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!

Am a hoe for Ava Wilder. Honestly, I'm not even surprised with how much I loved this book. It gave me Elena and Damon vibes without the vampire aspect and I freaking loved it.

What a ride…
I wasn’t at all expecting how this went. The characters are flawed and their journey difficult. Throughout the course of their lives finding each other again and again. Wilder’s writing captures perfectly these emotions and reactions, making this book incredibly involving and hooking.

Rating: 4.5
Laughing: 3
Crying: 0

I screamed and danced when this approval came in. As a big fan of HTFIH, I was so excited to read Ava’s sophomore novel.

This book did not disappoint. There is something extraordinary about the way Ava writes. Her characters have such depth, they’re complex, flawed, and beautiful. When I read her books, I feel like I am falling into this other world and watching this story unfold right in front of me.

I was team Shane all throughout this book. Although I appreciate Lilah’s strength, I wish she wasn’t so closed off. It made for good- GREAT tension, but I’m a sucker for the guy who is just so open to love. I felt like Shane is just one of those guys that if you have him in your life, it’s something special. The way that he’s described as caring, charming, easy - sigh.

These two had a lot of moments that I wished were *their moment*, and I think the fact that each time I felt the build-up is a testament to Ava’s writing.

Celebrity romances are always fun and exciting because I know nothing about that world. I will say, reading this; I just kept thinking of Vampire Diaries and wondering if this was how it was for Nina and Ian. Did anyone else think of them?

This story is slow but TENSE (oh, the tension!), burn. So if that’s your jam, add this to your TBR now. Will They or Won’t They comes out on 6/27/2023 - Thank you, Random House, for the e-Arc!

This is a really enjoyable sophomore effort from Ava Wilder, whose How to Fake It in Hollywood was one of my favorite releases (and debuts!) of 2022. Like Grey and Ethan, Shane and Lilah are veterans of the Hollywood scene. Unlike G&E, they are industry peers, both the stars of the same popular TV series. As an inveterate lover of celebrity gossip, the care, detail, and accuracy with which Wilder writes about the Hollywood ecosystem makes her books incredibly satisfying to read. As a romance AND industry nerd, Will They or Won't They does a wonderful job of capturing the questions and insecurities about moving on from an identity-defining role, and the gendered differences of those concerns. It juggles a very complicated timeline admirably, and in a genre not known for its third-act twists, deploys one deftly and humorously! Deeply pleasurable to read from start to finish.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ava Wilder had a winner with her debut novel, How to Fake it in Hollywood. This sophomore release shows she is an author to watch. If you like a second-chance romance with a big dash of Hollywood life included, this is the book for you. I will be recommending to readers who like a solid romance. Ava Wilder will be on my go-to list!

“Maybe she didn’t need to worry about faking the chemistry, after all.”

“They weren’t going to have sex ever again, unless it was for keeps.”

“Maybe he was reading too much into it, but it didn’t just sound like an apology. It sounded like a lament. For the lost versions of themselves they could’ve been, for the different future they could’ve had, for every choice they’d made along the way that had carried them further away from each other.”

In the past 12 or so months, I’ve read quite a few books that I was anticipating for MONTHS, and there’s a certain exhilaration that comes with being so rightfully excited about something and it living up to your expectations. Ava Wilder’s sophomore, Will They or Won’t They was one of those books. No one's fighting me on it, but I still have the strongest urge to scream in everyone’s faces “I WAS FUCKING RIGHT THIS BOOK WAS A DAMN MASTERPIECE JUST LIKE I SAID IT WOULD BE”

Lilah is my Scorpio icon. There were so many things about her that I felt in my soul, like this quote:
“She’d accepted long ago that she wasn’t for everyone.”
One of the recurring nightmares she talks about is one that she used to have as a kid where she would be in the backseat of a speeding car that had no driver. LITERALLY SAME. It’s insane how much I relate to this woman, she even has that signature Scorpio hypocrisy where she’s hurt by the fact that the person she’s dumping isn’t even putting up a fight. Love her.

Shane. A soft, fiercely sweet man who’s so quick to love, and lose, and then ready to do it all over again. I often struggle to verbalize my love for some male main characters because my feelings take shape in the form of keyboard smashes and screaming into the void. Shane has me feeling that type of way. I just adore him.

So many aspects of this book had me by the neck since the time I heard about: just the fact that Ava Wilder wrote it, since she became one of my favorite authors with ONE book because she’s one of my “perfect for me” authors, of which there are less than five, the fact that I get another Scorpio female main character since there is quite a shortage of us, the fact that this synopsis reminds me of The Vampire Diaries/Nina and Ian, AND that it was a second chance romance.

