The Break-up Pact

3.75⭐️3🌶️

Contemporary romance
Break up romance
Celebrity/public breakup
Small town
Small business owner FMC
Friends to lovers
Fake dating
🏳️‍🌈 side characters
Grief


The set up for the friends to lovers is so good. The out of touch childhood friendship/crush was a great way to established that familiarity with out making the reader feel like they were dropped into the middle of the story with no context.

The shared grief for the loss of the FMC’s older sister creates such a close bond. The sisterly feelings are very real and very touching.

There is a lot of nostalgia and slow burn.

The book had a lot of inner monologue that circled a bit. Making the FMC seem immature, but trying to move past it.

I didn’t love how often social media was mentioned. The TikTok references made it really cringy in those moments.

I wanted a little more heat to the slow burn. It felt a little like a pop-flash then lots of emotional excuses and avoidance.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own

Emma Lord Flies Under the Radar
Some authors are lucky enough to blow up on social media, influencer lists, and top 100 lists in various news outlets. Others manage a slow, slow burn that builds on itself without the threat of burn out. Emma Lord is one of the latter. Sure, I’ve seen her book covers float around. They’re cute and eye-catching, but I still feel like Emma Lord is flying under the radar, building her backlist of titles and steadily amassing her fan base. I won’t be surprised when she some day soon takes over the reading world. “The Break-Up Pact”, Lord’s upcoming novel out in August, is sure to add fuel to her fire, scorching my fellow romance readers with the heat of June and Levi.

Fake Dating? Sign me up!
June and Levi, both in separate relationships, are spectacularly dumped smack dab in the middle of the public eye. These break-ups are MESSY. Levi is cheated on, his fiancee hooking up with a celebrity while selling him expensive real estate. June’s boyfriend, a real piece of work who hadn’t said “I love you” in 10 years, creates his own reality tv show and breaks up with June while simultaneously explaining that he met someone else and they are in love and soul mates. Gross. THEN they turn her into a meme.


Heavy Hitting Topics
The romance is sexy. The tension builds right from the beginning, especially with June being unable to keep her hands to herself. However, while the ‘Revenge Exes’ burned like wildfire, it’s dampened and kept in check with the remembrance of a lost loved one. June’s sister Annie was Levi’s best friend. She passes away unexpectedly before our story takes place, but she touched everyone she’d interacted with. There’s an Annie-shaped hole that lingers in the periphery.

That’s not to say that it’s sad — the story isn’t really sad.

“The Break-Up Pact” truly makes me feel hopeful and inspired. June and Levi have spent a lot of time with regret, mulling over their choices and battling their grief. When the time comes, though, each of them are challenged to restart their lives, living for themselves and their own wants, needs, hopes, and dreams. It’s the idea of Annie, their lost loved one, who pushes them to get their act in gear and live.

Reading with my Ears

Photo by Findaway Voices on Unsplash
My most favored way of reading is with my eyes, either physical books or eBooks on my Kindle. Sometimes, though, a story comes around that begs to be read with my ears. I first read “The Break-up Pact” with my eyeballs. I was immersed in it, and knowing there was an audiobook as well, I jumped on it. Being able to hear some very beautiful scenes in this book read aloud felt like reading this story in a more powerful way. (I’m looking at you, Chapter 27.)

“The Break-up Pact” balances fun, feisty, friendly banter with deep, painful grief and Natalie Naudus manages to emote the whole spectrum beautifully. She captures the swing of human emotions and the quickness of how it happens with a natural grace. This would be a great story to experience via audiobook. I listened to it on the Netgalley shelf at 1.25x, which felt like the right pace for a comfortable but engaging conversation.

Final Thoughts
I wish I lived close to a “Tea Tide”-like tea shop by the ocean.

I’m DYING to try a Revenge Ex scone.

I’ll be reading through all of Emma Lord’s backlist ASAP.

A more grown-up version of Emma Lord’s delightful romcoms. In signature fashion, the characters had great banter and the book revolved around delicious sounding desserts, but the characters were a little older and the romance was a little more adult. I enjoyed the book overall and really liked the “Revenge Exes” storyline, but I did feel certain parts towards the end dragged a bit and could have been streamlined. Definitely check it out for a fun summer read that will have you craving a scone- comes out 8/13!

Thank you to Net Galley, St Martin’s Griffin, and the author for the early read!

Unfortunately it was a DNF for me. I got about 40% through and just couldn’t bring myself to finish it. The premise for the fake dating trope felt very gen-z to me and immediately I couldn’t connect with any character. I also felt like it was wildly predictable, which 99% of the time I’m fine with in a romcom, but this didn’t work for me.

Thanks netgalley for the arc!

