I struggled to get into this book, which is a real bummer because the premise sounded so cute and the cover is absolutely adorable! It might just not be the book for me right now, I'll definitely try it again later.

Three and a half stars

WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE by Charlotte Stein is an entertaining contemporary romance about a retired athlete and the ghostwriter assigned to help him write his memoir.

Alfie Harding is well known to be the grumpiest man in existence. Mabel Willicker is the ghost writer assigned to help this buttoned up ex-footballer write his life story.

Honestly, Alfie from the start is described as a truly fearsome man whose own teammates describe as terrifying and irritating and dangerous. However, this reader’s perception of him is more that he’s an enormous marshmallow in a giant footballer suit.

And Mabel is apparently the ghost-writing equivalent of Mary Poppins, and has Alfie hiding smiles and almost cooperative from the get-go... She is a mix of supposedly incredible professional who is also full of self doubt and certain that others, including and especially Alfie, cannot possibly find her interesting or gasp! attractive. (Spoiler--he does.)

Charlotte Stein reveals characters who need desperately to be seen and loved for who they truly are. And to have the courage to let that happen.

Written in third-person deep PoV, solely from Mabel's perspective.

This one is set in England, it follows a football player (soccer for the US) Alfie, and his ghostwriter, Mable. Alfie has a history of being a closed off grumpy and Mable is trying to make it as a writer. I really enjoyed the beginning of this one, it had me turning pages to keep reading. It’s a quick, fake relationship read, with - spoiler alert- a bit of grumpy/sunshine. 😉

Typically I love the grumpy/sunshine troupe, but this one was not it for me. The story was a bit hard to follow and after the 6th eye roll due to the dialogue I had to DNF this at 40%. There's cheeky and silly and then there is just plain ridiculous, this fell into the latter category for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC, but this one wasn't a grab for me.

Alfie, a grumpy retired (UK) Football player finally agrees to write his memoir and finally decides to have Mabel, the sunshiny, curvy ghostwriter as his partner in this venture.

There are some laugh out loud moments - like when Mabel uses her pepper spray or when she attempts to get into the car and ends up showing more than she wanted to the buzzing press. These are coupled with witty banter, a tension filled slow burn and some very high-heat open door bedroom scenes.

There are also tender moments and a shared understanding between two people who suffered from having pretty awful fathers. In some of their conversations it seemed like Mabel and Alfie revealed things they never intended to but felt so comfortable with the other person they felt safe in sharing.

I did struggle a lot with the single POV 3rd person narrative, which I think made it hard for me to connect with either character. This was my first book by the author but I would like to try some of her others.

Engaging with cute banter! Love the tropes. Just fell flat to me for some reason, had higher hopes! Very cute cover though! Thanks for the copy in exchange for an honest review

Until the following items are met by the SMP team, I will be withholding any promotion or review of any St. Martin's Press titles (including SMP Romance and Wednesday Book titles):

1. Address and denounce the Islamophobia/racism from your employee.
2. Offer tangible steps for how you're going to mitigate the harm this employee caused.
3. Address how moving forward, you will support and protect your Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to your BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.

Wonderful story, great character development, great writing! Highly recommend this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it

What a cute book! I enjoyed this book and the characters! The character development was great. I had never read this author before but I will for sure be reading it again in the future!

I’m just a sucker for cinderella story, though I think Allie might be as much of the Cinderella in this story as Mabel is.

Mabel an aspiring author has been ghost writing biographies to get experience under her belt. Which makes her, in her editors opinion qualified to write for the notorious bad boy of football, Alfie. Alfie a gruff retired footballer is ready to tell his side of the story, but after a disastrous first meeting it’s unclear if they can ever get on the same page.

After accidentally being photographed together they decide instead of admitting he’s hired a ghost writer to fake date. The only logical conclusion if we are honest. The problem is, Mabel is a little on the curvier side and not in the same tax bracket as Alfie. So while social media is having a meltdown around them, they are trying to navigate their increasing attraction.

True life isn’t a romance novel as Mabel and Alfie unfortunately find out.

Thank you SMP for the chance to read and review this book.

When Grumpy Mets sunshine is a sexy romance with a grumpy football player and an upbeat writer. Former football player Alfie is convinced to sell him memoirs but he doesn't think he can handle writing time. Insert Mabel a ball of sunshine ghost writer. The two of them do not get along well and argue about everything at first. Eventually they realize their chemistry is more than they thought. This story is full sizzling moments and cute dialogue. I did enjoyed this one!

