LaRynn and Deacon were hook up buddies for a summer in their late teens and neither of them forgot the other despite the heartbreaking way it ended. When they become joint owners of a home shared by their late grandmothers, they haven’t seen or talked to each other in almost a decade and have to rebuild their relationship along with this house. She’s kinda mean, and he plasters on this faux charm, and they are at each other’s throats until they wanna be down each other’s throats, naahmean?

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: 🌶️🫑

Liked (🚨some sorta-spoilers here🚨)
* I love how ass backwards this couple did everything. This was not-really-friends to hookup buddies to enemies to married to friends to lovers. A freakin rollercoaster but it was an interesting premise. “What if we hook up first and then become enemies and then get married and renovate a home?” I just imagine Tarah Dewitt and the Elmo fire gif.
* I loved the love and dedication to the grands. It was clear they were very special and I love the fact that LaRynn had Cece in her life, the only real stability she had.
* I appreciate a book that addresses abandonment and the effects of it. Bravo to this book for having the FMC deal with it head-on.
* I think I liked how messy and complicated it all was.
* I loved the letter they wrote to the buyers of the house.
* I appreciate that - while they did bang a lot while they were in their late teens - she didn’t write that on-page. I appreciated her author’s notes about that too. Not that I have a problem with 19 and 20 year olds boning - I just feel like a creep when I read that shit cause I’m old.

Disliked
* Okay I was immensely distracted while reading this book so it took me a hot ass minute to get into. I didn't really start getting sucked in until over 50% thru, mostly because I was watching the Olympics in between. THEREFORE, I owe Tarah a reread of this because I love her and her writing, and I need to give it the attention it deserves.
* I think I still have an inner cringe about them being family by marriage even though not by blood. I had this problem with Benny and Jane in Yours Truly and Just for the Summer as well. I can fully rationalize it in my head but my initial reaction to those types of relationships is to always be a bit put off by it.
* This is one of those books where “if they both just went to therapy…” It grated on me a little.

🫡 Tropes deployed: marriage of convenience, forced proximity, friends-with-bennies to enemies to married to friends to lovers 🎢, grief, complex family dynamics

I’ve quickly become a Tarah Dewitt fan over the last year. This was is clever and cute. We have every single trope crammed into one on this one… fake dating, second chance lovers, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, it’s got em all.

this story has been one of my top faves since it originally self-published almost two years ago, and this new & improved story has made a strong favorite an absolute masterpiece.

I have loved Deacon & Larynn’s characters from the very beginning, I love that they’re both so strong and prickly on the outside but secretly so soft on the inside. Deacon is easier to show his softer side, but Larynn shows her love through sheer protection and dedication. mixing a fun enemies to lovers with marriage of convenience, forced proximity, and renovation would be an absolute mess in any other circumstance but works exactly as it should in this story, it’s absolutely perfect!!! the overwhelming love, protectiveness, strength, acceptance, and dedication in this story is unmatched.

I am once again blown away at how Tarah DeWitt can tear me apart and put me back together so sweetly in every book she writes. DeWitt knows just how to make me feel all my feelings on the most intense level and leaves me feeling like i’ve been washed, fluffed, and folded. i thank her for it every time.

thank you so much for the arc :)))

I really struggled to get through this book. I loved the setting, the premise, the characters, but the story itself felt long and drawn out, and I had a hard time getting really into it. The flashbacks specifically were to a point when I characters were in high school, and while having some of the context was helpful, overall I felt like it just made the book drag on. I wish there were only a couple of flashbacks rather than one every couple of chapters.

I had previously read this book last year when it was still under its indie publication and absolutely loved it, but this new version completely changed not only my book ranking, but my entire perception of this book. I love second chance with silly banter and emotional confessions, and this new version of LaRynn and Deacon did not disappoint. I had the absolute best time reading this book, but that goes without saying when you’re reading Tarah Dewitt’s writing. I know anyone who picks up this book will be impressed and absolutely swooned by this couple.

✅ This is a re-write and re-publish. So if you read it the first time round, this is different from that.
✅ LaRynn Lavigne, 26 & Deacon Leeds, 27, (a Leo) working on a home renovation project
✅ dual POV
✅ marriage of convenience to access a trust fund
✅ second chance romance, dual timeline
✅ set in a coastal town
🌶️: in both timelines!

