Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Enjoyable read overall. Well fleshed out characters, generally believable romance, and good spice. It wasn’t a home run for me but that’s probably just personal preference, as love triangle type set ups aren’t my thing. I also found the dialogue/inner monologue swapping a bit jarring.

This book is almost a cozy read to me. It's a slow read, but not in a boring way. I was engaged the whole time, but it didn't feel rushed which made me love the characters more and really get the time to root for the relationship. The characters were great communicators and actually compatible. All of this made for great tension in the slow burn that made it all that more amazing when they gave in to each other.

I enjoyed this book. while it was a little confusing at first. I liked the dynamic of it with Deanna and River's deal and how they slowly got to know each other through this deal with all the questions and everything.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me this advanced copy to read and review. The Neighbor Wager by Crystal Kaswell is a dating app, boy next door, great chemistry along with being a steamy romance novel. Deanna created a dating application with her sister Lexi. Lexi hasn't dated. The neighbor River needs to prove to Deanna that love is more then just a predictable algorithm with collectable data. He needs to prove love can be undeniably magical with no predictability. River also has had a huge crush on Deannas sister. Lexi. This was a 3 star read.

The Neighbor Wager✨
By Crystal Kaswell📊

Review🫶🏻

I read this lovely book on holiday, and it was a great relaxing read. The book questions how to find your perfect match—by logic or love? It’s always great to find powerful and headstrong female main characters, and I’m glad the author gifted us with one in this book. I also loved that the MMC was more into his feelings than the FMC. It’s great to see books shed a different light on gender instead of the typical stereotypes. Good read!

Rom com😂
Boy next door🏡
Charming💕
Steamy🌶️
Dating app📱

4 stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What’s not to like about this book?
You get lovable characters with great chemistry, a sweet story, and lots of steamy scenes.
I thinks books are like perfumes, they work for some but not for all. This book, I personally enjoyed it very much. It was entertaining with characters filled with vulnerability that may relate to some of us at some point in our lives.
Plus you get an extra free book at the end which is always lovely.

Thanks NetGalley for giving me a copy of The Neighbor Wager by Crystal Kaswell. #TheNeighborWager #NetGalley

I was provided with an ARC of this novel. This review is honest and unbiased.

The Neighbor Wager is a modern take on Sabrina with a gender twist and is told from the POV of the female and male main characters. Deanna is a no-nonsense, logical, powerful woman, and River is the artistic boy-next-door who grew up to be a hottie with a tattoo sleeve. My favorite character was Lexi, sister to Deanna and ideal California girl. I enjoyed the sister dynamic, and thought the characters were very distinct and well-fleshed out.

While I liked the main characters, I had a hard time following the dialogue. For every spoken line, there was 2-3 sentences of internal monologuing, which made the conversations feel halted and unnatural. This style of writing made it especially difficult to follow the conversation concerning the bet of Love being logical vs. magical. This bet sets up the major plot line for the novel, but I felt like I was missing the gist of the conversation because the dialogue was so choppy.

Overall, this book makes for a light, frothy read. I would recommend The Neighbor Wager as a quick summer read. The characters are distinct, and there is a fair bit of spice as well. 3/5 stars.

Thank you Entangled for sending me an E-ARC of this romcom novel!

Summary: Deanna is a realist who is trying to find funding for the dating app so co-created with her sister. Her sister, Lexie is slow to jump into commitment and gets scared when she needs to lock down her current boyfriend for the app's success. This is where River, the neighbor comes in with his long standing crush on Lexie. Deanna makes a bet with River to not pursue Lexie while single for the app's success.

Overall, I felt myself going back and forth about how I felt. I couldn't connect to Lexie, even though I wanted to and tried. The spice was deeper for this book, but at times felt like it came before or without the main character connection. It was mentioned a little often without basis for my taste, but you may feel differently! I did find myself picking up the book to see what happened and it was easy to binge through. Also my one major note is that I will never be okay with the word algorithm being shortened to "algo" for a whole book. Especially with a grandma saying that.
I rated this story 2.5/5 stars! Halfway for my halfway feels..

I picked up this book by solely looking at the cover and the blurb wasn't descriptive enough either. This is the first book that I'm reading by this author and in the beginning, it took me some time to adjust to the writing style. Then I also found out that the MMC, River is pinning after the FMC, Deanna's sister Lexi which was a let down. I loved Deanna, she was smart, independent, kind and caring and I mostly enjoyed reading the book only because of her. While I understand that her sister was a commitment phobe, I still found her to be immature and stupid at times. And I could sympathize with Deanna when she felt like she was living under her sister's shadow. The whole love triangle trope is not really my thing and if I had known, I wouldn't have picked up this book tbh. Though, all the character's feelings were portrayed very well and the slow burn between Deanna & River was good, I still couldn't bring myself to connect with the book.

