The Next Best Fling by Gabriella Gamez kept me up half the night to finish it! I absolutely adored this story of unrequited love, unexpected attraction, and fake dating. Perfect for fans of Emily Henry's Funny Story, I especially loved a librarian-football coach romance since I am a librarian and my husband coaches football!

Huge thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this fantastic rom-com!

Marcela Ortiz is a Teen Librarian that has had a crush on her best friend Ben for ten years. She has been waiting for a chance all this time, but her world crumbles as he gets engaged. Marcela knows that this time she definitely has to move on, and her coworker bestie advises her to have a fling (or multiple) to take him out of her system. In her search for the perfect rebound, she ends up helping ex-NFL player Theo, who is no other than her best friend’s oldest brother. He has been in love with his brother’s fiancé since they were young, and Marcela gives him the same advice her bestie gave her. Seems like a good deal since both of them have someone they have to get over, and are craving a distraction, right?   
 
When I tell you that I loved this book and cried multiple times, I’m not even kidding. I saw myself in Marcela, a curvy librarian that struggles to be confident even when she knows she’s beautiful.  

Usually a story about falling in love with the brother of your “ex” would’ve been hard to digest and not my cup of tea. But this novel was different, because as you put yourself in her position (if you’re curvy as I am) you understand why she would think she was “in love with him”. The vulnerability of thinking and holding on to the idea of being unworthy for anyone else and after that many years, discovering that you’re worthy of love, REAL love. A love that will make you feel wanted and desired. Not what you thought it was, not what the other guy gave you for 10 years waiting for him to choose you. Taking the scraps. The typical “you accept the love you think you deserve”.

I give this book 4.5/5✨

Fake Dating to Survival➡️ to Friends➡️ to Lovers
Mexican American FMC
Plus Size Representation

This book comes out on July 9! Put your alarms and write it in your calendars, so you don’t miss it out! 

Huge thanks to netgalley and Gabriella Gamez for the ARC. 💖

“Call me what you want,” he says against my lips. “As long as I get to call you mine.”

The Next Best Fling was the type of romance book that you sit down and keep reading until you finish it. And that is exactly what I did. Marcela and Theo’s story had me hooked from the very beginning and left me on the edge of my seat wanting to know what was next and how their story would resolve.

One aspect of this novel that really resonated with me was Marcela being a plus-size and curvy woman. The author did a wonderful job of showcasing how a woman can love her body and who she is while also still having valid moments of insecurity and doubt, especially when it comes to the physicality of a new relationship or fling. It was real and it was relatable as someone that exists in a larger body.

Some of my favorite scenes were between Marcela and her mom. I loved that her mom was always bringing her food to replenish her stock of homemade goods and wanted the tea about who she was dating. The scene where Theo tags along was absolutely precious and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since finishing the book!

This ex’s brother, fake dating situationship between a librarian and ex-NFL player was messy and steamy at the same time. And the pining in this book? EVERYTHING. Theo was such a darling love interest who made me love a blond fictional man — what a feat. A blond MMC? It’s not often I’m like “yes, he’s the one!!”

Overall, this was such a wonderful romance read and I’m excited to see more Librarians in Love books.

This book centered in on Marcela, a youth librarian in love with her best friend, Ben - who is getting married to her former college best friend. Sounds complicated, right? Enter Theo, the groom's brother who is just about to blow up Ben's engagement to Alice when Marcela steps in to stop him. And then subsequently start a fake fling with Theo so they both can get over their decade-long infatuation. Sounds messy, right? Right.

I wanted to love this book, but it had too many aspects going against it. The plot and storyline were fantastic and had the right potential, but the writing was very, very repetitive and so slow-moving that it became boring at times. I got annoyed reading about how much Marcella loved Ben and waited for him for ten years. She came off as too self-deprecating and immature, making her character unrelatable and unenjoyable. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to like Theo at first because we were first introduced to a flashback of him in a drunken rage. Hello, red flag! I don't think there was absolutely zero chemistry between Theo and Marcella, but I wish there were more. I like how Theo listened to Marcella and gave her opportunities to explain herself, but he felt a tad too bland and vanilla, not a lot of personality.

