Young love learning its place.

LaRynn and Deacon's story is told through dual POV and two timelines. They meet when their after their grandmothers" home, who had a whirlwind story and a great love of their own. Neither particularly care for one another until one summer changes everything.

Both LaRynn and Deacon have flaws and reason to not trust relationships and giving your heart to someone. They both live with the heartache and "what-if" of the summer that changed everything.

I absolutely ate this book up! It’s a second chance romance and that is my favorite trope. The MCs being forced into a marriage of convenience to get money from their trust fund was icing on the cake. There was a lot that these two had to work through but this was such a fun read. I would definitely recommend.

Ugh. This one was a miss for me. The only conflict was a decade old miscommunication from a 19 & 20 year old. We spend 60% of this book with the characters just being so mean. Like so so toxic. When all they needed was apparently one conversation and then it was whiplash into spice. There was a lot of cliffnoting, like brief descriptions of weeks of time. It got very annoying after while. Even the flashback chapters seemed to not really do much for the story line. At no point in the first 60% of the book was a cheering for the characters to work through things and get together, so when they did I was not invested at all. They went for zero to 60 way to fast.

I got this ARC from NetGalley and this is my honest review.

Tarah DeWitt has done it again! Her writing has a way of immediately bringing me in by the first chapter! Forever a fan of Tarah and her writing! Another beautiful love story

You can never go wrong with a marriage of convenience, and Tarah DeWitt proves that again in this book. The banter and build up between the Hero and Heroine is so good. The emotional topics interwoven with the funny quips was done so well. It also felt very genuine with the amount of time passing from beginning to end.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

THE CO-OP is a strong enemies-to-lovers/marriage of convenience romance novel. The banter and the sexual tension between the two MCs is unmatched. The two MCs are genuinely so mean to one another, but IT WORKS.

If it wasn’t for the second chance romance aspect of this novel, I do feel that this book would have the potential to be a new all-time romance read for me.

A majority of the book includes dual timeline chapters that lead up to the event that caused the MCs to break up in the past. However, it feels like this event was kind of brushed over, not addressed in a past timeline chapter. Then the dual timeline suddenly stops around the 70% mark?

This story grasped my attention from the start. The writing is witty and the story is fast paced. The characters are clearly defined and rooted in their past. However, the last 30% of this novel just fell short for me, and I feel this ultimately impacted how I viewed the characters’ respective growth and development at the end of the story.

The Co-Op was such an entertaining book! If you like a good enemies to lovers story this book is for you. You get to watch both of these characters grow and learn more about each other than when they first met all those years ago. This book had great banter as well!

I hadn’t read anything by this author before so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved this book! The story was cute and fun and there was actual character development. I loved the switch between past and present, it made the story more interesting and made me like the characters more.

I went into this with high hopes but was left disappointed. While the writing was great, the stories and characters fell flat for me. If I am not hooked by a book from the very beginning it’s unlikely I will enjoy it, and that was the case here. I didn’t ever feel like I was invested in the plot or the characters.
The lack of communication and adulting between the FMC and MMC was ridiculous. It doesn’t feel like there was ever any maturing between when they were teenagers and adults. I expected the renovation to be a main point but it wasn’t addressed nearly as much as I thought it would be. Other parts felt unnecessary and didn’t add to the storyline whatsoever.

I love Funny Feelings but this one just an okay for me. Still cute and very spicy.

Thank you NetGalley and SMP for the eARC in exchange for honest review.

Second-chance romance is one of my favorite tropes. The potential for angst and all of them feels? Umatched. And The Co-Op definitely serves that!
I love Tarah's voice. There is some melancholy and nostalgia woven in the way this story is told, and I truly love how Tarah's writing makes me feel totally immersed into the story.
LaRynn and Deacon are the types of characters that I love to read about. Messy, trying to find their way, working on themselves, trying to be brave - which sounds so easy but is one of the hardest things to do. Nothing feels more relatable. And rooting for them to find their way back to each other was so easy.
I am a big believer of "meant to be" and "the right moment". The thing about second-chance romance is that it encapsulates both of these: if it's not meant to be at this point of your life, it might find you again at the right moment - if it's meant to be. And LaRynn and Deacon's love story portrays that beautifully.
The Co-Op is another addition to my list of favorites for this year.

Super cute fake dating/forced proximity romance. I love Tarah DeWitts work and this is no exception. It’s a great romance that I highly recommend.

First of all thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!!

Such a funny and emotional read. Friends to enemies and enemies to lovers. Honestly at first I wasn’t sure how I felt about LaRynn but I loved Deacon right from the start.

❤️ the sexual tension was sooooo well written
❤️ SPICEEE!!!!!!
❤️ the games/pranks they play against each other to get under each others skin
❤️ the family drama and how it was repaired
❤️ how broken they both were in different ways and repaired each other together
❤️ the way they dealt with their past relationship with each other to move onto the present

Did i read this book in one sitting? Absolutely. Tarah did an amazing job with this one. It’s hard not to be emotional about the way Deacon and LaRynn were perfect for each other. Second chance romance is my one of my favorite trope for romance. Watching the two of them work together to break down the walls (both literally and figuratively) that have kept them apart for so long was really a treat. This story is about hope, grief and self-doubt, and finding the strength to try for the love they deserve.

