First off thanks to netgalley for providing me an ARC!

Sophie is an author who's struggling to write her next book. She rents from her best friends brother, who happens to be a child actor and her childhood crush, Dash.
While she's trying to figure out why she's never said I love you. Dash is working through many issues on his own. They develop quite the situation-ship.

Overall, the book was cute. I'm not a big fan of including social media, in this case TikTok, in books. It dates the book and it was a little cringey in some spots. But it was a cute and quick read.

This was a real struggle to get through. This relies too heavily on TikTok and I'm not the audience for that kind of book. There is a way to incorporate social media and make it fun but Plot Twist didn't work. This needs an LGBT category. The cover art is adorable but I didn't understand the meaning of the title. I do think there are many, many readers who will find this fun and relatable.

I go back and forth about how I feel regarding the plethora of romance novels written about romance writers, but Plot Twist had a fresh take on this subgenre. This story is a sweet narrative of a woman trying to understand why she's never fallen in love by revisiting past romances, all while slowly falling for her neighbor (a former film and TV star she had a crush on as a teenager).

The one frustration I had with Plot Twist was that I felt like Sophie's friends and family were too hard on her in her "failings" toward them. I kept waiting for her to stand up for herself more, but that never happened, which was a disappointment. Regardless, this is a sweet and steamy story that was very readable.

Sophie Lyon is a romance author that is stuck finishing her sophomore book. She mentions MULTIPLE times throughout the book that her life will be over if she can't complete this next romance book. She gets filmed at a karaoke bar yelling that love isn't real and that she's never been in love. She goes TikTok famous and has to deal with the consequences of her exes contacting her and wanting explanations.

Dash Montrose is Hollywood royalty, and he hates every second of it. He is a recovering alcoholic and a crafting genius. He crafts to keep him sober. He is also Sophie's landlord and her best friend's brother.

Sophie and Dash merge together when she throws up on him following the outcome of her viral TikTok video. They grow a real bond and friendship as he tries to help her navigate her new TikTok fame and the chaos that is her life and book.

It is a very cute HEA and I enjoyed that Dash is a recovering alcoholic and that there were a lot of emphases made in the book about the importance of sobriety. There was a lot of talk about mental health in men and the strength it takes to not relapse. If you do relapse, it is not the end of the world.

I also enjoyed Sophie's journey of self-discovery through meeting up with her exes to see what went wrong and how she could improve herself. That's not something you see very often in a romance book.

I received an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Plot Twist follows the story of Sophie an author, whose second book is due in weeks, and her best friends brother Dash, a former actor. After an embarrassing tik-tok of a drunk Sophie admitting she has never been in love Dash suggests she meet up with her exes and find out why. After meeting with her first ex it doesn’t seem to bad but when she needs a ride to meet up with her second ex things take a turn and maybe her and Dash are closer than she realized.

I had a lot of fun reading this book, I basically read it in one setting. Sophie’s journey with writers block and trying to find why she has never been in love before had its ups and downs. For me with romance books I think the dynamic between the FMC and MMC is so important. Sometimes that dynamic falls flat for me but in Plot Twist I felt like Sophie and Dash had a really easy dynamic between the two of them. Which I really enjoyed it gave that feeling of having been friends for so long you are good with just being in the same room with them. I also really liked the little bit of teasing between one another it felt effortless and fun, not forced or awkward.

This book isn’t 100% fluffy there is some heavier parts to the book especially with Dash’s past and present. Dash is a recovering alcoholic who is starting to find his next step in life. However I really liked how is his story paired with Sophie’s. Sophie is trying to learn why she hasn’t been in love and Dash feels like his future with love can’t be what he once hoped for.

I also think the spice in this book was just right for this book, not too much and what we get is just spicy enough without being too hot. Especially great if you want just a bit of spice but not Katee Robert level (which is also good but sometimes you need just a little spice).

The one thing about the book that I wasn’t too sure how I felt about was when Poppy learns about Dash and Sophie getting close. It seemed kind of petty, but I don’t have siblings so maybe I am missing something.

Overall this book was a fun read, that I would recommend to others. If you like rom-coms, if you like friends with benefits to lovers, or friends to lovers I would recommend.

CW/TW: alcoholism recovery, relapse, toxic family.