I wish during the scene when Angela and Marcella were speaking Spanish in front of Theo, instead of having their conversation in the Spanish language with an English translation in italics, they just had their conversation printed in English. I would have loved to have the opportunity to read the Spanish and see the English translation. I also think it was a missed opportunity to have Theo be fluent in Spanish.

Another gripe about repetition is the amount of cupping of the face and cheeks that happened. I wish they could have cupped something other than each other's faces! I eye-rolled after the third or fourth cupping. Also, the rift between Ben and Theo was messy and confusing and we never got the full story of how Ben caused Theo to injure his knee. Ben was made out to be the villain, but the process of painting him that way was too long and drawn out.

Overall the idea was great, but perhaps the editing should have been a bit more keen. Thank you to Netgalley and Forever Publishing for the chance to read this advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

What an entertaining book this was! If you're a fan of drama, pining, and tension, you won't want to miss The Next Best Fling!

I laughed, I was frustrated, and this book had me on a rollercoaster of emotions. I hated Ben with a passion. I loved Theo and Marcela and was rooting for them the whole time.

Things I liked:
📖 Love square
📖 They're each other's rebounds
📖 Librarian x ex-NFL player
📖 He's the sweetest
📖 They both learn to trust
📖 Books!!

"Call me whatever you want," he says against my lips. "As long as I get to call you mine."

This book is sweet and earnest. The MCs run into so many great will-they/won’t-they situations. Fun, lighthearted read.

The Next Best Fling by Gabriella Gamez was an easy, comfortable read. It was well written, and I enjoyed it while I read it, but I did not linger on the story or want to go back and reread it.

Marcela has been in love with her best friend for years, but it was unrequited. Theo is also in love with a childhood friend and about to share his love for her when Marcela intervenes. After a misunderstanding, Marcela and Theo pretend to be together.

Marcela Ortiz has had a crush on Ben Young for well over eight years (!!) and, in My Best Friend’s Wedding style, Ben has become engaged to another woman, Alice. Spirited librarian Marcela is expected to attend the wedding in spite of her secretly broken heart, and that means being a part of all of the pre-wedding festivities. She finds herself distracted from her heartbreak by Ben’s older brother, Theo. A former NFL player looking for a new life beyond the field, he, too, has a secret crush… on Ben’s fiancée, Alice, his own long-term friend. Marcela is horrified when Theo tries to confess at the engagement dinner that he’s in love with his brother’s bride-to-be. She grabs him and steers him to her room so he can sleep off his drunken impulse. The only problem is that when they emerge in the morning, their friends and family think they’ve hooked up.

Marcela and Theo shrug it off. Hey, they’re lonely and they both need a date for the wedding, so maybe if they fake a relationship for long enough they’ll have a good cover for their feelings for the bride and groom. Fake dating after a fake drunken hook-up, though, leads to a real drunken hook- up. Surely they can keep things purely physical? And if they can’t, can they let go of Ben and Alice and find real love with each other?

I had a few problems with The Next Best Fling. At least one of them is due to the fact the heroine is crushing on a guy who refuses to acknowledge her worth and has not done so for a good eight years. And while it’s good that Theo and Marcela know their crushes aren’t healthy and are in fact holding them back from getting where and what they really want out of life, it also takes them both forever to disengage from Ben and Alice. The burn is a slow one as they waddle through their denial toward real love, and for some readers it’s going to take way too long for them to get to that point.

I liked Marcella and her absolute true love of being a librarian; the plus-size rep here is also stellar, and I liked that Theo has a sweetness to him on top of it all. The romance builds realistically and I wanted Marcella and Theo to wake up and get it together already.

What isn’t realistic is what happens with Ben, the plot twisting him until…well, you’ll see.

