Thank you Net Galley for an audio copy of The Year of Cecily by Lisa Lin. This is a second chance romance that draws you in from the get go. I thought the first half was better than the last half though. The dialogue, I think, needed some work. But over all, i enjoyed it!

Secind chance romances aren't normally my thing because I'm a firm believer in if it didn't work the first time, its not going to work, but there was something about this book I really enjoyed. I think it was that Cecily was working on herself and I am at a poijt in my life where I know that working on myself is the key to literally everything good in life. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes romance.

This second-chance romance ticked almost all the boxes for me. Especially in the area of realistic conflict. At no point did the story feel silly or overly dramatic—at every beat, the characters and their choices felt like something that could happen in real life, and I consider that a win in a romance novel. There were some elements that tended toward cheesy, but in a way that made me think of real people in my life who might do or say things like that.

The plot had a beautiful ebb and flow with multiple conflicts and resolutions throughout. The subplots didn’t get as much time as I might have liked—there were moments when I thought a detail was going to tie a subplot into the main plot, but then it didn’t happen… And not all the subplots had resolution. There was a small gap of time in the latter half of the book that made me feel like I was missing some information, but overall, I really liked the structure of the story.

I appreciated the way each of the characters developed, and especially the way Cecily and Jeffrey’s personalities unfolded in the first half of the book. Coming from an Asian family, I felt at home in these pages, which is still kind of a new experience for me. I never realized how much representation would matter to me until I actually found myself in the pages of a book—not just my personality, but my appearance, and my family culture and traditions… It makes a huge difference.

Open door romance is not for me, but it also didn’t take center stage, so it hasn’t greatly affected my perception of the overall story. It was a fun read. Idk if I’d read it again, but I know I’d read more books written by Lisa Lin. Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Lisa Lin for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Year of Cecily by Lisa Lin
4/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

•••Spoiler free review below•••

Not only is this a wonderful second chance romance written by an #OwnVoices author, it is a story of resolutions, changes, and how - sometimes - all we need is a little push in the right direction.

After a run in with an ex she hasn't seen in ten years, Cecily wonders if maybe this is a sign that her former fiancé deserves a second chance. She has already made a resolution for the year to come to be her best self and maybe her ex is part of the way she gets there? We follow our two leads through the ups and downs of overbearing families, work/life balance, and the navigation of second chances.

The Year of Cecily is available in print and newly available in audio. If it's not already on your tbr, it should be!
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Special thanks to Dreamscape Media for sharing a free copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

3.75
I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

The timing of this book was perfect since it was released just before Lunar New Year. I enjoyed engaging with the story in conjunction with the holiday!

It was a cute story. I found the timeline or maybe pacing a little odd. After the initial reconnection in NYC, they seemed to be seeing each other all the time. I felt like we should have seen a conversation where they talked through that more but they just start getting together every weekend, with Jeff coming up from LA most of the time. It’s a small thing, just felt like a missing piece of the puzzle. I also kind of thought his reason for ending their engagement in their twenties was thin. You bailed and didn’t look back because you were too scared to share with your partner? I don’t think I would have gotten over that.

Overall a nice, light read.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape media for the ARC

Cecily Chang after reading a self help book has decided to make a list of new years resolutions. Jeffery Lee is going home to New York for Lunar new year, and having to deal with his family not understanding his career as a Hollywood screenwriter, and his choice to quit medical school and move across the country. The two collide and Jeff decides he still has feelings for Cecily after suddenly breaking off their engagement when he left medical school. Trying to stick to her New Years resolutions and avoid drama Cecily finds herself hearing Jeffery out and giving Jeffery a second chance.

This was Honestly a really fun Lunar new year romance novel and I really love seeing more diversity in the holiday romance novels available. I also really appreciated the family dynamics both Main characters have to navigate, Jeff being pretty successful yet his family still trying to give him money so he can go back to school, and Cecily constantly feeling inadequate even though she's a successful lawyer who is pretty close to becoming a partner at the firm really resonated with me. I enjoyed all the effort Cecily put into trying to better her life over the year, getting new hobbies, making new friends, and staying drama free. I enjoyed this one a lot and I hope that we get a Racheal story because her and Cecily building a friendship after being pitted against each other was super sweet.
Thank You to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy for a fair and honest review.

Ten years ago, Jeffrey broke things off with his fiancée, Cecily, without explanation. Now, he's determined to win her back. Can he convince her to give him a second chance?

Objectively, this is a well-constructed, well-written romance novel, especially if you enjoy interfering parents who are over-involved in their adult children's lives. Subjectively, I found most of the characters, including Cecily, to be toxic. She talks a good game about being supportive. Ultimately, she proves herself as unwilling as her parents (and Jeffrey's) to respect boundaries, and let other adults live their own lives and make their own choices. She basically tells Jeffrey that if he won't do what she says in his career, then she can't be with him. Despite how rocky her relationship is with her mother, ultimately, Cecily is just like her.

I'm sure there are other readers who will enjoy the tough love and lack of emotionality in this book. The audio narration was well done.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Cecily Chang is ready for a fresh start, so she makes a list of resolutions before the Lunar New Year and heads off to the home of her meddling parents for the holiday. She’s just crossing her fingers she doesn’t run into Jeffrey, the boy down the street who jilted her years ago.