Thank you Entangled Publisher & NetGalley for providing me this ARC

Life is hard. Romance novels should be an escape of sweet proportions. Crystal writes them exactly that way.

No, I’m won’t say how or what happens.., but this book is a hug that lasts as long as you read/remember it.

The Neighbor Wager by Crystal Kaswell was such a fun read to give my brain a rest between fantasy series I am involved in reading. The story follows two sisters, Deanna and Lexi, who have started a dating app. Lexi is a love em and leave em kinda girl until she meets her perfect match on their app. That is until the pressure to get engaged as the poster couple gives her cold feet. Enter River, their childhood neighbor who has always been obsessed with Lexi. Visiting from New York, it seems that River may have his chance with Lexi until Deanna proposes a wager: prove to Deanna love is magical and not data and statistics and he has the green light to go for Lexi and if he loses he will help Deanna reunite Lexi with her true love.

This story was fast paced and I was able to read the entire book in one sitting. I felt like I was watching a movie in my because of the pacing, descriptions, and interactions between each character. I love that Crystal was able to tell this story in a way that showed the complex feelings each sister had about each other without making it a competition and encouraging jealousy and resentment. The female characters in this book are definitely "girls' girls" and the men are too! I really enjoyed how she wrapped everything up with a nice shiny bow and everyone had their happily ever after.

Thank you Netgalley and Entangled Publishing for the opportunity to receive an advanced reader copy to read and review.

The Neighbor Wager has echoes of the 1980's John Cusack romcom The Sure Thing.

River is an artist who now lives in NYC. When he returns to California to help his grandmother, he sees his longtime fantasy crush, Lexi. Lexi is a beautiful bubbly blonde who embodies the fantasy of the ideal woman. She's also Deanna's younger sister. As in the movie, Lexi moves in and out of the plot like a mirage but doesn't really drive the story forward.

Deanna is brilliant, serious and intimidating woman. (She's compared to Steve Jobs, but less of an ass.) Disbelieving of soulmates and uncomfortable with emotions, she develops an app to predict which couples are compatible. Determined to prove that the algorithm works to obtain venture funding, she's very invested in showing that Lexi's match with Jake will go the distance. River's appearance next door will potentially throw a wrench into that plan.

Deanna and River make a bargain. If he can convince her of the magic of true love, she will step aside and let him explore his destiny with Lexi. If not, he will step aside. As River spends time with Deanna, he grows to appreciate her smarts, vulnerability, caring and beauty. Even though he supposedly has a crush on Lexi, all he can think about is Deanna. As River and Deanna click and complement each other, Lexi's illusion is between them. Deanna worries that River compares her to Lexi and that he views her as a second best substitute. In that way, the Neighbor Wager feels a bit like a love triangle - even though there's no cheating.

Deanna and River are both very likeable characters. It's easy to engage with and understand both. I enjoyed seeing their relationship develop as they spend time at the beach, share memories about their families, and explore their fantasies together.

Special thanks to the author and netgalley.com for an advance copy. This is an honest review.

The Neighbor Wager was an interesting read. It’s self described as a modern, gender-twist on the classic romantic comedy Sabrina. Although it’s blasphemous to admit, I’ve never seen Sabrina so I don’t know how well it does its inspiration justice but I liked it nonetheless.

It follows the story of River, who returns to his Grandmother’s home after many years away and falls right into the shenanigans of his family with their neighbors Deanna and Lexi. Time has treated both sisters well and he’s just along for the ride.

Even as the older sister, Deanna has always felt like she lives her sister’s shadow. Where Deanna is strong willed and overly logical, Lexi is bubbly and fun loving. In essence, Lexi is Deanna’s polar opposite, but that’s what makes the sisters so close. The two sisters create a dating app and are on the verge of a huge business deal but it all rides on the success of Lexi’s own relationship.

Unfortunately, Lexi is a commitmentphobe. Although she’s met a good man named Jake, they haven’t slept together so she’s feeling the itch to RUN. So she suggests a break that Jake reluctantly agrees to. When Lexi sets her sights on River, Deanna is does everything in her power to keep Lexi from making a big mistake. Including keeping River occupied...

This book was different than I expected. It’s quiet and slow, but held my attention. The way the characters all approached their feelings was really sensible. Even Lexi, who was struggling with her fears went straight to her boyfriend to communicate her needs. It’s rare to find characters that are all this communicative and mature. They spend so much time talking which made the storyline feel very deep and introspective. It made me stop to think of my own feelings towards love.