The Next Best Fling is a big, messy romantic drama. The central romance is sweet, the hero and heroine lovable, but too much focus is pulled from it by the crushes they have on others to make it fully credible. I definitely enjoyed it, but I can’t quite give it a wholehearted recommendation.

This was such a cute read! I really enjoyed the love story that was developed between Marcela and Theo. Firstly, fake dating is one of my favorite because it leads to killer tension moments, and we did not miss out on those in this one. Secondly, the TWIST with Theo’s brother/Marcela’s “love” was just something I did not see coming, and honestly was kind of sad? But it really did fit Theo and Marcela’s love story. Finally, the SPICE was so good. I loved having a plus sized FMC (which I really relate to) experiencing so many moments that we only ever really see in stories about skinnier FMCs. The on thing I didn’t love, though, was the third act breakup bits, even if it wasn’t truly a third act breakup. Just generally not my favorite part of a story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Rounded up from a 3.5

Who wants to read about a love triangle when you can read about a love square!

Marcela has been in love with her best friend, Ben, for years now; the only problem is that he is about to propose to his long-term girlfriend, Alice. Enter Theo, Ben’s older brother who has been in love with Alice since childhood. When Marcela finds Theo pacing around and practicing a speech at Alice and Ben’s engagement party, professing his love for her, she knows she has to step in and stop him from causing a scene. After leaving the party together and showing up to a family brunch together the next morning, Marcela and Theo now find themselves in a fake relationship of sorts and continue the ruse so that they can get over their respective feelings for the future bride and groom.

I loved the setup of this so much! Like I knew it was bound to be messy and it delivered on that. Marcela and Theo’s relationship evolved so naturally to me and I loved how they gave each other the space to open up to one another about everything and anything. Theo is such a sweetheart and he falls so hard for Marcela! He did so many little things along the way that just made me swoon (kissing her knuckles when he held her hands, participating in her library’s teen book club, buying her favorite books, and more).

I do wish we would have been able to see more of Theo’s professional life, he’s a recently retired football player because at times I felt like his profession could have been anything else and the story would pretty much be the same. And I do understand that football and his injuries played a huge part in the brotherly dynamics between him and Ben. I just wish we saw more of it firsthand on the page.

Overall it was a very quick and easy read and I will read more by this author in the future.

rep: plus size latina
cw: abandonment, emotional abuse, toxic friendship, fatphobia, body shaming, injury

4 Stars

The premise for this book was such a fun one! Two love interests who have been pinning over people they couldn’t have, an engaged couple, finding one another. While there were a couple of tropes featured in this book that I am not a huge fan of, like third act breakup and lying, I flew through this book because I loved the MMC; THEO!! He was so bomb, like the gold standard!

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

this was a miss for me. i was really excited about it because it was about a librarian, marcela, who falls in love with her best friends brother, theo. but there were too many aspects of the book that i didn't enjoy that disappointed me overall.

marcela is the epitome of the 'not like other girls' trope and i couldn't handle it. she acted very immature and juvenile for her age. that fact that she was pining for almost a decade over a man who was in a relationship but also a complete asshole? girl GET UP. i couldn't believe that she remained friends with (and fell for) a manipulative narcissist for most of her adult life. girl.

from the get go, theo had no personality. he literally spoke to her in "grunts"??? and he was also pining after his childhood friend for years. like what???? aside from that it was obvious that he definitely had alcohol problems. most of the book he was drunk, she was, or they both were. there was instalove between them but zero chemistry. they were brought together by circumstance but didn't actually fit each other's personalities.

the drama and the conversations were annoying. the amount of miscommunication made me roll my eyes multiple times. the plot keping going on and on in circles, repeating itself until i honestly almost dnf'd the book lol. i really did enjoy the plus size rep in this and the fact that marcela was a librarian!

Thank you to NetGalley & Gabriella Gamez for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for a review!

