I loved everything about this! Definitely will be a summer hit. Annie and Will are goals!! Annie is the sweetest and kindest person and Will with his quiet brooding nature. They compliment each other perfectly.


Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

I absolutely loved this book.

I am a huge fan of Sarah Adam's work! I had the pleasure of reading an arc of When In Rome last year and I couldn't wait to get back in the city of Rome, Kentucky.

This book is just a warm hug. It's the perfect small town romance with the sweetest love story, the quirkiest neighbors, and great character development. I thought that both Annie and Will were extremely realistic and relatable characters. I loved their arcs throughout the book and their growth from their respective parental trauma. I really loved how they brought out the best in each other and genuinely wanted each other to succeed in life.

I thought that this story was perfect! It had such a great balance of lust, comedic timing, and realism. The tension was fantastic and had me on my toes the entire book.

Practice Makes Perfect is the perfect mix of hallmark movie with a touch of Gilmore Girls.

I can't wait for two more trips to Rome, Kentucky!

Thank you, Sarah Adams, Random House Publishing, and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you so much @RandomHouse for giving me this ARC in exchange for my honest and unbiased review (Release Date | 02 May 2023)

SYNOPSIS | Annie is an introverted flower shop owner who feels like she is largely to blame for the lacklustre dates she has been on but still hopes to find her forever someone. On one of her failed dates she bumps into Will (Amelia's bodyguard) & she immediately feels an attraction, but he doesn't believe in relationships & lasting love. Will agrees to help her improve her dating game by being her "practice person".

WHAT I LIKED:
- the fact that the male love interest can actually communicate!!
- small town vibes were immaculate
- that Amelia & Noah (from When in Rome) were integral to the story & didn't just make a cameo
- social anxiety rep was highly relatable

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
- a smidge too insta-love
- I felt like the 'tap in' & 'tap out' practice session verbiage was unnecessary

This book! Sarah Adams does it again with her incredible writing to bring me a book that I’m absolutely obsessed with. Annie and Will, ugh, Annie and Will, I love them, I love them so much. I honestly am struggling to decide if I love this book or The Cheat Sheet more (and that is a top book for me).

Annie is the sweet little sister that everyone sees as perfect and angelic and Will is the bad boy bodygaurd with tattoos. They could not be more opposite, at least on the surface. But then fake dating each other is divine, especially as all those fake lines start to blur and shift.

I love the way Sarah Adams writes steamy closed door romances, and that’s coming from a woman who loves spicy open door romances too. This one is a little heavier on the steam than her previous books and I was here for it. This one is definitely a little more descriptive and sexy and the inuendo is more on the nose. I’d say it’s like open door to a point and then it fades to black, but you aren’t getting all the nitty gritty, down and dirty details. There’s also more language in this book, because you know it’s hard to have a bad boy bodyguard and not expect him to curse 🤣

All in all, I’m in love with this book and can’t wait to reread it eventually!

ahhh! im so in love with this book it was just the right amount of spice and romance!

will and anna have got to be the cutest people ive ever read about. will is definitely such an undercover sweetheart, he is very misunderstood due to his looks and bad boy aura but he is just a sweetheart!!

anna is also such a sweetheart! she is so unapologetically herself. she is fierce, adorable and a great match for will.

truly enjoyed the plot and all the characters, highly recommend

I finished this book and immediately wanted to turn back to page one and read it all over again. I was absolutely MELTING for both mcs, and i loved how open their communication was. I was also so invested in all the side characters, the town members were so endearing, and i can’t wait to read the rest of the siblings stories. I 100% recommend this book
Also this book is great if you’re looking for closed door. No explicit spice but ALL the tension

Thank you netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah Adams never disappoints when it comes to a sweet romance, and this one has as no different.

4/5 ⭐

Let’s just say that this was beyond adorable and so enjoyable! The chemistry between our MCs was hot. The sparks were flying. I love what they brought out in one another and oh wow that first kiss… toe curling! Sarah has proved yet again why she is the queen of closed door rom coms.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me a copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

It was okay, not the Absolute Best, but enjoyable.

