𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 4⭐️
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: contemporary romance 📚

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜:
A super sweet and fun story

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
Character growth
Spicy scenes
Found family
Polyamorous relationships
Snow days
All the queer joy
Forced proximity

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚍:
All the diversity and representation
The daughter!

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛:
Started off a little slow

Really Cute People by Markus Harwood-Jones was such an enjoyable story.
A fun and exciting queer poly romance that was super entertaining.
I absolutely ADORED this book. I was hooked from the start and found it ridiculously hard to put down.
The characters were well written and the relationship was exciting. They had good communication and all worked well together.
The plot of this was charming and fun to read.
I will most definitely be picking up Markus Harwood-Jones next titles!

Thank You NetGalley and Carina Adores for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I had trouble staying engaged while reading this book. I think it’s in part to the lack of tension throughout the first two acts. For me, the story doesn’t start until around the 70% mark.

The main character, Charlie, stays in an Airbnb for a work trip. The host family mixed up their days and are still home when Charlie arrives and will be in the house for Charlie’s first night there. The family is set to leave the next morning when they all get snowed in together. Charlie has been burned by a bio family and found family and is captivated by this host families mix of loving chaos throughout the week they’re stuck together.

There is some flirting between Charlie and the host married couple, Buffy and Hayden, but it was written in a way that it lacked the appropriate angst and tension to be a fulfilling slow burn. And then the relationship escalated rather quickly.

Personally, I wish the story was told from Buffy’s pov. She’s a burnt out stay at home mom trying to figure out what she wants her career to look like after stepping back from a successful political artist career. There was so much there boiling beneath the surface that wasn’t explored, but I would love a deeper look.

I loved this book! This is a queer book that has non binary and trans main characters. I found all the characters in this book so lovable. Charlie is a non binary person who is dealing with burnout. They end up going on a work trip but end up getting snowed in with Buffy and Hayden. Hayden is a trans man and Buffy is a bisexual woman and they have a daughter named Rainbow. Charlie develops feelings for both Hayden and Buffy. I loved the character development Charlie went through in the book.
Highly recommend.

4 / 5 stars !!

firstly, thanks to netgalley & harpercollins publishers for giving me this arc in exchange for an honest review.

this book was honestly so warm and cozy feeling, i enjoyed it thoroughly, and the various forms of poc & queer representation between the characters was so amazing to see, a poc bi woman, a plus size trans man, a nonbinary mc, etc! the very respectful way that the spicy scenes were written was also so amazing to me, because there's not much representation out there for queer relationships, especially trans, in situations like that, so i truly loved how respectfully and well written those moments were. there are not many books that tackle polyamory in a positive light, and the way that this book showed it justice and made it truly so loving was beyond beautiful to me. i adored this book very much!

This one has all the found family vibes, a queer polyamorous romance, crazy pets, an adorable kiddo, and is a super charming and relatable story of being burned out and wishing for a “normal” family - but also realizing what it truly mean to feel “at home.” It’s got small-town feels, and a fun snowed-in force proximity trope - and I really enjoyed it.

It took a bit for me to get into this one at first - the first half was really slow, and I would have much preferred more of the second half antics.... because the second half more than made up for the slow start and I can't wait to read what Markus writes next!

I so enjoyed Really Cute People!

I loved how we got a sense of who Charlie was before they met Buffy and Hayden, their comfort in being assimilated into their family, and their confusion about both hitting on them.

It was a "really cute" romance about the possibility of healthy polyamory and making queer families.

Bonus points for at least one sexy fat belly! So I can count it as fat-positive as well, with no implicit or explicit anti-fat bias.

I was already on the verge of bursting into tears. Charlie's responsible queer who never is quite sure where they fit in was just SO relatable and lovely and just SO MUCH. And then I hit "If someplace is where you're really supposed to go, you'll end up back there. Until then, there's no harm in taking a break to make sure it's what works for you." and I just started full-on sobbing. Apparently this was exactly the book that I needed to read at this point in my life. <333333

(Friends, the romance is great, the found family is A++, and if you've ever attempted to live in a communal queer situation, the breakup of Hillside is just to give you ALL of the flashbacks in ways both good and bad. But mostly I just need you all to know that I NEEDED CHARLIE TO BE HAPPY, BECAUSE READING ABOUT THEM WAS KINDA LIKE READING ABOUT MYSELF. And then they WERE and it was a little bit healing, I'm not even going to lie.)

(This is a review of a free advanced copy of this book that I was given in exchange for an honest review.)

This is a really good found family story full of wonderful queer characters.

Charlie Dee is sent on a work trip but gets trapped at their rental with the homeowners. Buffy and Hayden and their daughter are not what Charlie expects, but the dynamic might be exactly what they need.

I love the cast of characters and the various representation. Charlie is nonbinary, Buffy is bi, and Hayden is trans. I relate so much to Charlie's social feelings. The work indecision felt forced, like Charlie already knew what they wanted but was indecisive for the sake of it. Most of the book was enjoyable though.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review.