I really wanted to like this book but it did fall a little flat for me ... the elements were all there but it just seemed to fall a little short in the execution. It was very tropey, but needed just a bit more tension/ will they-won't they/how are they going to pull this off to really wow me. Overall a cutesy simple read.

Thank you to Harlequin and Netgalley for an earc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC.

There were quite a few tropes and nothing very unique about the story. I did love that our main characters had an easy dynamic and they were multi dimensional and we'll fleshed out. I also loved the steamy scenes.

Sophie is a romance writer who has never been in love. Struggling to finish her second book and terrified of becoming a one hit wonder, she devises a plan: meet up with each of her exes and figure out what went wrong, all while documenting her experience on TikTok. Dash Montrose, her hot landlord and former actor, offers to help her navigate the social media scene, though he doesn't mention his anonymous online presence as a crafter, a hobby that has helped him maintain his sobriety. As the two grow closer, Sophie suggests a friends-with-benefits situation, but a casual relationship might end up being more than they bargained for.

I thought I was over the "romance novel about a writer" trope but I enjoyed this a lot! It was fun, brought in some of my favorite tropes (close proximity, only one bed), and featured multiple steamy scenes. While dual POV usually isn't my favorite, I absolutely loved Dash's chapters and his sobriety journey felt authentic. I appreciated the pansexual representation via Sophie and the TikTok aspect wasn't overdone. A solid, enjoyable romance!

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the digital galley in exchange for an honest review.

For a book called "Plot Twist" this book was more tropey than twisty. And while tropes definitely aren't a bad thing, I felt like the focus on the tropes overshadowed what otherwise could've been a great story. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this book, because I did. I liked the characters and the general storyline. I also enjoyed then author's writing style. The story flowed pretty smoothly and made for a relatively quick read. I also appreciated the queer rep. But something didn't quite click with me. I don't know exactly. Maybe this is a classic case of "It's not you, it's me." I am a bit of a mood reader, so maybe I wasn't in the right mood for this book. I'd definitely be inclined to read more by thus author in the future, though.

3.5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the ebook in exchange for a review!

When I first heard about this book and read the description, I was immediately hooked. The idea of a romance author who had never fallen in love was very intriguing. Unfortunately, the execution was disappointing and somewhat lackluster.

One aspect of the story that I did not enjoy and would take me out of the story whenever it came up was the whole TikTok thing. I, as well as many other readers that I know, do not like pop culture references in books. They date the book, make it less enjoyable in my opinion, and frankly are just cringey to read. The plot is started and continuously moved forward by the needless incorporation of TikTok.

The novel starts with Sophie's landlord/neighbor/best friend's brother, Dash, knocking on her door telling her that Poppy, his sister, told him to check on her. He shows her a TikTok video of her that was posted the previous night while she was drunk and out with her friends proclaiming that she has never been in love and that "love isn't real". She is embarrassed and hungover and then promptly vomits all over herself and Dash. They spend a good few pages discussing TikTok and its features as he convinces her to stitch the video of herself and explain.

By reading the description of the novel, I thought that her announcing she had never been in love was going to be a huge scandal and all of her fans would be outraged, but literally no one cared. Her publisher didn't care, none of her fans cared, literally no one who saw the video knew who she was and thus they did not care. Sophie has an epiphany and decides she wants to reconnect with her exes to try and figure out....and then document it all on TikTok.

There is a subplot where Dash, who is a nepotism baby, has an anonymous TikTok account where he created pottery. Through this account, he has an online and somewhat flirty friendship with another TikTok creator, with whom he has shared intimate details about his life, like the fact that he went to rehab for alcoholism and is eighteen months sober. This woman reveals herself as a crazed stalker/fan of his that thinks they're in love.

It is possible to remove the TikTok of it all. I would do this by first having the initial video have been filmed by Poppy and then shown to Sophie the next day as like, "haha, look at how embarrassing you were last night." Sophie can still have her epiphany this way and still decide to reexamine her past relationships, but instead of documenting it on TikTok, she can just document it in a notebook, or something. Cindy, the stalker, can maybe be someone Dash knows from AA who he thought was a friend and someone he could trust, who then turns out to be crazy. This would also give her more credibility when she reaches out to Sophie, because Sophie likely would have met her before, like how she met Chris (Dash's sponsor and best friend).

The romance between Sophie and Dash was honestly not very believable to me. At one point in the book, Dash thinks to himself how before the start of the novel, he and Sophie had had said about twelve words to each other. They only knew each other through Poppy and by Sophie sending him her rent money each month. There is an obvious mutual attraction between them, which is essentially the basis of their romance.

