatt is quick to out Luna to their entire office to get her the job. Luna doesn't land the job and her work gets more difficult under her incredibly demanding boss before things finally pile up too high and cause her to quit in a dramatic scene in front of the entire office, and Valeria. After witnessing the explosion that lead to Luna quitting, Valeria offers her the chance to come work with her on her next movie, which Luna quickly jumps at the opportunity. Valeria and Luna then begin growing even closer, spending lots of personal time together on and off set, and Luna begins to wonder if Valeria is queer herself. DNF 51%

At this point in the story I had to stop reading. The exposition of our story, the set up to the entire thing, was so freaking boring. There was too much movie/ film/ production speak that I tuned out most of it and skimmed those parts because as someone completely uninterested in the film industry I do not care (I'm sure if you convinced a movie buff to read this they would've loved this though). So already started out hating the underlying plot line of Luna's work was not a great way to start this story. But I was excited to see what happened with the romance and that's the only thing that kept me reading. But even the romance quickly fizzled for me and I soon lost interest. When Luna met Valeria and formed this rather quick girl crush on her, I figured okay cool fine, this is the equivalent of me having a crush on Zac Efron, but no, she kept forcing herself to be around Valeria and force conversations and friendship. Like okay fine, it's creepy and obsessive but fine. You know the guy that you hate that is "in the friend zone" and every time you see him goes "where's my hug???" until you cave in? Creepy, obsessed with you, doesn't understand that you just want to be friends and nothing more? That's what Luna turns into before knowing if Valeria is even remotely queer (which at my point of DNF she still doesn't know, so I as a reader have no idea if all these efforts were for not). Luna is obsessed with Valeria, she constantly talks about Valeria, follows her, thinks about her, if the Bechtel test counted towards books this one would absolutely not pass because every freaking conversation Luna has with another female character (mostly Romy) is about Valeria. Speaking of Romy, what the actual flip. On like page one THEY share THEY are nonbinary but slightly more femme and at multi points throughout our story (or at least the 50% I did read), Romy gets visibly upset when people do not respect their pronouns or refer to them as "grandchild", "child", or "nibling". Yet Luna, Romy's best friend, roommate, person closest to them CANNOT RESPECT THEIR PRONOUNS and exclusively uses she/her pronouns when referring to Romy. Like are you kidding me. I almost DNF'd the book on page one because of that. And I get it, a person will know their pronouns and what they want to be called better than any other person ever would know for them, but if they are getting viscerally upset over OTHER people misgendering them and refusing to use gender neutral terms when referring to them, I simply do not see how they are okay with their best friend ignoring their gender preferences. And further on Romy- they are clearly in love with Luna, and Luna them, but Luna is all "teehee I could never be in a relationship with Romy" as if both of them haven't at multiple points (again even just in the first 50%) said "I would totally date other person"?????

I wanted to like this book so much. The cover is beautiful, the premise is intriguing. But execution flopped. I tried for so long to get through this book, but inevitably I read the first 50% in one sitting and then dreaded ever having to pick this up again.

This book wasn't what I expected it to be and I usually will be okay with that. However, Sizzle Reel just felt like it was missing something for me.

I'm always here for bi-rep, but this book wasn't life changing by any means.

Sizzle Reel just didn't work for me. I found myself skimming through it despite loving books set in Hollywood culture and film making. The characters just didn't connect for me.

Okay, first, the pros: I LOVE the representation in this. Bisexual, non-binary, I love that. I also love that she had a not-often-written-about job (though I am seeing an uptick in Hollywood books lately). I LOVE that they referenced Hot Ones! I loved the tour of LA. I thought that was so fun. I LOVE seeing characters in therapy. It helps normalize it.

However…

Her being Jewish felt like an afterthought. The side characters beyond the two women in the love triangle felt unnecessary and underdeveloped. I saw a lot of what was going to happen way early on. The third act felt forced. Her family didn’t need to be in it at all, especially since her brother was so one dimensional in his scenes and then at the end there’s all of this enthusiasm? It was weird. Her neuroticism almost made it difficult to keep reading at points. Especially since multiple characters would explain something to her and she would write it off as “too easy/simple.” Life doesn’t need to be that difficult!

I LIKED it, but I didn’t love it.

Updating my review as I’ve thought more about the book and found more issue with it that’s I initially did. Some of the interactions have heavy acephobia, claiming that there’s no point in having a romantic relationship if you’re not having sex. Plus, as I mention below, the MC having an obsession with having a relationship only if it means also having sex. We don’t want bi rep if it means tearing down aro/ace people; we don’t need to diminish or erase one member of the LGBTQIA community in order to uplift others.

Original thoughts:
I thought it was a cute and funny story at the beginning but it started to drag a little bit and I found myself getting bored (and a tiny bit annoyed with the MC). I did enjoy the bi and anxiety rep plus it was interesting to learn about Luna’s Cinematography work!