I enjoyed all of the Lunar New Year details and the overbearing family interactions in this story and how Cecily and Jeffrey had to hide their reconnection from their parents. However, when they left their home community and both went back to their respective homes in California, the story started to lose its spark. It was still a lighthearted book, but it didn’t hold my interest as much as I would have liked.

Thank you, NetGalley, for this ARC.

My timing for reading The Year of Cecily by Lisa Lin couldn’t have been better! I read it during the week of the Lunar New Year. But instead of being in the year of Cecily/pig, we just entered into the year of the rabbit.

This super cute Rom-com involved a jaded and super focused and workaholic lawyer named Cecily, and her childhood bestie and her former fiancé, Jeffrey, who is a burgeoning screenplay writer. Both come from strict Asian families with parents who expected high achievements from their children.

Jeffrey has realized that he never got over Cecily, even though he was the one who broke off their engagement a decade before. During that decade, neither spoke to the other to settle their differences.

When Cecily literally runs into Jeffrey at the airport, will that be the opening that Jeffrey needs to rekindle what they once had? Or will it allow for the closure that they never got 10 years before? And how will their families react to this happenstance?

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this adorable advance audio ARC!

This book was entertaining and engaging. I loved that it's about a couple who broke up and are being reunited over the Lunar New Year. I love the complications of the mother daughter relationship in the book. I also love that one of the main character goes through a list of New Year's resolutions pretty successfully because you don't see that often in real life.

Cecily Chang, an attorney living in San Francisco, travels home to New York for the Lunar New Year to celebrate with her high expectation and critical family. Why isn’t Cecily married yet? Why are there no grandbabies? So and so is married, has grandbabies and an amazing job. Cecily creates a list of goals for herself to work on in this next year to make herself not a workaholic anymore and to have more of a personable life. On her travel home, Cecily runs into her ex, Jeffrey. He is determined to win her back. This was a cute read. Only two steamy scenes, I thought there would be many more after the first one, but I was wrong. I loved reading about the different family dynamics and the culture / food. Time seemed to pass quickly in this book. One minute something was happening and then all of a sudden it was 4-6 weeks later and it took me a bit to understand that time had passed. This was also the case between chapters. I had no idea when a chapter was ending and another one beginning. Perhaps it looks different in the physical copy of this book than the audiobook. It sounds like this is the first of a series where each character will get their own book. If you like second-chance romance and learning about the Lunar New Year, then this one is for you.

Jeffrey and Cecily travel home to celebrate Lunar New Year with their families in Brooklyn. In their 30’s, they are thriving in their careers, but not in their love lives. Will they rekindle an old flame during these family celebrations?
I enjoyed the characters in this story, but struggled with the dialogue. It felt more telling than showing. It could have been listening to the story rather than reading it. I did enjoy the narrator.

Cecily Chang is a San Francisco lawyer who finds herself sick of her rinse and repeat life of only work and home. For the new year, she has come up with a list of resolutions to spice up her life, which she will begin after returning to her family home in New York for Lunar New Year. Jeffrey Lee is a Hollywood screenwriter who constantly deals with the weight of his parents’ good intentions of swaying him away from film and back into medical school to follow their prescribed definition for a successful life.

Cecily and Jeffrey are childhood sweethearts turned affianced young adults, but Jeffrey ends their relationship in an attempt to do right by her. It’s been ten years since they’ve seen each other, and they are both endlessly badgered by their well-intentioned families regarding the way they live their lives. The weight of their parents’ high achieving expectations and chaos of the holiday drive them to find escape within each other for one night, where Jeffrey declares that he is hoping and willing to work to win her back in this second chance romance.

As a fellow child of Asian immigrants in an American household, I’m familiar with the cutting, over personal comments from well-meaning extended family as well as the pressure to find a specific kind of success through the set plan of going to school, getting a good job (namely in the stem field), getting married, and starting a family. Cecily and Jeffrey’s journeys takes these and wraps them together in a fun, lighthearted story while beautifully displaying their family’s culture and traditions.

There is a comfort in reading strong women who know what they want and uphold their standards for what they know they deserve, from both within themselves and the people they choose to keep in their lives. Cecily is one of these women, and Jeffrey persisting in proving how much energy he’s willing to put into himself and his relationship with Cecily— *chef’s kiss*.

The narration for the audio was great, and I’m excited to listen to more books by this narrator, Kat Riley, and read more books by Lisa Lin! Thank you, Netgalley and Dreamscape for the audio ARC!

I'm always excited to read books by BIPOC, and especially AAPI, authors and main characters. I was happy to listen to the ARC of the audiobook, and these opinions are my own. This debut novel from Lisa Lin touches on not just a second chance romance but also on relationships in general - from friends to family. The beginning provided a compelling situation that involved a relationship that had no closure over 10 years ago, and is dreading going home for the lunar new year since it is full of dissection from family, especially her mom. I really wanted to like it, and to see them grow together. I think the pacing seemed a bit off and I had a hard time with the familial tension... I don't think it necessarily made Cecily more sympathetic... I'm not sure. And her relationship with Jeffrey... I definitely didn't get the heart flutters I usually do when reading a romance novel. I also think that the book could have used a better narrator who had better pronunciation in Mandarin as it sounded like a non native speaker trying to pronounce it. I am not sure if that was the intent but I found it distracting. It was nice to see Jeffrey's character grow, but I didn't get the same feeling about Cecily.

