I love the way Ava writes her characters and her dialogue. Her prologue is top notch and really sets the stage for the rest of the book! The characters are flawed but relatable. They play actors on a popular supernatural TV show that has a cult-like following. They despise each other and tensions are high on set together. I really appreciated seeing their growth and revelations through the couples' therapy sessions and seeing their friendship develop. There is almost too much angst between the two and this was a very slow burn! The ending was so good and so satisfying!

Recommend if you enjoy
Celebrity romance story / Hollywood setting
Second chance romances
Enemies to lovers
Flawed and relatable characters
Supernatural shows like The Vampire Diaries
Jewish rep

Will They Or Wont They
By: Ava Wilder
Review Score: 4 Stars


Five Key Feels
-You can feel the tension between Shane and Lilah from the get go.

-I loved how the story flows, jumping back and forth in time to tell the story.

-The chemistry between Shane and Lilah is palpable, and it makes sense why they were on the show for so long.

-Lilah has a really great group of friends, it was fun to learn how they met.

-No spoilers, but there are some really good plot twists in this story.


———


Will They Or Wont They was kindly provided as an ARC by Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine . Thank you for allowing me to read this wonderful book!

Release Date: 6/27/23

Yall. This book. It was intense. I loved following Shane and Lilah’s journey, and trying to determine what happened to them to make them hate each other (especially when their on screen chemistry is just off the charts).

This book pulls you in, and makes you want to know what happened! I was hooked, and sad when it was over.



#bookstagram #books #readingnow #boogiereadsbooks #fivekeyfeels #audiobooks #audiobook #fiction #arcreview #netgalley #willtheyorwontthey #avawilder #randonhousepublishingballantine #ballantine

I inhaled this incredible book in one day. Lilah and Shane have a complex relationship full of history, and I loved getting to follow them on their journey to figuring it out. As with HOW TO FAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD, Ava Wilder does great things here with the Hollywood setting. It's fun, but the characters still feel grounded, with real vulnerabilities. I wanted to keep hanging out in their world long after I finished the book. Such a great read!

Ava creates some of my favorite, messy characters! I love a celebrity romance and when I read How to Fake it in Hollywood last year it quickly became a favorite. I knew I had to get my hands on this book immediately and I read it in under 24 hours.

I will forever be obsessed with second chance romances! I loved the writing style. I loved the flawed, relatable characters and how the author can take a Hollywood setting and create real people with real problems. Lilah and Shane are co-stars with a very complicated past who despise each other. Lilah left the show after season 5 but is returning for a final season. The tension and banter between these two were top notch! The ending was perfect and satisfying!

I loved the enemies to lovers trope and it was done perfectly! One of my favorite things about Ava’s writing is how she always incorporates mental health representation and it’s so wonderful!

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this book!

<i> five stars! </i> ʚïɞ

ava wilder does it again! she is quickly becoming an autobuy/autoread author for me. i absolutely adored her debut,<i>how to fake it in hollywood</i>, last year and was so stoked to find out that she was writing another novel! i genuinely let out a scream when i got the email that i had been approved for the arc of this, and i almost quit reading my current book to pick this up then.

despite all of my excitement for this book, i never actually read the synopsis before starting it so i really had no idea what this book was about. <i>will they or won’t they</i>had me hooked from the prologue though, and i immediately fell in love with lilah as a main character and the spark between her and shane. and then i realized this was a second chance romance and i was so giddy with excitement because the set up was just so good. i think this has to be one of my favorite second chance romances now! <3

this book follows lilah and shane, two actors on a very popular television series where they essentially play star-crossed lovers. during the initial first couple of seasons on the show, lilah and shane very quickly develop feelings for each other and have a secret relationship, until that blows up in their faces. ten years later, lilah decides to join the show again for their final season, and the emotions between her and shane are still as raw as they were when she left.

over the course of the novel, the two characters realize that the bickering and tension between them is not healthy and, with the help of couples therapy sessions, they form a sort of truce and eventually develop a friendship. we also get to see a bit of what happened in the past with them, which just added to their relationship and dynamic. seeing how shane would stand up for lilah, and how they learned how to communicate with one another, ugh they were just so perfect for each other. everything was so meaningful and genuine. and the angst and tension between the two?? *chef’s kiss* times a million. there was even a scene that slightly resembled the hand flex scene from the iconic <i>pride and prejudice</i> movie and i was living for it!!