Good bi rep especially showing both the struggles of coming out/being a baby gay while also showing lots of queer joy! At times I related to Luna because some of her thoughts on coming out reflected how I felt when I came out, and was trying to figure out what that meant for me (plus like Luna, I also came out in my mid twenties!)

The conflict in the third act was well done, it made sense for the relationship and characters; plus most important of all it didn’t involve miscommunication! These characters are all 24+ so for once they communicated like their age (take note other romance authors).

One of the biggest issues I had with the book is Luna’s obsession over losing her virginity and what “real sex” was, which got annoying quickly. At times it felt almost like she was invalidating Romy’s experiences and explanations because Luna kept insisting that penetration needed to happen for it to “count.” There was so much emphasis on sex defining your sexuality. She has queer friends and uses terms like comphet or allosexual-terms I wouldn’t think someone who’s got a lack of LGBTQ+ knowledge would know and use so often-Luna has a surprisingly narrow minded view on sex!

The dialogue and inner monologues are kinda disjointed and felt like someone who is not Gen Z thinking that’s how Gen Z talks (and I say this as a millennial- it’s painfully obvious and not how any Gen Z person I know sounds). The slang and terms thrown around just felt forced and at times cringey.

Lastly, the pacing is all over the place-it started off well but by 35% it slowed down quite a bit, and then had a rushed/abrupt ending. The idea was there but the execution fell flat and I started slowly losing interest by the second half. I’m sad I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I thought I would, especially since this was one of my most anticipated sapphic releases for 2023 😞

Rep: anxiety, Jewish MC and side character, bi MC, non-binary lesbian side character (uses she/her pronouns), lesbian side character

Tropes: Friends to lovers, celebrity, slow burn

(ARC from NetGalley) I'm happy that we're at the point that the gays can have flawed characters in fiction but I think we drove past that and arrived at fully unlikeable. I think the main flaw was in the marketing and the cover-- this is more lit fic than rom com. DNF at 40%

Read from April 7th, 2023 to May 27th, 2023. Written on July 6th, 2023.

~3.5~

I'm not going to drag on to much. I had some expectations for this book and they were not all met, and the ones that I thought did ended up disappointing me.

I loved the film portions of the book; as someone who wants to follow a cinematography career, I enjoyed reading about the scenes where the main character is in a movie set or something cinematographic happens, it was fun. Though I think that for the readers who are not familiar with technical talk on movies, some things may be hard to comprehend.

I love a good queer story, but I felt like most of the book was chasing down the love interest and, when something finally happens, it doesn't really. So that was a BIG downer for me. I felt like I was rooting for something that ended up not being what the story was leading up to.

I also felt like the chapters were a bit too big, maybe that's just from the ePUB version, no idea.

Do I recommend it? Sure, why not? Everyone has different reading experiences. Would I read again? Mm...maybe not. It just kinda let me down, to be honest. Maybe that's why I also struggled to read it; because I really did struggle.

(Free ARC from NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Vintage that I chose to review after reading)

I’ll start with the fact that I hated the writing style. Very dialog and quip heavy. So much so that I had trouble remembering where they were for any given scene because I feel like there was absolutely no exposition.

I love a good Hollywood romance story but this was written from such a narrow perspective that it make me wonder if the author just assumed everyone reading it was from/obsessed with Hollywood. I just could not follow along with the lingo. Which from my perspective limits this book to only being relevant for couple years; akin to when authors put a lot of modern pop culture references in their books.

I did like that they explored a sexuality beyond gay or straight. But that is about the only positive note I have for this book.

ARC generously provided by NetGalley and publisher in exchange for fair and honest review.

CW: Biphobia PUBLIC OUTING, (seriously why did none of the other reviews have this as a CW)

I am struggling with my rating on this one...

On one hand, I remember being a baby queer. Sometimes you over correct while deconstructing the hetero-normative narrative that we've all been taught. But at the same time, I think that some of this was harmful and not challenged enough.

So much of the main character's queer identity hinged on "having gay sex" as if she couldn't be bi unless she had sex with a girl.

There seemed to be a lot of righteous anger in this book, and while I get it, this book was probably cathartic to write, a lot of this should've been unpacked in therapy, not in a book for the world to read.

The Main Character is publicly outed early on in the book, and while it's talked about and she calls out the person, it's later glossed over and forgiven way too easily just to further the plot. That was unexpected and triggering, so please be safe.

This thing was a mess. From the plot to the characterization. It felt like a walking twitter keyboard warrior trope and a straight cis woman making a characterization on who she thinks queer people are. Frankly, it was annoying and slightly offensive.

This was a did-not-finish for me, but I can see the appeal and would still recommend it to readers who are looking for LGBTQIA+ novels.