Steam: 🔥
Heart flutters: 0

Cecily is hiding in her room on New Years Eve, happily by herself but knowing she's got to make some life changes. So she writes a list of resolutions including make new friends, find some work/life balance, don't let her family drive her crazy...
It doesn't take long for some of those resolutions to not go as planned, especially when her former fiance, Jeffrey, comes back into her life while home with her family. As she navigates her boundaries and exploring herself, trying to stick to her resolutions, Jeffrey keeps popping up and weaseling his way in until it just feels inevitable. Her growth from her past self to the self she wants to be, healing relationships and the realizations that arise along the way are honest and explores cultural dynamics as another layer.
Cute little romcom with unexpected depth.

#arc
#netgalley
#theyearofcecily

*Received copy for review.*
This is a second chance story. This felt more like a women's fiction story than romance. Although the romance is essential to the plot, the growth of characters and their family relationships were more important.
I must admit that the heroine's behavior toward the end of the book didn't work for me. Perhaps it's something outside my experience but ultimatums are aggravating to me.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

This was a cute little love story. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed the romance. The narrator was good as well.

Love the premise and I was rooting for Cecily from the start because I adore a second chance storyline. Going home to see family can be stress inducing under the best of circumstances with an easy, loving and accepting family . All Cecily wanted to do was get in and out with as little conflict as possible with her judgmental bully of a mother and to avoid seeing Jeffrey, her obtuse ex. She can never catch a break! So many questions are come to mind on Cecily journey. Can she forgive the almost unforgivable? Should she listen to her head or heart? Will Jeffrey own up to the tsunami of a mess he created when he abruptly ended their engagement and left for her to clean up and give her a heartfelt apology? Will all of the family drama, expectations, personal drama, will they/won’t they tension ultimately lead to a happily ever after for Cecily? It’s a long and winding road to everyone figuring it all out together.

I was very excited to read another book by an Asian author, especially one that is romance and includes a major holiday like Lunar New Year.

The biggest issue I had with the narration was that the voice actor didn’t seem to express the correct emotions with the scene. As I listened, there were moments where it felt a bit off, and it ended up pulling me out of the story.

Outside of the narration, I had a difficult time getting into the story. It took approximately 35% of just setting up the story before it really got interesting for me. I found the characters to be too perfect, which also caused some disinterest in that regard. I just really didn’t care about what happened to them.

Additionally, there was an over explanation of various cultural/Asian aspects and traits. It interrupted the flow of the book because there would be so many awkward insertions of stereotypes. While most stereotypes are rooted in truth, I felt it created the feeling of “other” with the characters.

Instead of letting the reader figure out this is Asian parenting or saying it in a more subtle way, it had to be very obviously pointed out to the reader over and over again. Perhaps this book is geared towards an audience that isn’t Asian/Chinese, so it would serve a greater purpose with these insertions.

I understand why the stereotypes were used - they are meant to help the audience relate/understand, but they can also be subliminally harmful. Oftentimes, the model minority stereotype is perpetuated, and I felt that come through in the story. It’s why I prefer my characters to be more flawed. There was some of that with the character of Jeffrey, where he’s a med school dropout. But he also found success in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I guess I was hoping to hear more of his struggle and journey, but we only get to the part where he “makes it.”

I didn’t feel like the conflict was romance book-worthy. I appreciated that it’s different and not your normal romance trope, but it didn’t feel as powerful as typical romance tropes. I think if it had been expanded, it could have been really great.

There was one scene that I didn’t quite understand. It’s when Rachel asks Cecily about visiting her in San Francisco, and Cecily is overly sensitive about Rachel not wanting to stay with her. Considering that Rachel and Cecily are barely friends at this point, I’m not sure why Cecily is hurt by it. It just doesn’t make any sense to me and frankly made me dislike Cecily.

I really do feel that this book had such great potential, but it fell flat for me. I went into this book with the same expectations I have for every romance, but if the romance is going to have cultural elements, then I’m expecting those cultural elements to blend in seamlessly. I just didn’t get that with this book. As a debut novel, I’m not going to put too much stock in it. I don’t want to like a book just because the author is Asian, but because it’s a good story that incorporates those Asian elements.

Cecily is an attorney who lives in San Francisco and is trying to live up to her parents overly high expectations. Mainly, trying to make sure that she gets married and starts giving them grandchildren. Her last relationship ended badly when Jeffrey broke off their engagement. When they are both flying back home for the holidays, they end up on the same plane and reconnect. Cecily makes a list and is calling the New Year the year of Cecily. As they spend more time together, they have their second chance romance.

I enjoyed this read and learning a little about how the Asian New Year is as well as how the parents interact and want to show that their kid is the best. There is a spicy scene, but nothing too crazy.