I really enjoyed this book, and I think it’s because the coastal setting adds a dreamy filtered quality to the book. I loved both LaRynn and Deacon and stayed awake entirely too late to finish.

I tried really hard to like this book, because I usually adore a well-written second chance romance. I’m also fascinated by marriage of convenience as a concept, but can’t think of when it’s useful? However, this one was just not it. At all. The FMCwas straight up the kind of FMCs that I really cannot stand. She was super annoying and bratty. Now, it might be the monk you hate effect, but what’s with the names? All the names of the characters are just so out there, it took me out of the narration. I’m very sorry to say, but I was so excited for this book, but I’m left disappointed. I did Iike the other characters, though!

Tarah DeWitt has very quickly become a must read author for me- I read Savor it a while ago and was absolutely addicted.
The Co-op follows Deacon and LaRynn as they are forced to embark on a renovation journey together, despite being exes who haven't spoken I seven years. This makes things TENSE and the tension is delicious. As a child who grew up in a renovation home- I am fully aware of the maddening tension that living in a construction zone brings and this book emulates it perfectly.
If you are a lover of:
-forced proximity
-second chance romance
-marriage of convenience?
Then you will love this.
I also will always have a soft spot for a prickly female main character and LaRynn fits the bill perfectly.

I am always a sucker for small town romances with forced proximity. LaRynn and Deacon had a summer fling years ago and is forced to work together to renovate a property owned by both their grandmothers. There's enemies vibes in the beginning and as they spend more time together, their feelings from the past bubbles up. This was a total slow burn and the tension, I was waiting impatiently for their moment.

I wanted the characters to have a little more depth, they just felt very surfaced. I felt the same with the side characters.

Thank you @smpromance for a copy of this book.

LaRynn and Deacon are childhood friends, connected through their shared grandmothers and a complicated entanglement in young adulthood that they both obsess over, even 10 years later. Inheriting a house together serves as the catalyst to bring them back into each others' orbit. Its a collection of tropes: A second chance romance that starts out as enemies-to-lovers with a house renovation in the mix and a contract marriage to boot!

I flew through this book - a fun summer read, if a tad predictable. You know how this story is going to end from miles away but that doesn't come in the way of a good time. Some of the saucy teasing and house-sharing hijinks are truly a lot of fun. All the supporting characters are given full rich backgrounds and lives that seep through the narrative, making it feel much more lived in.

My only complaint is that everything resolves in a fairly generic manner with no depth. <spoiler> They don't even end up selling the house! A deus ex machina lets her fund opening a business with her best friend anyway! </spoiler> The traumas of the characters are explored at the surface level. The realizations of how to move forward come quite suddenly and without any true self reflection. These two characters never stopped loving each other and the flashbacks to their first attempt at a relationship are not nearly as effective as the rest of the book. The emotional foundation remains shallow. And the house renovation is treated in what can be best described as a "written montage" when I was looking forward to a lot more of the book or relationship being explored intertwined with the ups and downs of redoing a home.

All in all a ride that is super fun while it lasts, even if it's not necessarily something you'll remember or keep coming back to.

<i> This review was provided thanks to an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review </i>

i got an arc of the new version from netgalley and i absolutely adored it! i have not read the original so im not sure how they compare but if there’s one thing you should know it’s that i’m obsessed with every single tarah dewitt book ive read and this one was no different

3.25⭐. Thanks to NetGalley I was able to read the ARC of the revised version of this book, which will be published in November. This was my first book by Tarah DeWitt and I enjoyed her writing so much that I will be picking up more. My rating is largely impacted by the fact that I just don't love second chance romances and this book really leans on that trope, especially in the first half. So, if you do like second change romances then you'll probably really enjoy this book. I enjoyed the second half of the book more and that was probably because it focused a bit more on the marriage of convenience trope, renovation plot, and watching these characters work through a lot of difficult issues/feelings from their parental relationships. I really appreciated that there wasn't a 3rd act break-up but still a 3rd act issue they needed to work through together. Overall this was fun but I never really connected to the characters and it feels pretty forgettable.

3.75 stars

LaRynn and Deacon inherit a building together as each of their respective grandmothers pass away. They had a fling 10 years ago that ended poorly and now they are forced to be around each other to fix up the building.