It was a little bit predictable at times, but the characters were adorable, and it made me lol quite a few times. Definitely give this one a try if you're looking for a cozy small town romance.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for allowing me to read an ARC of this book!

It's always a beautiful day when the world gains another Sarah Adams book, and I just know that this story of love and growth and self-discovery and healing and knee-weakening kisses is going to take the world by storm!

I’ve already read Practice Makes Perfect twice, and will definitely be coming back to it again and again just like I do with all of Sarah’s books. This book is filled with Sarah’s characteristic and masterful combination of humor, emotion, and chemistry with a unique and heartfelt cast that makes you want to crawl into the book and live there.

Annie Walker is one of the most tender, lovely, strong romance protagonists I've ever read about. Her struggles with her reputation and the way those around her perceive her as well as her perfectionism and tendency to put other’s needs before her own are ones that I relate to on a very personal level, and made me feel seen in a way no other character has. I absolutely adored watching her come into her own throughout the story, recognizing that she doesn’t have to stay in the box she’s placed herself in.

And Will Griffin! 😍😍 Beneath his cocky, aloof, closed-off exterior hides a soft, sweet, affectionate, center that I could not get enough of! I’m an absolute sucker for heroes who don’t believe they’re capable or deserving of love and who are completely thrown for a loop at the hands of their girl. His growth and healing from his past was beautiful to witness.

I think the mark of a truly great romance couple is when they bring out the best in each other, and Annie and Will absolutely did! Will was so kind and gentle as he urged Annie to break out of her shell and become the adventurous, passionate person she'd been all along, and Annie was patient but firm in not accepting Will's preconceived notions. Add that with the crackling chemistry that veritably leaped off the page, and you have the recipe for perfection. Sarah is a master at balancing emotional connection with physical chemistry, and it worked SO WELL in this book!

Rome, Kentucky has got to be one of my favorite fictional towns of all time! I will never ever get tired of reading these wonderful stories set in such a tight-knit, wacky, fantastic town!

This book was saccharine sweet and laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving and so much freaking fun. Practice dates? Practice KISSING? Late-night rendezvouses? Audrey Hepburn movies? Complex sibling relationships? Meddling old ladies and small towns up in everybody's business and beautiful character growth and pirate fantasies and kisses that will make knees weak? This book has it ALL! AND if you're anything like me and are desperate to see a little more of our favorite pop star and pie shop owner, have no fear! You get that too and it's wonderful!

I am and will be a Sarah Adams girly till I die, and I'm so beyond excited for the world to meet Will and Annie and this beautiful story. Practice Makes Perfect is AVAILABLE NOW!!

I think I officially liked this more than When in Rome - you still get the small town feel, in some ways even more so, heavy Stars Hollow vibes with the town meetings and gossip about their relationship, and constant eyes on them! Will was super sexy with his tattoos and overall broodiness. I loved how Annie came out of herself and who people expected her to be to find herself and stand up for herself. I loved that all the sisters ended up being romance readers but with different passions. I feel like you start to get to know the relationships between the siblings more which I loved. I think the biggest thing that bothered me was Will not showing up at the wedding at the end, i feel like the ending could have had the same feel while still allowing him to be present at that event. But I loved the moments between Amelia and Noah we got to see at the wedding. Another slam dunk by Sarah!

Absolutely incredible book. I loved that character development and story of Annie and Will. The author did a great job making the story relatable and captivating, without making it feel entirely predictable. I will definitely be recommending this book to others!

Practice Makes Perfect- 3.25⭐️ 2.5🌶️ (closed door)

Annie Walker is on a quest to find her perfect match—someone who complements her happy, quiet life running the local flower shop in Rome, Kentucky. But finding her dream man may be harder than Annie imagined. Everyone knows everyone in her hometown, and the dating prospects are getting fewer by the day. After she overhears her latest date say she is “so unbelievably boring,” Annie starts to think the problem might be her. Is it too late to become flirtatious and fun like the leading ladies in her favorite romance movies? Maybe she only needs a little practice . . . and Annie has the perfect person in mind to be her tutor: Will Griffin.