In general, The Neighbor Wager made me want to slow down my reading which was an interesting experience. By the halfway point I was yelling at River and Deanna to just give in to their desires, but I liked the tension of their slow burn and didn’t want to miss out on their conversations as they figured their relationship out.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. I want to thank Entangled Publishing for providing me with an eARC. It was my first book from Crystal Kaswell and I enjoyed adding a new author to my shelf.

Apologies to the author, but this book did not resonate with me. I've never watched the movie Sabrina, so I went in a bit blind. But the blurb called it a romantic comedy, so I had high hopes. (I've read and enjoyed a fair amount of Crystal Kaswell's self pubbed stuff in the past, but it has been awhile.)

Sadly, I found this book neither romantic nor comedic. I am not sure what parts were supposed to be humorous, but nothing got a chuckle out of me. As for the romance... Did you ever hang out with psych majors in college? They want to overanalyze everything all the time, and it comes off as super pretentious and quickly annoying? That is both of these main characters. Add in the fact that the entire cast things and talks about almost nothing but sex (but in a non-romantic, frequently crass way). Plus, all the analysis that made it feel a lot like telling instead of showing, and it is just a complete miss for me.

The one possibly good thing I can say about this book is that for some reason, it reminded me of the one Colleen Hoover book I've read. (I didn't like that one either, but it is ridiculously beloved.)

So maybe, if you like Colleen Hoover, you'll like this. Or if you're a psych major? Or if you liked the movie Sabrina (unsure on that one because I am not sure if it is actually similar?)

River and Deanna place a bet. River needs to prove to Deanna that there is magic in falling in love. If he can prove this, she will move aside and let River have his chance with Lexi, if not he has to help keep Lexi and her boyfriend together.

There is a heavy emphasis on terminal illness in this book. The loss and heartbreak were very powerful.

This was a cute twist on the boy next door trope.

I want to thank Crystal Kaswell ,Entangled Publishing and netgalley for this brilliant ARC. This is my honest opinion of this book.

Ok I loved this book! I was fun, it was sexy, it was sweet and it was PERFECT.

if you're looking for a romance with a STEM twist, this is it, and you won't be disappointed.

Firstly, the dual point of view was perfectly balanced, which I find quite rare in romances, so thank you!
The characters are endearing, and we see them evolve, learning their fears and desires.

The author revisits the clichés of today's world and manages to turn them, adding her own reality to them.

The man falls in love first, he's the one who believes in love and it's the woman who's ultimately unsure of their relationship and doesn't want a ring right away, and that's refreshing!

loved this romance and what is love and romance. I loved the sister's and working together and they figuring out their relationship. I loved that the romance with the neighbor and smexy times. I loved that they are figuring things out too.

River Beau only had eyes for his neighbor Lexi, the only problem…her sister had other plans for her and it didn’t include River. As a successful sibling duo in the dating app business, Lexi and Deanna had it all except one thing…Love. When River returns to town years and a toned tattooed muscular body later still infatuated with Lexi, Deanna does everything in her power to keep him away. Going as far as making a wager with him. Love is not logical and cannot be quantified and Deanna is nothing but numbers and analytics. Until River.

I devoured this book. It was the perfect amount of cute mixed with spice. The slow burn built a tension not only between the characters within the pages, but within yourself. I could feel the emotions of each character as i read every word Crystal Kaswell wrote. I love that each character has their own quirks and insecurities, as it makes them more real.

5/5 ⭐
2.75/5 🌶️

I received this eARC from Entangled Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thanks Entangled Publishing!

💙 The Neighbor Wager ARC Review 💙

Thank you so much to Crystal Kaswell and Entangled for the opportunity to read and review this book!

The Neighbor Wager is a standalone contemporary romance. Deanna has always felt like the unpopular sister - Lexi is perfect and she’s not. River had a crush on Lexi in high school, and has an opportunity to date her now - but what happens when he enjoys spending time with Deanna more than her sister?

This was a fun romantic read. River was a complex character and I enjoyed the relationship he unexpectedly built with Deanna. I liked the dynamics between the two of them throughout the story, but I did feel like some of it moved a little too quickly for my own personal tastes

Overall this was a three star read for me. This book was a smidge of a slow burn but had a few spicy scenes with some mild kink once it got there - so overall two flames for spice.

If you’re a fan of contemporary romance with strong women, fun banter with an interesting story, then absolutely check this one out.

Please note: review will be posted on Amazon upon publication

This was a great read, like so many others have said it is light hearted but with serious undertones that are written very well. I truly enjoyed how River was intuitive with his own feelings and knew what he wanted- it was refreshing.