I pretty much picked up this ARC as soon as I received it. The premise is great and I love the small town atmosphere. The story was strangely convoluted, though, and it made connecting with the main characters difficult. I do think that this author has potential and has created a great setting for future books. This one just didn’t quite work for me.

Work It Out is a small town, forced proximity, celebrity, found family romance. This book has solid romance tropes, an enticing premise and repped a lesser known health condition. The characters, both the main characters and side characters, were likable and relatable. That being said, I did struggle with this one. It took a while for me to get invested in the story and the writing style was hard for me to follow at times. This was written in third person, which admittedly is not my favorite, but I feel like it really compounded the problem of whose point of view we were reading. This one also had very cheesy dialogue and phrasing, was repetitive at times and omitted details that could have been helpful. (I was never quite sure why Jake went by Jake when his given name was Christopher other than it was most likely a stage name.) This story had A LOT going on… too much in my opinion. There was Jake’s fitness, health issues and desire for privacy, Rayah’s financial struggles, other man AND other woman drama, Rayah’s family issues and secrets, small town and found family shenanigans, and the hunt in addition to the standard will they or won’t they relationship drama. I was impressed that most of these were satisfactorily resolved but the story seemed long and did seem to drag at times. Jake and Rayah both made mistakes but Jake loved Rayah enough to put her comfort and happiness above his own. In the end, I got the hard fought emotional and satisfying HEA that I wanted.

Thank you for giving me an arc of this book!

I’m so torn about this book, so torn. It feels like it’s one draft away from perfection. The premise is so good, the characters are really good, the banter is great… I just found the flow and dialogue difficult at points. At times there was so much going on I couldn’t keep up. I enjoyed this book, and k loved the cover too… it’s a 3.75 stars for me. I’m excited to see this author evolve with future projects too!

Work it out is a very enjoyable small-town romance between a famous actor,Jake, and a former gymnast, Rayah. I liked the pace of the book for the most part and the way the surrounding characters are portrayed and contribute to the story. I also liked the way the more sensitive issues were addressed, it was subtle but not superficial. I would have liked to know some more things about the MMC’s past and how he grew to become the man he is now, it felt like the FMC had more attention by the author in this part.

I guess the thing that bothered me the most was Rayah’s tolerance of Jake’s attitude towards her in the beginning of their acquaintance- I mean she was portrayed as strict, how could she not complain when he started calling her “cupcake” out of nowhere?


-Written in 3rd person
-Spice: max 2/5 🌶️

Overall: 4/5 ⭐️ for me.

I received an advanced free copy of this book via NetGalley & Entangled Publishing and I’m leaving a voluntary review.

This was such a fun read. At times the story got a little crowded, with the fallout from her gymnastic history and his medical/celebrity history. But the world created here - the town, the gym, the fascinating secondary characters - makes me want to revisit Bigbone, AZ again and again.