Will—the sexy , tattooed, and absolutely gorgeous bodyguard—is temporarily back in Rome, providing security for Amelia Rose as excitement builds for her upcoming marriage to Noah Walker, Annie’s brother. He has one personal objective while on the job: stay away from Annie Walker and any other possible attachments to this sleepy town. But no sooner than he gets settled, Will finds himself tasked with helping Annie find the love of her life by becoming the next leading lady of Rome, Kentucky. Will wants no part in changing the sweet and lovely Annie. He knows for a fact that some stuffy, straitlaced guy won’t make her happy, but he doesn’t have the heart to say no.

Amid steamy practice dates and strictly “educational” tutoring lessons, Annie discovers there are more layers to Will’s usual stoic attitude. As the lines of their friendship become dangerously blurred, Annie reconsiders her dream guy. Maybe her love life doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to be real


✨My Opinion✨

This was such a cute “fade to black” rom-com!!! It is a part of a series, but I read it as a stand-alone and it was great!

Small town
Grumpy/sunshine
Bad boy/good girl
Fake dating/dating lessons
Close family
Grand gesture

I loved the FMC and her character arc! It was great to see her communicate with her family and grow as an individual. The MMC was fun to watch as he let go of family trauma and lets himself be present.

The ending was not what I expected, maybe a little out of character, but a grand gesture. It set it up to see snippets of their relationship in following books.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I truly loved how kind and hopeful the book read — it was playful and lighthearted, while still touching on some tender themes. 🪻💐🌷🌺

The book follows Annie & Will in a pretend relationship as “practice” to help Annie out on her quest to find love. It was so sweet to watch the pair grow and develop as characters while remaining true to themselves and building up a healthy friendship. I really enjoyed seeing how Annie and Will brought each other out of their shells and how well the two seemed to fit together! The book also had some small-town "Gilmore Girls" type hilarity, which I also loved!

The main characters Annie and Will had a lot of chemistry, and it was entertaining to watch their lighthearted, fun shenanigans throughout the story and see them grow as individuals, but unfortunately this novel wasn’t a hit for me.

Annie and Will were cute together, and I did enjoy the chemistry and connection they had as they went along with their dating lessons, but when it came to the writing itself, I found it to be over-explanatory and rushed, resulting in unbelievable, instantaneous romantic and emotional connections and unnatural dialogue between the characters.

The instantaneous attraction and romantic connection may be due in part to the fact that Annie and Will had met prior to this novel, in the author’s earlier work, When in Rome, which follows Annie’s brother. However, having not read When in Rome, and as this is a stand-alone novel, I would rather have seen Annie and Will’s feelings for each other develop more slowly over the course of their “lessons” instead of being an absolute fact from the moment they met five pages in and then not wanting to admit how they felt to themselves or each other.

I also found that throughout the story, the majority of character development and backstory was presented through dialogue between the characters instead of through narration and context, which feels unnatural to the reader. Instances of this are shown, for example, when Will is talking to his younger brother and telling him how hard it was to grow up with their dysfunctional parents, which his brother obviously knows and remembers since he was there and lived through it too, in an attempt to fill the reader in on Will’s backstory.

It's a shame because the plot is a great, entertaining, and perfectly rom-com concept, and I liked the dynamic between the characters, but the execution just wasn’t there for me. With a little slower development and exploration of their feelings, and more deeply explored plot points, it could have been a much stronger and complete novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dell Random House for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review!

I liked When in Rome, Amelia and Noah’s story, but I loved Annie and Will in Practice Makes Perfect! I loved the good/bad boy vibes and that Annie was an introverted romance reader. Adams is so good at writing tension and build up in her romances, that I don’t even mind that they are closed door.