this book perfectly does a realistic job at the whole “lovers to enemies to friends to lovers” thing and i ate that up the entire time! their banter and arguments when lilah first comes back was so entertaining and reminded me a lot of naomi and nicholas from <i>you deserve each other</i> in the sense that both couples intentionally would do or say things to get on the others nerve in a slightly comical way. i loved both shane and lilah’s characters so much, they were both insanely realistic and flawed yet still completely lovable. i definitely had heart eyes for shane (not to mention he’s from oklahoma… i’m from oklahoma??? where the hell are the men like that??) and there was some amazing anxiety rep with lilah, i saw a lot of myself in her!

overall this was such a great novel, and i’m so thankful i got my hands on it early! i’ll definitely be preordering a physical copy, as i can’t wait to get this in my hands to reread and annotate! i can’t wait to see what ava wilder does next, but i can imagine i’m going to be loving it just as much as i’ve loved her first two books! <3

<i> huge thank you to netgalley and random house publishing for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review! </i>

I can absolutely see the hype behind Ava Wilder’s writing style. It’s fun and easy to get pulled in. While the writing pulls you in, for this book, I really struggled to connect with the characters. And it’s absolutely possible that was intentional because of the way they each guarded themselves. But as a reader, I wanted a little more time to understand and get to know them them. I feel like the breadcrumbs we did receive were still too vague to connect.

There were definitely parts where I was like “awh, that’s cute” or was mad for each of them. But I feel like once they started working together again, there was an immediate shutdown of emotions to the readers. It didn’t make me feel as much as I want to out of a book.

I like the way the plot plays out. I wished the “will they or won’t they” came a bit earlier. The pop-up at 92% really left everything else to play out in a rush. Right when my heart was starting to actually pitter patter for them.

Lastly, if you’re gonna do flashbacks you gotta commit. There were at least three chapters that listed things out instead of using a flashback where it would have been perfect. I struggle with listing because it feels like I’m being talked at instead of immersed in a story. I want to experience it.

Again, the plot - yay. The story as a whole…I also really liked it - DESPITE the miscommunication. I just think my personal preferences in a book got in the way of me enjoying it as much as others.

(4.5) Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for sending me an eARC of this novel! I adored Ava Wilder's debut novel, so I was extremely excited to get my hands on this one. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. I am a sucker for stories about famous people, and Wilder does it so well. I thought there was an insane amount of chemistry between Lilah and Shane, and I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting for them to get together. It was that palpable. I thought that the best part was them practicing their scenes. It was the only time they'd let themselves give in to the palpable chemistry. I just didn't want to put it down — it was a great mix of light and fluffy without being unbearably cheesy.

read this overnight! Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

honestly I have been in a reading slump and this pulled me out. at first I was worried that our heroine was unlikeable throughout but she really redeemed herself for me as the series progressed. i would have liked to see her anxiety explored a little more. i wish in addition to the last chapter we got an extended epilogue as well.

i really enjoyed this book! i liked all the characters, felt like they were well-developed. i loved the slow-ish burn pace; I didn't even mind the time jumps that much - they were well placed and not overwhelming.

the formatting errors were really distracting -- every few pages reading "vOQ2" - at first I thought this was the name of a bizarre therapy technique? but nope, just a typo.

Lilah and Shane have played on-screen love interests for almost a decade, but their behind-the-scenes relationship is a bit more complicated. After an instant connection at their auditions and a season of hooking up, the two have a disastrous break-up followed by unhampered animosity that reaches a head when Lilah decides to leave the show after five seasons. But after a failed movie, Lilah is back for the ninth and final season, and somehow these two have to find a way to work together--perhaps with the help of couples counseling and a bit of liquor.

Gosh, Wilder manages to put forth yet another fantastic celebrity romance. The celebrity romance trope can be tricky to manage in a believable way--particularly when so many authors force a random person into a relationship with a star. But Wilder avoid that pitfall but working with not one, but two celebrities, who could (and should) actually be together. Lilah and Shane are presented as kindred spirits, broken apart by youthful fears and then pushed apart by their own petty actions. With several flashbacks, we begin to understand where it all went wrong and how it got to the point where we begin the book--hatred. I don't know how many more unique celebrity romances Wilder can pull together, but I will read all of them--or anything else she writes, for that matter.