This was angsty. There was a lot baggage from their parents and from their prior relationship. Lots of miscommunication and missed signals. So it was a bumpy ride for the first half (or more?) of the book

But I thought the romance developed nicely. You can see them work through their own issues to really grow together. I enjoyed the plot and I loved that this didn’t have an annoying 3rd act break up. Like after working through all of that to have that happen would have been frustrating.

Thank you to NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Co-op is my third Tarah DeWitt book but the first one I didn’t even finish. I don’t know why but I couldn’t connect with any of the characters or the plot. I really liked Funny Feelings and I LOVED Savor It, but I couldn’t get into this book at all sadly. LaRynn and Deacon were teenage lovers but almost a decade later they are more enemies than lovers. After inheriting property from their grandmothers together, they have to do the fake marriage trope to get some money to fix the place up. I don’t know, after she spends $100 a piece for a bunch of pillows, I just felt silly for continuing to read it. She was also super annoying and Deacon called her Larry which was also annoying. Life is too short to read books that anger or annoy you. Not for me, but since I have previously loved Tarah’s books, I’ll continue to give new ones a chance!

I received an advanced copy from netgalley in exchange for a review and opinions are my own.

I love Tarah's writing.

Thank you St. Martins for this early copy!

I saw so much of myself in LaRynn, and somehow every character Tarah has written I've connected with in some way or another so strongly. To see those spikes and sharp corners and recognize them for what they truly are - Deacon is just a walking fantasy.

Sometimes, I call romcoms/romance novels fantasy novels because it feels so unrealistic to ever find this kind of love, but at the end of every book I've read from Tarah, I feel like it might still be possible for me.

This had heavier themes and struggles/topics. Grief and disability and struggle with self identity. All of which I think were written and portrayed beautifully. LaRynn has this exterior to protect herself when nobody in her life sans the grands gave her that softness she so desperately deserved...until Deacon.

I laughed a lot in this book, but I also cried several times and for me that means I really connected, and if I cry it's an automatic 5 stars lol.

I would have loved to see more of Jensen and Elyse but I loved seeing them again in the Epilogue. Deacon's part in this felt super well fleshed out as well - he wasn't just a MMC there to love her regardless, he had his own struggles and insecurities but through those struggles they found each other and supported each other and chose to love each other. (picture me crying here).

Thank you Tarah for such a beautiful story and I'm so glad you wrote it for the world to read <3

When LaRynn's grandmother dies, she leaves her home to LaRynn. But of course there is a catch....she shares ownership with Deacon, grandson to her grandmother's wife. After a tumultuous summer fling when they are teenagers, they want nothing to do with each other. But Deacon doesn't have the funds to fix the place up, and LaRynn can only access her trust if she is married. So they make an agreement to get married, and then they can fix up the place and be rid of each other once and for all.

What I liked: I love these characters. I love the idea that they have to work together to fix the building up - a place that they both have emotional ties to. The process of fixing up the place was inevitably going to push them together and force them to deal with the past. This author is quickly going to become one of my favorites - she has this way of making you so invested in the characters. I always know I'm going to cry, and I love it.

What I didn't like: I loved every second of it.

I cannot wait to read more of her books. The simplicity of everyday life in her stories are so realistic and make it so easy to connect with the characters and the story.

I really liked this book! The FMC showed a lot of personal growth and the second chance romance was sweet.

Tarah DeWitt should be protected at all costs! I LOVED Funny Feelings so I just knew I was going to love The Co-op too! This story is absolutely amazing and will get you by the throat the whole time. I can not say enough good things!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review! 🫶🏼

I read this bad boi in under 24 hours! This is my first Tarah Dewitt book and I need more! I am a lover and sucker for all tropes and this second chance romance really did it for me. Would read anything else this queen decides to publish.

Tarah Dewitt is a literary romantic genius!

The Co-Op is one of my favorite romance books. Marriage of convenience with forced proximity tossed in and a summer fling when they were 18 and they reconnect 8 years later? I loved it so much! I enjoyed this from start to finish. I love these characters so much. One thing I love about her writing and this book was how relatable and likable her characters are and you see them grow and learn and fall in love in the house that they are without knowing building as their own home. The writing is so beautiful that leaves you wanting more of LaRynn & Deacon. I’m so incredibly in love with the characters and story. I loved the slow burn and it felt perfectly paced for their story. I loved their growth and really enjoyed that I connected with these characters in a way that makes you feel seen. The ending was so beautiful and it made me so happy for these characters because after everything they went through, they deserve all the love and happiness