I really loved Annie’s character. She reminded me of myself in a lot of ways, and I believe a lot of people who read this will be able to relate with her. And I really enjoyed Will’s character. His background was tragic, but well fleshed out. I loved getting glimpses of Amelia and Noah throughout the book, and I think I saw a hint of who the next book, if there is one, will be about. The small town setting of Rome, Kentucky adds such a fun backdrop to these stories!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

A sweet and endearing romance everyone should pick up and read. Practice Makes Perfect follows Annie Walker, a small-town inexperienced girl and flower shop owner constantly babied by the rest of her family. When her older brother is getting married to his superstar fiance, her bodyguard Will comes back into town. Annie and Will have to fight their attraction for each other initially, but soon find themselves in a perdictamite where Will teaches Annie how to date and be desirable. This setup brings new emotions they didn't think they could possess, and many unspoken feelings arise.

This was one of my favorite romances I've read this year. While sometimes cheesy, it made for such an entertaining and feel-good reading experience. I love both Annie and Will and the chemistry they bring to the table. My only complaint is the nosy and, most of the time, annoying townspeople who meddled in everything Annie and Willd did.

This book gives me all the cozy small-town vibes 🥰. I feel like I’m curled up on the couch, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, with a latte in one hand and a slice of Noah’s warm apple pie in the other. These Rome books also give me major Gilmore Girls vibes 💗. Fake dating, grumpy X sunshine, bad boy/good girl. Here for it 🫶.
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We’re in Rome, Kentucky, where everyone has a pickup truck of a different color, and nosy neighbors will call town meetings to decide if they approve of your boyfriend 🫣. Angel Annie is the town’s florist and sweetheart. BUT, Annie Walker secretly hates it when her siblings call her “Angel”, and she hates it when they make fun of her virginal “good girl” status. (She reads pirate smut for goodness sake! 🏴‍☠️) But then Amelia’s hot bodyguard and serial monogamist, Will, shows up and agrees to be Annie’s dating coach. He has a sleeve of tattoos. She has a drawer of banana-themed PJs🍌. Will they keep things professional, or will all this practice lead to something more?
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Will’s serious aversion to monogamy was almost off-putting at first, but I appreciated his character arc. Annie is also a bit precious at first, but I was happy when she finally spoke her mind. Adams has a really tender discussion about grief near the end that I found relatable 🥹❤️‍🩹.
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Overall, I enjoyed my journey back to Rome 💗. Thank you to @randomhouse and @netgalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley & Random House Publishing Group for my ARC of Practice Makes Perfect!

Honestly, another cute book in this When in Rome series. It got a little bit repetitive for me and I got tired of hearing about Will's "tattoos" and how "sweet and innocent" Annie was, but other than that, I thought this was a quick and easy read to get me out of a current reading slump I'm in. Love dual-narrator books and I'm a sucker for cute romantic novels.

"Clearly my stab at conversation went right through him, and he's bleeding out."

"But the thing about quiet people is, we're only quiet because our brains are so busy overthinking everything."

Y'all, this book is darling. Will and Annie are so full of tension and the perfect amount of angst, and I really liked seeing their relationship grow and develop.

Seeing Annie come into herself and being willing to change and grow and finally stand up for herself was so satisfying. The character development of both Annie and Will was beautifully done.

I always am a sucker for people figuring themselves out and helping each other heal. Will and Annie are perfect for each other. They are very much opposites attract in the most fun of ways. I loved how they encouraged each other and wanted the best for the other (though sometimes I wanted to smack both of them), and they ultimately found their own happiness with each other.

The characters are fun, the romance is sweet, and Rome, Kentucky remains an incredibly nosy-but-lovable town. I would recommend this to romcom and contemporary romance fans, with the following caveat (see "Note on content" below).

Thank you to the publisher and author for the advanced complimentary copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Note on content: This book is not "steamy" in the general sense, but it is more graphic than previous books I've read by this author. It's at a similar level of spice and language as When in Rome, the first book in the series, so I'm sure we'll see similar amounts of both in the next books. I would put Practice Makes Perfect in the fade-to-black rather than closed door category because there is no graphic sex, but there are few things left to the imagination leading up to it.