Dash is continuously telling Sophie, Chris, and himself that he does not feel steady enough in his sobriety to be in a relationship, which was very confusing to me since this is a romance. Based on my limited knowledge, I think that the way he was written as an alcoholic was respectful and accurate, but I did not understand how that added to the story at all, in fact I feel like it hindered the story and my enjoyment of it. He ends up relapsing toward the end of the book and the big romantic gesture that Sophie does after the third act conflict literally happens while he is in rehab. I assume they were together from that point until the epilogue one year later. I do not think this is healthy and it kind of cheapened their relationship for me because I do not think that they have a solid foundation. Also the fact that they "fell in love" after like a month and a half of hanging out does not bode well for them.

Even though Dash was insistent about not wanting a relationship, and Sophie saying she does want one, they settle on a friends-with-benefits situation. Since they're not in an actual relationship, they decide not to tell Poppy for fear of her reacting poorly. The whole book takes place over the course of about 6 weeks, so they were only hooking up for about 2 or 3 weeks before Poppy catches them and is unreasonably angry and upset. Dash is 36 and I can only assume that Poppy and Sophie are also in their thirties, which made this plot line so confusing. Why is she a full grown adult and acting like this? Maybe if this was a young adult novel and they were all 16/17 it would make sense, but this just felt senseless and like it was just there to create conflict, despite there being no real basis for it.

There was a lot of exposition regarding characterization, but not a lot of demonstration to back those claims up. For example, Dash is constantly referred to as being broody, but nowhere in the book is he shown to be broody. I do not at all believe the claim that Sophie has not been in love. Through her own descriptions, Sophie was for sure in love with her ex Carla, with whom she had the longest relationship with of eleven months. Carla said she loved Sophie about five or six months into the relationship, but Sophie never said it back which eventually led to their breakup. The way Sophie thinks about Carla and reflects on their time together, I got the impression that she was in love with her, but was unable to say the words for whatever reason.

The premise was promising, but so many aspects of this book made it not enjoyable and a pretty average read for me.

This was such a sweet romance. Dash is Sophie’s landlord and also her best friend’s brother, and over the course of the book, they both grow closer as friends and begin to develop feelings for each other despite Dash’s issues that are preventing him from starting a real relationship with Sophie. While I am not a big TikTok user (ok, i don’t use it at all) and some of those details lost me a bit, I was really won over by the relationship between Sophie and Dash. About halfway through the book, I found myself hoping for more scenes with the two of them together, but I appreciate how the author built each up character separately to allow me to get to know both of them as individuals. Knowing them better as characters allowed me to become more invested in seeing them find their way to being together. None of the conflict keeping them apart felt manufactured, which is one of my biggest pet peeves in romance. I really sympathized with and understood Dash’s struggles and reluctance to enter a relationship, and I appreciated how those more delicate issues were sensitively handled in regards to the ending of the book. Lastly (and my favorite element of the book), I just loved both leads. They were incredibly sweet and endearing, and I was fully invested in seeing their HEA play out in the end. So overall, despite my boomer confusion with the frequent references to social media, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more by this author.

ARC provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book. And to be honest there were some parts I did enjoy. Overall though this was trying to be too much and therefor missed the mark in many ways.
Pros: Sophie had some funny parts. I liked the relationship between the sisters. The bit with the squirrel was cute. I liked how they didn’t make a big deal about Sophie being pansexual, she just was and it was natural.

Cons: So many tropes and cliches I couldn’t turn a page without stumbling on one. The premise of meeting with her exes had promise, but didn’t go anywhere, so what was the point? Additionally the “TikTok videos” were boring and unnecessary. As was the stalker. Dash dealing with alcoholism could have been a deeper angle, but his reactions to things seemed so over the top and unbelievable sometimes. I’d love to have seen more interaction or back story with the mother to make his and her choices seem more believable and make me care about them more. Especially since this turned out to be a Thing. And the sexy times were a bit cringy, imo. “Can I ride your face?” was a bit… yikes.
I did finish it though, so that’s why it’s 2 stars. And there were some funny and sweet lines/moments.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and author for providing an advance copy for my honest review.