The author couldn't have been more obvious they're a fan of Ted Lasso if they tried. This was clearly a Roy Kent-esque character with very little room for imagination. I DNF.







I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

📚ARC Review 📚

I have been in a book slump for what feels like weeks and this book truly helped bring me out of it. Alfie and Mabel are Grumpy/Sunshine perfection and the title rings 100% true. This book crosses laugh out loud moments with fake dating which I really truly enjoyed.
I recommend picking this up if you need a quick read that makes you laugh!

Thank you to the author, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for the ARC.

I loved this book!! It was fabulous and well done. The characters were on point and I thought the plot was well developed. I would recommend this book to others.

I wanted to love this book! Grumpy/sunshine is one of my favorite tropes but this one didn’t work for me.
The dialogue was all over the place and confusing at times. I love a good steamy book, but I honestly found myself skimming the book by the time we got to that part.
It definitely had potential but it missed the mark for me.

Excellent, hilarious banter + hot fat lady rep + some interesting backstory explanations of why our characters feel compelled to be grumpy/sunshiney AND some **EPIC** smutty business. This book was an utter delight from start to finish* and I need to get to reading Stein's backlist ASAP! Highly recommend!

* except for the requisite third-act breakup, which I hate in ALL romance books.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. This in no way impacted on my view.

In When Grumpy Met Sunshine, the lovely ghostwriter Mabel Willicker has just met her match in super negative footballer Alfie Harding. When his agent tells him he needs to write a tell-all memoir, Alfie is adamant he will not do it. Every ghostwriter who has been sent to him has run away with their tails between their legs, but Mabel is made of harder stuff. Yes, she may be sweet, and like a permanent ray of sunshine, but she knows just how to get under Alfie's skin, and isn't about to give up on him. But Alfie is more than just his grumpy persona, and if anyone can discover the real man, it's Mabel.

I just loved this book! Like just about everyone, I adore the grumpy/sunshine trope, and Alfie and Mabel embodied that perfectly! Alfie was a retired footballer, who had been at the top of his game, but with a reputation for being a hothead, both on and off the pitch. He's a private man, so the idea of telling his story, in all its gory detail, is horrific. Because of this, he's brash and abrasive when he meets Mabel, but she knows that working with Alfie, as hard as it'll be, will be her big shot. Mabel wants more than to be a ghostwriter, but until she makes her break, this is the perfect job for her. Somehow, she can bring out the best in Alfie, and though they have to pretend to be a couple, they form a true friendship first. It was great to see that Alfie was a softy at heart, and he fell for Mabel, hard. A truly great book!

I did DNF however I read enough to have an opinion. I want to start by saying I started this as an ebook but couldn't get into it so I tried it as an audiobook. Honestly, there is nothing the narrator could have done to save this book.
There's is nothing that makes giggle like a school girl like great banter. In this, the banter gives me the ick. To add more damage to injury it was too wordy. The inner dialogue did leave me confused at times.

"𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴. 𝘎𝘰 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦. 𝘓𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰'𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. 𝘋𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦."


So, like other books recently, it has taken me a bit to finish this book... not because it was a bad book, but because of life circumstances and such. Things have not been kind the last 2 weeks.

That being said, I finally finished this ARC last night, and overall, I did really like it! I always love a good plus sized MC who gets her happy ending! And our MMC is absolutely just Roy Kent from Ted Lasso and I loved that so much!

And while it was definitely on the spicier said, there was a point where I was internally screaming JUST HAVE SEX ALREADY! 😅

Oh... and EFFING TALK TO EACH OTHER!

That is all LOL

Thank you to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for this review!
.
.
.
.
#bookstagram #booksta #books #booksbooksbooks #avidreader #ilovereading #thetwistedlibrarian #professionalbookworm #whengrumpymetsunshine #charlottestein #book11of2024 #whatsnikkireading #grumpysunshine #oppositesattract #fakedating #plussizemaincharacter #onebed #stmartinspress #netgally #advancedreadercopy

This book has very confusing start. It's hard to grasp who the characters are because the writing is choppy and almost hyper. She starts by getting mortally offended by an insult that he never even said. I feel like I'm reading the internal dialogue of a self obsessed crazy person. And why are they making it our like the guy is mentally handicapped?

I didn't like how judging the author is about body positivity. It comes across as fat-shaming and from the description the character isn't even above regular weight.

Annnnd she just wrote the words "it was like an angel had farted". This does not deserve publication.