This was a little too wish fulfillment to hold my interest, especially for the first half—it was obvious what Charlie would see in the complex, intriguing Hawthornes, but the character of Charlie just wasn't very fleshed out in turn, and I wasn't sure what the Hawthornes were meant to see in them. It kind of seemed like they were built to be a general purpose reader projection/stand-in. The fact that Charlie's character, history, and body were never described in a way that would reveal anything about their assigned birth gender was really cool, but that seemed to come with a general lack of exploration of the character—they seemed to exist purely within a 2 year period in which they were going through a social and professional slump—just made them not very interesting. But the Hawthornes were plenty interesting, and it's easy to root for everybody's happiness.

This book is unapologetically queer and androgynous, very clearly experiencing the extremes of queer identity. This is not a queer romance for general audiences, but for niches within the queer community– and I do respect that balls to the wall commitment.

A fun, campy romance. Not my favorite, but a standard and good romance.

I give this a 3.5

There are so many things this books does so well, the relationship dynamic between the three main characters, their respect for one another the idea of cohesiveness in something that's not a 'typical' set up.

The character growth of Charlie really experiencing their worth and gaining confidence through their relationships.

Found family and friendship. The LGBTQIA rep was 🤌🏼

The writing is good, I find the authors writing to be nicely descriptive and poetic but not too much.

I loved the idea of the forced proximity from a snow storm, it's very Canadian and definitely common, being thrust from a quiet mundane world into chaos was great...

However, it's really missing the emotional build up, we go from random stranger to we want to be a thing. I can't pin point exactly, but it's just missing the bridge and so while I found myself enjoying their dynamic, I found myself not really understanding how they got there and they pulled me out of the story.

I love the queer community that Charlie discovers as they also fall in love with Hayden and Buffy.

The writing seemed a bit clunky to me at first, but I feel like the details and expressions were great at laying down the foundation for a lot of themes that are consistent throughout the novel.

I have been championing for queer poly romances in the mainstream market, and this one does a lot of what I love so well. The characters are diverse in so many ways. You can see what they care about and how they care about things differently, and how lovely they work together.

How they address each other and their dynamic is great - especially the funny ways of highlighting how important communication is.

It's also a very on-point queer experience of "what do you mean you like me??" or "I thought you knew!" type of situation

I can see how readers who are not familiar or comfortable with either queer or poly romances may not be able to get into it, but I would love to get more reads on this title.

I would have likes if all of them had POVs and not just Charlie.

The Forced Proximity and Love Triangle tropes were very well explored.

REALLY CUTE PEOPLE by Markus Harwood-Jones was fun! And REALLY CUTE! 😜⁣
⁣
This one has all the found family vibes, a queer polyamorous romance, crazy pets, an adorable kiddo, and is a super charming and relatable story of being burned out and wishing for a “normal” family - but also realizing what it truly mean to feel “at home.” It’s got small-town feels, and a fun snowed-in force proximity trope - and I really enjoyed it.

It took a bit for me to get into this one at first - the first half was really slow, and I would have much preferred more of the second half antics.... because the second half more than made up for the slow start and I can't wait to read what Markus writes next!
⁣
Add this one to your TBR and keep being cute my friends!

these characters ARE reaally cute :D there's definite depth to them but it still feels light and cheery, although it touches on problems. It's very much a whirlwind, but that worked very well here.

Really Cute People is the sweet & steamy poly romcom of our dreams filled with forced proximity (snowed in during a surprise snowstorm), a big cast of lovable queer characters, and all those warm fluttery feelings. A true love story to queer community and the power of finding ourselves alongside each other.

triad poly romcom | non-binary mc | Black bi woman mc | trans man mc | forced proximity | trapped in a snowstorm | group chat sexting | community organizing | steamy | rural setting in a break from the big city

4 out of 5 stars

Rep: Non-binary queer main character, Black bi love interest, trans queer love interest, non-binary/trans/queer/BIPOC side characters

Content warnings: Friend group breakup, eviction, Canadian housing crisis, burnout, brief mentions of homophobia, couple arguments, on-page sex

This was very sweet! I adored all the queer joy, found family, and excellent spice. While I appreciated the character development, it did feel a bit sudden — Charlie went from self-absorbed and grumpy to optimistic and almost magical kind of out of the blue. I’m also not sure how viable this romance would be in real life; it felt like Charlie was solving all of Buffy and Hayden’s marital problems for them. However, I am not poly, so it’s not my place to speak to the accuracy of that. All in all, this was a delightful little romp and I’d love to enter its world myself!

**HUGE thank you to Carina Adores for granting me an eARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!**

This was interesting. It took me a while to get through it, and honestly, I almost stopped multiple times in the first 3 chapters. The setup of Charlie’s life—with all their mourning and moaning over their lackluster life—got old real fast. But I’m a completionist at heart, so I started skimming, hoping it would get better. And it did, eventually. Unfortunately, that was well past the halfway point in the book. I liked the resolutions in the story and did get to the point where I was reading more than skimming, but I never felt the need to stop and really pay close attention to all the words. I think this could have been better if so much time hadn’t been spent on all the negative leading up to the happier times.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was just an ok read for me. It was not the best but it was not the worst either. I had a really hard time finishing it. Not bad, just not the best for me.

I loved this book! I devoured it in only a few sittings and wish there was more to read. The story line was paced very well and the characters were easy to love!