I loved this romance and finding love. I loved that she had writers block and ending up finding love and discussing her past relationships. I hope that there is more romance from the sisters or the Montrose family. I hope that poppy gets romance along with rhy's . I loved learning more about his family and very realistic with drinking and love.

I wanted to love this book. The characters were great and the romance hit the majority of the time. But I just was never able to fully commit to the novel the way I hoped I would. There was just something missing in the back half that really would have kept my interest.

I would definitely still recommend any rom com fans to read this book because it is well written and I did enjoy the first half of the novel.

Thanks to NetGallery for this eArc on exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately this book really did not work for me. My rating was 3.5 stars, but rounded up to 4. I do think it was a cute book, but I am definitely not the target audience. I immediately grew tired of the TikTok references. I could not escape into this world because I already live in it!! I had to skim all the TikTok manuscripts so I could enjoy the book more. I thought the spicy scenes were good and I liked the writing, but the execution of the concept didn’t really work for me. I was a lot more interested in Dash’s family dynamic and journey with sobriety than Sophie’s writing career. I rushed through Sophie’s chapters to get to Dash’s. I was ready to give up on the book about 50% through, but I decided to keep going and I’m glad I finished it. I liked the ending a lot and it brought the rating up for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Canary Street Press for this read!

Tropes/ Themes
- Friends with benefits
- Romcom
- Alcohol use recovery
- Best friends brother
- Forced Proximity
- One bed
- Pansexual fmc

Sophie (fmc) is a struggling romance author who has writer's block and hasn’t been able to finish her second book. She hasn’t ever been love and discovers herself with the help of her neighbor/ best friend's brother Dash( mmc) and exes.
Dash and Sophie immediately have a connection and start a friends-with-benefits type relationship, and none of them want to commit.

I really liked the first half of the book. There were funny moments and good character interactions. Despite this being a romcom, Dash is recovering from alcohol use which brings serious issues into the book. The romance was cute and steamy.

I didn’t really like the many tropes that the main characters talked about and the frequent TikTok references, but that’s just me. Overall this is a good one for anyone looking for an easy-to-read and cute rom-com.

Thank you, NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, for this arc!

I don't have the words to explain how much I loved this book! I absolutely loved the double povs! I felt like this book was such a beautiful read. I instantly fell in love with both Sophie, and Dash. In love with their individual stories as well as their story together. This book does deal with some addiction but I absolutely appreciated how it wasn't made such a dark and ugly thing. Addiction is different for everyone and in this story the character wasn't made dark or too overly damaged. I actually cried a few times because I fell for these characters in such a deep way that I felt their pain through the pages. I couldn't put it down and immediately I knew that such a book had to be read in one sitting.

“Dash, in the places where we’ve both been broken, being together makes me feel whole. As soon as I fell in love with you, I knew I couldn’t be without you.”

-close proximity, dual pov, best friend’s brother
-Sophie is romance writer who’s never been in love 👩‍💻❤️
-Dash, who is also her landlord, starts helping her see the possibilities
-I enjoyed reading about their vulnerabilities and building of their friendship to something more!
-tw: substance abuse
-thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this read ✨

4⭐️

Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa

This story had a lot of good elements, however I always felt uninvolved. The plot was almost formulaic. It was definitely not the light hearted storyline that the blurb and book cover hinted at.

The story seemed juvenile/YA, due to the characters personalities, but at some point you get that Dash is in his mid 30s and figure that Sophie is close to the same age. Yet it reads as though they should be in their early 20s….. everything is drama and about them, very self centered and somewhat narcissistic. Perhaps it’s because neither goes off to a job where they have any responsibilities other than to their own interests. No need to move forward and earn a living.

That being said, it was easier to relate to Dash than Sophie. He is definitely more mature. You get more of his internal debates and more of his life and background. You know why he struggles. With Sophie, I had difficulty forming any connection. She hardly interacted with her Bestie or sister. Eventually you get Sophies background but it just doesn’t grab at you like Dash’s does. Perhaps that’s because of her lack of interaction with anybody, other than Dash, except through her Tik Toks.

Ultimately, I found this to be more about Dash’s story than about Sophie’s.

*** My thanks to the Publisher and NetGalley. This is my honest review given in exchange for the ARC of this book. ***

I want to thank NetGalley and Harlequin for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

I was sad that I didn’t like this book as much as I thought I would. I will say I think that sometimes books can still be enjoyable but not everything is for everyone and I don’t think I was the right audience for this book.