Summary: For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her--but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that's-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.
When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she's found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut--and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy's help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life--impress Valeria's DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.
But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble--straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she's destined to end up on the cutting room floor.
Pros: multiple sexual orientations represented in the plot; Luna’s first girl crush, Valeria, was very Florence Pugh in my mental movie as I read along; I really liked that Luna and Valeria remained connected after their sexual relationship ended.
Cons: Luna’s boss was aggressively tropey in my opinion; MC is obsessed with losing her virginity in a very American Pie movie sort of way; kind of saw the ending coming from a thousand miles away.
ARC provided by @netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb was really compelling, but the actual execution leaves a lot of desire. I really struggled to like the main character, Luna, even reading it as a bisexual person who sometimes struggles with my identity.
Even as a journey of self-discovery, this book fell a little flat for me. There were several instances of Luna dropping her (often offensive) internal monologue on her best friend. The actual romance was sort of well-done, but I found most of this book very difficult to read. I struggle and vehemently disagree with the idea that having sex in any way defines your sexual orientation. I also really mentally struggled with the public outing scene. It was cruel and unexpected and I had to walk away from the book a bit before I could read it further. I think this was a great idea of a story and I can see the bones of a fantastic work, but I did really have to work to finish it.

Sizzle Reel was such an interesting book because the protagonist, Luna, has just figured out she's bisexual and is trying to figure out how the impacts her relationships with her friends and family, as well as her career. While Luna makes a lot of mistakes in the book as a baby-bi trying to figure things out, I did find many of the scenes funny and even relatable at times.

I do think it was pretty obvious that Romy had a crush on Luna throughout the book, which made her shock of figuring it out feel a bit underwhelming. But since she was a baby-bi, and very naive to a lot of queer culture, I'll let it pass.

As for Luna's relationship to Valeria, I didn't love it especially because it felt like Luna was using Valeria to push forward her career. I'm all for making friends and networking, especially in Hollywood which is not really friendly to women or femmes, but it felt a little gross at times. Like she had high expectations for Valeria and their relationship, but then would get upset when it wasn't benefiting her career. This aspect of the book just felt messy and made me like more Luna and Valeria less.

I think the book wrapped up on a good note, but there were definitely some areas I wish had more polishing.

I found the tone/voice lacking throughout the book and did not enjoy the writing style; I felt it missed something.
This should have been a fun read as someone who is bisexual but I could not get into it. The writing of the characters and how they acted and responded felt irritating, and I wouldn't like them.

I really wanted to like this book. The cover is adorable and the synopsis sounded interesting. However, there are so many issues with this book, how it handles sex and sexuality that I don’t even know how to rate it. Aside from that, the characters and plot itself struggled to keep my attention.

I do want to keep a look out for the author’s future works as I think there was a lot of potential here, but unfortunately, this one wasn’t it for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary e-arc. All opinions are my own.

2 / 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read in advance. This book didn't really stick the mark for me; it felt bland and underdeveloped, and if it weren't for getting an ARC, I probably would have DNF'ed it. The plot was rushed, and I found it a chore to read. The main character aggravated me to no end, and sometimes her decisions made no sense to me whatsoever.

The main thing that really grinds my gears about this book is the view on sex in general, and how much of an emphasis it put on virginity. I understand that the point the book was trying to make is that virginity is a social construct and to illustrate the harmful effects that places on people as a result, but honestly? It placed so much emphasis on it that it got it backwards and ended up coming across as "virginity is something to be embarrassed about". Realistically, I know that isn't what the author intended, and that might just be my own opinion, but that's how it came across to me and it made me all kinds of uncomfortable.

I think this might be something some people might enjoy, and I'm definitely not here to tell people they're wrong for liking it, but it was simply not for me.

1.5 maximum.......... i'll be really nice and round up to a 2, though, just so i don't seem heartless. this book took me so long to read and it, unfortunately, sucked. the romance was so bad, the pacing was bad, it was just all bad.

the love interest (who wasn't a real love interest until the last 30% of the book, because our main character was as dense as a brick) was a nonbinary lesbian (she/her) which was great!!!! except for the fact that she just keeps like info-dumping about her gender at points. like would literally just give paragraph after paragraph of her gender identity.

the main character had sex with someone at one point (literally, they fucked on page) but because they were both girls, the mc kept referring to it as "feeling each other up" which was so weirdly lesbophobic and uncomfortable??

also. the book just sucked. the writing was bad. the plot was rushed, the fact that luna (the mc) came out like 5 days prior and then was already in bed with a girl and then like 5 days after that outted their relationship......... god.

will not recommend to a friend nor will i be reading any of this author's future work.

I very rarely stop a book I’ve already read more than a third of, but I couldn’t finish this one. I loved the idea of this book and the representation, but I didn’t feel like the characters were realistic and I couldn’t connect with any of them. I kept having to remind myself how old the characters were because they seemed so young and immature. At 54% in basically nothing had happened and I was very bored.