Thanks to Dell Books for my ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 10/10

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine for this advance readers copy, in exchange for an honest review. Will They or Won’t They is a story about Lilah and Shane, two people who fell in love after being cast as the lead characters in a hit TV show. However, as the book opens, we learn that Lilah left the show after a few seasons and is now returning, with the added pressure of having to prove herself professionally and also confront Shane after so many years apart. Throughout the book, we learn more about the path that brought them to where they are today and what their undeniable, still existing chemistry might mean for their future.

This book is a true romance through and through and I loved every single minute of it! I read the book in one sitting and couldn’t get enough of it. In my own reading experience, romances can be either a hit or miss in that some are just too far fetched and unrealistic to buy into. However, that was absolutely not the case with this book and I was sad when it ended!! I was so waiting for the “will they or won’t they” trope to fully play out and the wait alone was so satisfying to read. Both Lilah and Shane were characters to root for! Another element of this book that I loved was the incorporation of mental health topics and anxiety, as experienced by Lilah. I appreciated the delicacy with which the author handled these topics and also appreciated how she showed how anxiety can manifest itself at any moment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would definitely be interested in reading more works by this author. I would highly recommend this story to any romance and contemporary fiction fans!

Summary: When Lilah Hunter and Shane McCarthy are reunited for the final season of their long running tv series, sparks fly. After their secret fling imploded at the end of season one, they spent the next four years hating one another - until Lilah left in search of a bigger career. Now back in each other’s orbits, the two struggle to put their feelings aside to finish out their filming, they are forced to confront feelings they thought they had left in the past.

Thoughts: There is just something so easy about reading Ava Wilder’s books. Going in, you know that each and every character, including those in supporting roles, will be fully developed and relatable. You know that the pacing will be steady throughout without the dreaded “drag” that can happen especially in romance novels. And you know that by the time you reach the conclusion, you will most definitely have a vested interest.

The lovers to enemies trope was done exceptionally well and it was so much fun to see the progression of our MC’s relationship both in the present day as well as through flashbacks of varied time periods. Some of my favorite scenes were Shane and Lilah’s counseling sessions where we were able to gain a glimpse into their very repressed emotions.

Read if you like:
•second chance romance
•forced proximity
•lovers to enemies
•hollywood setting
•jewish rep

Thank you Dell Publishing and NetGalley for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

A highly anticipated read for me, and once again Ava Wilder did not disappoint. I couldn’t get enough of Lilah and Shane’s slow burn, second chance, enemies to lovers romance. I can’t pick my favorite part: the therapy, the very, very good steam, the longing and near painful buildup, and the lack of third act breakup. I devoured this in one night and then immediately started rereading scenes. This is a new favorite. Thank you for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is out in June and you should run, not walk, to preorder it.

THE ANGST IN THIS ONE WAS ALMOST UNBEARABLE.. I just needed to start the review by warning everyone how angsty this was. This was not a romcom. This was very dramatic, almost too dramatic at points.

Lilah is almost unbearably immature at times as the story progresses and throughout the novel I am pretty much entirely on Shane's side. Like Shane is almost a saint compared to Lilah. Lilah would have you believe that Shane did some really unforgivable and cruel things, but as the story unfolds and Lilah begins to tell the truth and you realize what SHE did, yeah, I really didn't feel much for her other than I liked Shane so much I wanted his happy ending for him.

I felt a LOT of stuff reading this novel. I read it in one sitting and it took me about three hours. I couldn't put it down. I was simultaneously in shock of how unselfaware Lilah is, why Shane stills puts up with her and then also perturbed that I still would rate this a five star read despite disliking the heroine so much.

I think it's because I felt sooo much while reading this book and knowing it's going to stick with me. Also when the spice happens it's very, very well written. There's that too.

Yes, I recommend this novel for those who love angst and spice in books.

There are some other tropes in this well: enemies to lovers, second chance romance, rivals to lovers (workplace romance), and sunshiney male x grumpy female. All of these tropes work well in this.

Thanks to Ava Wilder, Random House Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the ARC for a review!

Check it out on June 27th, 2023!

My god this book had me absolutely hooked. I delayed sleep just to devour it in one sitting and I'd do it again! It's very well written, making it easy to love and an easy good read right off the bat.