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The Co-op tries to mix love and construction, but unfortunately, both the romance and the plot felt as shaky as the dilapidated building the characters were trying to restore. LaRynn Lavigne and Deacon Leeds, former summer flings turned reluctant partners, are thrown back together by a shared inheritance, but their forced marriage and renovation project didn’t quite build the tension or chemistry I was hoping for.

The premise—fix up a property while navigating an awkward fake marriage—had potential, but the execution fell flat. The characters lacked depth, making it hard to invest in their journey, and their interactions felt more frustrating than engaging. The emotional walls they put up weren’t just between them—they also kept me, as a reader, at a distance.

Despite being marketed as a steamy romance, the sparks between LaRynn and Deacon were few and far between. The story leaned heavily on clichés, and the plot twists were predictable. What could have been an enjoyable exploration of partnership and growth ended up feeling like a drawn-out project with too many structural flaws.

Overall, The Co-op didn’t quite deliver on its promise of restoration—whether of buildings or relationships. It left me feeling like I’d spent too much time on a renovation that never really came together.

First, I want to say I absolutely love Tarah DeWitt as an author and cannot recommend her book Savor It more!

Unfortunately, this book was not for me and I ultimately DNF’d at 35%. I love a good enemies to lovers, but the banter between these two was harsh without a playful tone. I found both main characters unlikable, to the point where any redemption arc was going to be a moot point for me which ultimately led to me putting the book down.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC. I still look forward to DeWitt’s next release and hope this book connects more for other readers!

Oh how I just ate this book up! I will always pick up anything Tarah writes, it seems.

I have such a soft spot for stereotypically “unlovable” characters, those that seem to cause so much controversy over their personalities and actions. But this is the reality of humanity: we are flawed, we make mistakes, we are always changing (and hopefully growing, too).

LaRynn and Deacon are riddled with flaws in all the best ways. Their lives (and relationship) are complicated and emotional and raw. They both are navigating grief, difficult family dynamics, and lingering feelings about their past together. Yes, they struggle to communicate. Yes, they act on emotional impulse. Yes, they constantly grate on each other’s nerves, but as LaRynn and Deacon say, “such is life.”

The personal growth and self-awareness were the true stars of the show. Watching LaRynn and Deacon learn to acknowledge their flaws and share their vulnerabilities with one another made my heart so happy. The love was always there, they just had to learn how to show it. Sometimes it takes the right person to hang in there through all of life’s ups and downs to learn to love yourself in the meantime too.

Tarah knew what she was doing with that “bedroom talk” scene (iykyk, enough said). Holy moly, I was SWEATING.

The cherry on top of the whole book: the “grands”!! Oh how I wish we could have met them in the present. I fell so in love with them from the little snippets Tarah gave.

I have to say I have some love/hate things going on with this book. The FMC (female main character) started off very iffy for me. She was outright rude and mean in the beginning. The arguing and not listening to each other was exhausting at times.

I love the story and their burning love, however, the back-and-forth time jumps just really frustrate and tick me off. I am not sure why authors use them so much. In this book, I felt more annoyed than appreciative of the back story.

The Co-op was awesome and even with it written somewhat backwards. The main characters have zero communication skills and anger issues, which frustrate the hell out of you. But still, DeWitt manages to write in such a manner that this story will make your heart swell.

The main characters learn to live with each other, learn to love, learn to grow, and depend on each other. There was some angst and the sizzle underneath it all is what made this story so worthwhile. Their chemistry is bomb! It's getting through it all that can be a lot.

For me, the epilogue made the book, in all honestly. Anything less would be a travesty.

Just finished the book “The Co-op” by Tara Dewitt.

Both Deacon and LaRynn had a “fling” as teenagers and then ignored each other for years. Both of their grandmothers left them a house - so begins a second chance at romance plus a marriage of convenience.

It was a little slow at first for me but once they worked through some things it got so much better.

I would recommend this book.

3.75 stars

The Co-op by Tarah DeWitt is a charming second chance romance -- LaRynn & Deacon used to hook up in their late teens when visiting their grandmothers who just so happened to be married to one another. Set in a beautiful beach town in California, it's been years since LaRynn & Deacon saw each other... their grandmothers have passed and they are left to figure out what happens to home they inherited.

This one is hilarious - I enjoyed the side characters and the cheeky banter in this incredibly slow burn. I did feel like the main characters acted like teenagers even though they were pushing 30, but sometimes our past causes us to regress and brings out the more childish sides of us.

Definitely check this one out if you're looking for a cute and funny romance that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review - I look forward to reading more from Tarah DeWitt in the future.