But once I read it, it reminded me of other books that I loved, in the BEST way possible. The ANGST from The Roughest Draft by Wibbroka, the actor-coworkers trying to resist temptation from Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade, my other Scorpio icon Indira from The Plus One by Mazey Eddings, and an almost toxic push and pull dynamic from a new adult romance that didn’t handle those complexities well, but Ava definitely did. I feel like I talk about this all the time but characters in a romance don’t HAVE to be likable/lovable; not everyone is, but readers have to be able to root for them and their happily ever after. Not to say that either Shane or Lilah are unlikable, in fact, I love them with my entire being and would perish for them. That doesn’t mean they don’t have flaws, or do shitty things for “no reason”, or are super quick to rectify their mistakes.

Ava Wilder was the first author I ever got the courage to message on Instagram, just a long text about how much I loved her book and all that good stuff. I’ve also continued to bother her over the last 10 months, more gushing about her and her books and, more recently, us trying to manifest an ARC for me together. She had no actual power over me getting this, but I appreciate her humoring me every time I whined about not having it yet.

MVP: Ava, I love you <3

(THANK YOU to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.)

While I didn’t find this author’s debut to be for me personally, I still really enjoyed her writing and was intrigued by the premise to pick up her sophomore novel. And thank goodness that I did because I fell so hard for this book! With great chemistry and a hell of a slow burn, Will They or Won’t They follows two co-stars who reunite for the final season of their popular show—except they hate each other behind the scenes.

Lilah Hunter and Shane McCarthy are known for playing the lead characters of Intangible, especially for their chemistry. However, ever since their disastrous falling out after season one, they can’t stand each other off-screen. It doesn’t help that Lilah left the show after season five to pursue a film career…and failing, so she ultimately returns to the show for the final season. Both she and Shane fall back into their old habits, but as they are forced to spend more time with each other, they gradually start remembering what they liked about the other person — and realizing that maybe it’s their time after all.

This book is so addictive; I was hooked by the second chapter! I had to force myself to put it down so I could sleep. Lilah and Shane’s chemistry shines off the page, both in their respective narratives and in their conversations. And the tension…truly chef’s kiss! I think this book was the perfect amount of slow burn; the pacing was great too, with just enough flashbacks at the right time to set the context.

Both Lilah and Shane have interesting character arcs too. Lilah left Intangible to star in what should’ve been a critically acclaimed movie; instead, it flopped hard, and her career has yet to recover. She agrees to the last season as a way to jump start her career again, but it’s very difficult for her to come back, not just because she has to see Shane again but also it’s a hit to her pride.

Meanwhile, Shane doesn’t really want to let go of the show. He was an undiscovered talent and had never acted before being cast in this show, so he can’t imagine a career outside of it. He also provides for his parents and siblings, so he wants to line up his next project yet doesn’t like any of the things his agent pitches to him.

It’s interesting to see their characters juxtaposed and how their differences only fed each other’s loathing of the other. Lilah is too used to being the cold-hearted woman outwardly, despite the fact that she has general anxiety disorder and can’t stop thinking about how people perceive her in public situations. She dislikes how Shane is so easygoing and well-liked, how he always manages to say the exact right thing. On the other hand, it’s hard for Shane to see how good an actor Lilah is and how she knows what she wants, amidst his own insecurities.

Really, these differences allow them to project their biggest fears and feed their anxieties on the other person, which in turn exacerbates their hatred. Their bad relationship, to say the least, isn’t one-sided in the least. Both Lilah and Shane do their part, over the years, to increase the gap between them until it’s too far to bridge. That makes the book all the more fascinating and all the more satisfying as they both gradually start to recognize their wrongs and grow closer.

So yeah, all this to say that I adored the romance! A love-hate relationship (but mostly hate) slowly becoming something more…I couldn’t get enough of it. Actually, I’m already looking forward to rereading this book because I know I’m going to devour it again; it’s just that good.

Full of chemistry and tension, Will They or Won’t They is a romance that I know I’ll return to over and over again. I loved the main characters and their dynamic, and how their characterizations fed into their bad relationship. If you’re looking for a slow-burn, hate-to-love romance, I can’t recommend Will They or Won’t They enough!

I LOVED this book. I know it'll end up being one of my favorites of the year. I love a hollywood romance and this one was done SO well. I loved the tension and the slow burn, it was done so incredible. I fell in love with the MCs and their journey. I loved hearing about their past and where they got to where they are. I loved how they had to do counseling, it was a cool element to force them to share things, I loved the ending. Big fan and highly recommend this one <3

Not sure if I was just not in the mood for this type of book, but Will They or Won’t They was a little too slow paced for me. I loved the growth the characters went through, and the discussion of mental health through out the book, but it fell flat for some reason and I was left wanting more. Ava Wilder’s writing has definitely improved and there was great chemistry and banter between the main characters. If you are in the mood for a romance novel set in the Hollywood world, then this book is definitely for you.