This whole plot hinges on a miscommunication from high school!!!…ten years later and we’re supposed to want these two to end up together when they could’ve had one single conversation to clear everything up. My problems with this book are more that it involves a trope I don’t enjoy and that it was very slow burn.
I made it to the 50% mark and the couple had just started getting together and I just couldn’t handle a breakup again at that point.
I think this is the author’s first attempt at an adult romance after writing YA and it felt immature and maybe that’s why. I think this book would’ve worked much better if the characters were in their early 20s instead of late 20s.

3.5/5

To start off with the things I enjoyed, I really loved the side characters in this and wish they had a bigger part! There were absolutely some adorable moments between Levi and June, but the pacing felt a little off. I think it would have benefitted from a dual timeline and thought the characters were a little underdeveloped. This led me to feel like there was a little too much telling, not showing, especially with the history between the characters and their relationships. And probably just a personal preference, but I didn’t love the drama with Kelly and how Levi was feeling about it, as well as the amount of miscommunication…

Overall this was a cute book, but I didn’t connect with it all that much. I definitely think it will find its audience!

Read if you love
- Fake dating
- Childhood friends
- Second chance romance
- Secret feelings
- Slow burn
- Small beach town

Look, you’re going to see this book in your local indie and it’s going to have an incredibly cute cover. (My apologies that as an advanced reader I was not trusted with showing you that adorable cover.) And you’re going to think, “Yes, a new Emma Lord novel!” And this is where I need you to stop and remember this post.

The Break-up Pact is Lord’s first adult novel—did you catch that English teachers? Don’t auto-buy this for your classroom library. I didn’t realize this was the case until I was part way through, and then quickly switched modes from reading for my classroom to just reading a quick summer read. Fine by me. I’m not ready to think about the impending school year yet. Unfortunately, I am not exaggerating when I say that when I finished this book, I put my kindle down and gave the following review to my dog: “Meh.”

The one thing I loved: A repeat joke about scream poetry that had me cackling.

What I didn’t like: A lot of this book would have not existed had our main characters communicated better with one another. Miscommunication as a trope has to be carefully done so as not to be annoying. It just comes off incredibly immature—and maybe I could have stomached it better if our main characters were teenagers running around without fully formed prefrontal cortexes, but these are fully adult humans. I feel like if you’re going to publish an adult novel for the first time, your characters need to be a little bit more grown up. Otherwise it just reads like a young adult novel with one open door scene about half way through. (Which, let’s be honest, is not a great vibe.)

This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published tomorrow, August 13.

3.5 ⭐️

The Break-Up Pact may not be the most believable story, but it’s still a decently entertaining beach read, full of plenty of fake dating fun. Perfect for when you just want a light romance.

Thank you Emma Lord, St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

Really love a celebrity + "regular" person plot and this is no exception.. I also always love a bakery incorporated somehow, it's so Hallmark but it's a trope for a reason. :)

re you looking for any last summer reads?

June hasn’t spoken to Levi in a decade. A lot has happened in those years but recent social media disasters have brought the two back together.
The two embark on a fake dating scheme to help weather the social media storm. How will they come out on the other side? Best friends again or something a little more.

Overall a cute summer romance with some self-discovery along the way. However, at times I felt that the characters were slighlty juvenile. I enjoyed the close friendships between June, her best friends and her brother. I loved the scone combinations that June ends up creating.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my advanced readers copy.

Thanks to #partner @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the digital ARC of Emma Lord’s The Break-Up Pact. The book will be published tomorrow.

You can’t go wrong with a book by Emma Lord. Her five YA novels have made her an auto-read author, so when I saw she was expanding into adult romance, I was thrilled! Her new book The Break-Up Pact, which features , friends to lovers, second-chance romance (of a sort), AND fake dating does right by its tropes and confirmed my commitment to reading everything she writes.

June and Levi were—along with June’s sister Annie—inseparable as kids and clear through high school. And then, as Levi and Annie, and then June, went to college, they drifted apart. June started dating Griffin, joining him on global adventures—and, by extension, on his quest for fame. She thought they were happy . . . until he returned from a solo trip with someone new, breaking up with June on a reality tv show and making her (the Crying Girl) a viral sensation.

Levi has achieved fame of his own, and his fiancee left him for an action movie star, meaning that Levi, too, has become a viral object of pity.

Levi returns to town, finding June running Tea Tides, the tea shop that she and Annie had always dreamed of opening. Now, in the wake of Annie’s death, June is struggling on all fronts, failing to make the business a success, losing the love that she thought she had, and finding herself unsure how to deal with the unresolved feelings she still has for Levi.

June and Levi wallow in misery for a while, and then June’s best friend Sana has an idea: they can each emerge with a little more dignity, a chance for Tea Tides, and some envy-inspired romance for Levi if they just pretend to revenge date for a while.

And so the Break-Up Pact is born.

Lord has such a fantastic touch with characters that I fell in love with June and Levi and all of their family and friends right away. The Break-Up Pact is steamier than Lord’s YA books for sure, but it captures the same giddy sense of new relationships and possibilities while balancing the wistful longing for the days when June and Levi were best friends and Annie was still alive.