The chemistry between the main characters wasn't just lust-fueled it was actually romantic and I felt how their fans must've when watching them in their fictional show. Think Clarke and Bellamy (The 100), or Elena and Damon (TVD), or Supergirl and Mon-El (Arrowverse). It was just so good!

Everything about this was just perfect. It was a beautiful balance of sweet, romantic, hilarious, bantery, romantic, heart-wrenching, and steamy. The characters had depth and personality rather than just being vessels to carry out a list of tropes. I don't even like second-chance romances and yet I loved this to pieces,

5 stars without a doubt

Expectations can be a tough thing sometimes, and mine were all over the place with WTOWT. How to Fake It has had my whole heart since last summer. It changed my whole perspective on romance novels, and I wish I could go back in time and read for the first time again. I tried to have zero expectations flipping open WTWOT because lightening never strikes twice, but I also have never been more hyped to read a book. In the end, WTOWT blew my expectations out of the water, and it’s solidifying the Ava Wilder(TM) signature style of amazingly written, flawed characters that you want to root for, with very realistic and raw portrayals of navigating the highs and lows of life.

Just like HTFIIH, Hollywood offers a glamorous backdrop for Lilah and Shane’s complicated enemies-to-lovers slow burn relationship. They’re co-stars on a hit TV show who play characters who are madly in love on screen but despise each other in real life.

The alternating timeline between past and present is executed perfectly, giving a window into their messy history, and why they’re still bringing out the worst in each other today. The unresolved sexual tension is off the charts, the banter is killer, the one-bed trope is used superbly, and the ending is really satisfying and earned, which can be really hard with enemies-to-lovers, especially with Lilah and Shane bringing some deep anxieties and insecurities into their dynamic.

You should absolutely read this. I wanted to equally savor it slowly and devour it as fast as possible. Also in Ava Wilder(TM) signature style, it’s steamy and swoony and sweet and sharp, and the perfect mix of horny, funny and sad.

Ava Wilder has a way with words that feels really magical, creating stories and characters that are beautiful and complicated and surprising, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than reading, laughing and crying along.

Ava Wilder is officially an auto buy author for me. I loved How To Fake It In Hollywood and Will They Or Won’t They was so great that I finished it in under 24 hours and I loved it so much.

Thoughts:
-Shane and Lilah! I loved them both and found myself relating to them both. First with Shane’s people pleasing and then with Lilah’s anxiety. I loved the mental health and therapy rep. It’s always nice when you see aspects of yourself in a character.
-The banter. You know I love a good banter and Shane and Lilah delivered.
-I am a sucker for celebrity romances and they can sometimes feel too tropey or cheesy but Ava Wilder does it SO WELL and realistically. I will read anything she writes and I’m sure I’ll love it every time. Sprinkle in second chance romance and enemies/friends to lovers and I eat it up every.single.time.
-THE ENDING!!! Perfect.
-The little nods to How To Fake It In Hollywood made me happy.

I just loved this book and can’t wait to buy it when it comes out on June 27. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group Ballantine for this ARC!

I enjoyed the plot and I liked the characters. The prose was very much tell, not show, which left the book feeling somewhat long.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

I absolutely devoured this book. I have realized that I really enjoy a Hollywood romance. This one was a slow burn, but in a good way. I love that you really got to see the progression of enemies, to friends, to lovers. It felt natural and not forced. The tension between the two main characters was top notch. This is the first book I have read by Ava Wilder, but I am definitely adding How to Fake It in Hollywood to my reading list. I highly recommend this book to any of my fellow romance readers who love a good enemies to lovers and second-chance romance story!

Ava Wilder is one of those authors that I just trust with my whole soul now. She has such a grip on pop culture and writes the entertainment industry with such authority and knowledge and realism. Shane and Lilah are relatable, flawed, and honest characters who feel fully realized from page one. Their chemistry and sexual tension popped off the page and made all the pay off of their physical relationship so worth it and so sexy. I can't wait to add this one to my physical shelf!

Thank you to #partner Random House for our copy of Will They or Won't They by Ava Wilder

This books comes out on June 27, 2023

Rating: 4 star
Genre: Romance

Thoughts: I really enjoy celebrity romance books! Ava Wilder does a great job with the details around acting and the spotlight life. I really enjoy the amount of time she takes to set up these details in her stories.

Her books seem to have some heavy topics too (mental illness, etc.) and she always does a great job handing these subjects!

If you enjoy celebrity romance trope books, I would definitely check this one out!