The Next Best Fling was an absolute rollercoaster - our two main characters are fighting unrequited love… and use each other to do it! Our MCs are a curvy librarian girly + an ex NFL player to boot 😍

The events of this book were like a tele-novella - love triangles (squares?), daddy issues, sibling drama, and not quite getting over exes. I enjoyed reading it a lot!

This book releases on July 9th, so be sure to give it a read!!

What a page turner! I could not put this book down! The Next Big Fling was spicy, swoon-worthy, angsty, and just fantastic. I related so much with a heartbroken plus-sized FMC and am so glad to see characters like her get a happy ending. The two main characters both experienced so much personal growth together and because of each other, it was evident that the chemistry was there and the love was real. The love they shared felt so mature and patient and healthy, I wish I had a support system like their's! This book gave me all the right feelings and I cannot wait to see what the author writes next!

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read an arc of this book!

I was expecting to like this or at least enjoy my time reading it. I feel bad that I came out of it thinking it was just okay and I didn't really enjoy myself much.

Everything about this book felt surface level to me. Nothing had any impact. The characters had no chemistry of any kind; best friends weren't shown as best friends, we were just told they were. It didn't feel legitimate. The drama between the brothers was supposed to be angsty or have an impact of some kind but it didn't hit the mark for me. Probably because it all felt flat/surface level. I did like that Marcela was a librarian and that was used in the story a lot.

I thought the book was entertaining I kept reading for the messy drama honestly. it was cringy at times, but I enjoyed it. I liked Marcela and Theo how they supported each other when they needed it. I look forward to reading more from Gabriella

"The Next Big Thing" by Gabriella Gamez is a super cute rom-com with a heroine you can't help but root for. Marcela's been in love with her best friend forever, but when he gets engaged, she finds a surprising distraction in Theo, his ex-NFL player brother. After a drunken mix-up leads everyone to think they hooked up, Marcela and Theo decide to roll with it. But as they hang out more, their fake relationship starts to feel way too real.

Marcela is an extremely relatable character - nerdy, anxious, realistic body type, and totally adorable. I LOVED that she's obsessed with the "An Ember in the Ashes" series - same girl, same! Theo is the perfect guy - he gets her and thinks she's amazing just the way she is. They've got that fiery chemistry, and the rest of the characters add to the laughs and drama.

The only thing that bugged me was that Marcela's overthinking sometimes made her create unnecessary drama. But honestly, that's a pretty small complaint. "The Next Big Thing" is basically the perfect read if you're into friends-to-lovers and fake dating. It's got all the feels, and you won't want to put it down.

What a delightful and fast read — a romance where the reason for the rift contains real depth and is about so much more than miscommunication. Just the feelings and fun and romp I was looking for

- Best friend's brother
- Friends-with-benefits to get over their unrequited feelings for his brother/his fiance.
- Plus-size Latina FMC
- Angst/pining

What to expect in The Next Best Fling:
- A very relatable heroine (hello, a plus-size librarian who loves books).
- A cinnamon roll, ex-NFL player hero who's honest about his feelings once they develop.
- Multiple hot, spicy scenes. The tension and chemistry between them was palpable.
- Characters that support one another and grow as the book progresses.
- A messy, complicated love story with lots of drama. Like watching a telenovela!

You just might have to suspend belief in the love square plot.

I love a good fake dating/ mistaken couple trope, and this story starts out strong. I was even okay with the toxic quadrangle that started it all. It’s the type of ridiculous drama that only works in books and seems reasonable to ignore red flags for the sake of good plot. I loved how Theo and Marcela interacted and held each other up, building a friendship alongside and independent of the chemistry they felt. Strong setup.

But it didn’t progress well beyond that. Despite all the effort I never felt like I got enough depth and detail to the two leads. The secondary characters were annoying and the interactions with them never felt satisfying or even cathartic. It was all too messy, with thoughts and actions just going around in circles like a holding pattern. It filled the pages but not my enjoyment.

In the end it was just okay. Not bad, I’d still be curious about more from the author, but slightly frustrating.