I so appreciate the way the novel peels back the layers of each character’s recovery and of the rebuilding of their multifaceted relationships. It’s a lovely read, a moving portrait of compassion and friendship, grief and love, and it’s about characters figuring out who they are and how being with the right person can help them build stronger individual identities.

June and Levi were childhood friends who always harbored feelings for one another, but due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, neither ever disclosed. June and Levi have both recently gone viral after being very publicly dumped and nearly ten years after losing touch, Levi is back in their beachside hometown.

While tentatively rekindling their friendship, June and Levi enter into an agreement; pretend to date in an effort to change the narrative of their newfound celebrity and help each other out. However, old feelings are still there and neither is really pretending, which only complicates things further.

Levi was a cinnamon roll of a hero, albeit a frustrating one at times, who had to prove to June that he was in it for good. Watching June and Levi get their second chance at romance and realize that they can be more than friends was so sweet.

I am a big fan of Emma Lord’s young adult writing and her adult romance debut was just as charming.

*** Book Review

The Breakup Pact
By Emma Lord

Recommended for: people who love romance stories that don’t mind a slow burn trope and some explicit romantic scenes

Summary: Levi and June are known all throughout social media as being publicly burned by their last romantic partners. They have been friends in the past and decide to pretend to date each other as a type of revenge (socially) and as a way to help get customers for June’s tea shop. While trying to help plan their friends’ wedding, they act out a few seemingly steamy dates to prove to social media that they are doing just fine without their old partners. Slowly, they realize that maybe they would be a great couple in real life and start trying to date for real. Things start to get complicated when everyone finds out that maybe the whole relationship was a sham.

Review: This was a sweet story of past friends who end up fulfilling their crushes from high school. There were a few things I did not like about this book, however. First, there were way too many characters to try to keep all the storylines straight. Second, it read dry and slow for a long time and then, seemingly out of nowhere, it became detailed and steamy. I don’t mind spice in a book, but it went from zero spice to a ton of spice rather fast. Lastly, they kept mentioning a wedding that was being planned with a lot of details of the decisions and then the wedding, itself, was not part of the story! I wanted details of how all those decisions worked out! If I was not given a free ARC of this book for reviews, I probably would have DNF’d it.

I was obsessed with this book!

I'm a big fan of the fake dating trope and I thought it was very well executed in this case, with the social-media-viral aspect! Plus, sprinkle in a revenge plot and you've got yourself a fun read!

Now, this book felt more "adult" than other rom-coms, as it deals with heavy topics, such as the sudden loss of a sibling (past event) so be warned!

I really enjoyed the pacing, the tension between June and Levi, and their shared history. I also really liked how we watch both characters grow into themselves and learn to live with the loss of a loved one.

I definitely recommend this one!

The feel-good book that I needed. Emma Lord is so good at balancing the humor and the heartfelt, and June and Levi's strengths and weaknesses perfectly complimented one another. Plus, I LOVE that June was demisexual!

Such a good read that I enjoyed! I'm so glad that I got the chance to read it early and will definitely be recommending it to multiple people who enjoy these types of novels. I enjoyed the characters and especially enjoyed the writing by this author. I'm excited to see what the author comes out with next as I'll definitely be reading it! Thank you to the publisher for my early copy of this book!

June and Levi were best friends in high school. Levi moved to New York, and they drifted apart. Years later, they both find themselves involved in very public break ups. For different reasons, they decide to fake date (June for money and Levi to make his ex jealous).

Pick this up if you love:
- fake dating
- friends to lovers
- a little spice
- slow burn

I have enjoyed Lord’s YA novels so I was excited to jump into her first adult, The Break Up Pact! I always enjoy a good fake dating story and that is executed well here! June and Levi were very real and Lord did a great job showing their past connection, as well as helping them find their way as adults. This one lost me a bit in the pacing, but I overall enjoyed! Great for a day at the pool!

June and Levi were best friends in high school reconnect after both of their relationships blow up very publicly. And June, especially, has become a viral meme … and definitely not in a good way. The best way to bounce back and show everyone you are ok and maybe even win back your ex…..Fake dating!
This was a cute, easy, friends to lovers slow burn romance with great side characters and that small town feel! You’ll also come away hungry – I did enjoy the scone descriptions!
It did lack the depth I like in a romance, even a rom-com. There were reasons they drifted apart – almost too many, and none fully explored. The immaturity of both characters left room for too much miscommunication, or rather non-communication.
I companion listened to the audiobook, narrated by Natalie Naudus, who did an excellent job with the narration!

If you're looking for a cute, swooning, wholesome romantic comedy.... this is it! I am a sucker for friends to lovers and fake dating tropes, but this also has beautiful friendships and an incredible cast of characters! I loved to see the main characters grow into themselves and support each other! Definitely recommend