I was such a big fan of Hameroff's debut novel, so I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of her sophomore novel. I love how Hameroff utilized the interconnected standalone structure to tie in her previous characters and utilize some of the same exposition content as her previous novel. I also adored how "real" these main characters felt to me, and there wasn't a need to fix or change their base personalities, and the use of one POV made this choice stand out and shine. The structure of family dynamics and Jewish culture was also really well done stylistically.
This was the first novel I've ever seen that executed a "reverse" marriage of convenience, which was SO intriguing! There is an oversaturation of tropes in the romance genre, so to see a popular trope be adjusted in this manner drew me in!

Some critiques that I noted include the abundant use of slang - and not just in text threads or at more appropriate times. It doesn't make sense that a person would use text slang in their internal monologue, and this, along with multiple pandemic references, brought me out of the story. Additionally, there was a lot of "will we, won't we" situationship vernacular and building blocks, which is just not in my preference.

Overall, this novel met the mark that I set! I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to others.

Classic plot line but with adorable characters and solid writing. Characters were endearing and author included interesting cultural tidbits.

Lindsay Hameroff has become an autobuy author for me! This book has so many great tropes like second chance, workplace, marriage of convenience and opposites attract.

Unfortunately this book revolves around two tropes that I typically avoid - glorified cheating and miscommunication. That is a risk I take when going into books blind! If I had known these tropes were involved, I wouldn’t have chosen to read this book.

This book reminded me of the Wedding Planner. Ali moves to Baltimore for a new job and falls for the guy she's helping plan a wedding for. The characters have a past, which leads to a funny and spicy romance. I really liked this book overall, but I am not a fan of the cheating troupe so I didn't give a full five stars.

This is such a sweet and love-filled story. A chance meeting during a night out on the main character's last night of study abroad. Matching tattoos after a bar-room bet. Fast forward 10 years and the dreamy Brit is in Baltimore. Through planning a wedding that shouldn't happen, these two fall in love and it's a lovely story. One in which I loved all the characters and read this in just one day.
I was cheering for love the entire time!
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

Second-chance romance is currently my favorite romance trope, so I was so excited to pick this up and I'm glad I did! Second-chance romance with hella banter that isn't cringy or overdone? Sign me up!

Ali is strong, intelligent, and incredibly likable. Graham is British, if that's your sort of thing, and has a heart of gold. Together these adults communicate well, consider each other's feelings, and had done a lot of work on themselves as individuals by the time their second chance at romance rolled out. This made for a very enjoyable, adult-feeling read. The angst and steam really dialed this feeling up at least by double, and I really enjoyed this one!

I will have to keep up with Hameroff's books! Thank you to St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin, and NetGalley for providing an ARC!

4.5 ⭐️
2.5 🌶️

I loved Hameroff’s debut novel, so I was super excited to receive an early copy of this book from NetGalley for review. For starters, I love that this book is a spin-off of Till There Was You, focusing on Lexi’s best friend Ali. It’s a nice tie-in, but it won’t alienate readers who haven’t read the first book. I loved the Jewish representation in this book— Shabbat dinners, Hanukkah celebrations, using words like Bubbie and yenta. I loved the relationship between Graham and Ali and was satisfied overall with how everything turned out!

Overall, I feel that this book was very well written. The FMC is going through something in her life with her career that I feel a lot of people, especially women can relate to. She struggles with feeling like she belongs, and I feel that this is a very common theme for women these days. I also enjoyed the MMC, as he handled his life situation in a very realistic way. There is a twist toward the end regarding the MMC that I DID NOT see coming, but was very happy with how it worked out in the story.

never planned on you is a second chance romance with ali and graham. they meet during ali’s semester abroad, get matching tattoos and then never see each other again. that is until ali is planning grahams wedding. I am not usually a “cheating” trope kind of gal but I think this book gave a quick reasoning for it (marriage of convenience) and it felt less taboo?? I love a “business in need of saving” trope and that is what you get with graham. ali and graham work together to grow her event business while also savings grahams family business. I did feel that there was a lack of exploration into ali and grahams working relationship. there was a 1 month time jump in which we could have gotten a better understanding of the two.

ali and grahams banger and chemistry were top notch - I overall enjoyed this story! thank you netgalley and st.martins for this arc!!

Hilarious!! This story is beyond funny! I really like Ali’s comment about living with her 2 boomer roommates and all the expired condiments! Especially since one of my adult children just visited and the boomer/expired condiments says it all! The banter is off the charts! And although there’s some “cheating” involved you just know something is up. I definitely recommend this cute rom com! And I’m hoping Chloe’s story will be coming soon!

I liked the story to an extent. I think the author did a great job of writing the story but this just isn’t my kind of book which is also okay. I didn’t connect with the FMC but I loved her humor and her always being authentically herself despite the lack of support and understanding from her loved ones.

A good, quick read about a second chance at love. After returning home from a semester abroad and finishing college, Ali is working on her career. Surprisingly, she runs into her British love connection while planning his wedding. Their connection and friendship grows as they try to save his family’s hotel and increase her success in the event planning business. Will everyone live happily ever after, we won’t find out until the Wedding day.

I loved this book!! Such a fun couple! I loved the set up of their first meeting and jumping to the next time they see each other. I didn’t love the insinuation of cheating, but it was quickly explained and remedied. Ali is so much fun and Graham is adorable. I just wanted to keep reading.

4.00 stars
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TW: Infidelity, Sexual content, Death, Drug use, Grief
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Ali is an event planner. She loves what she does, but she is also known to bounce around job-to-job as she discovers her passion. She's thrilled to get the opportunity to co-plan a wedding that could potentially launch her career and have her finally moving out of her parents' house. The only downfall? It turns out our groom is someone Ali's shared a past with, a one-night-only, where on a dare, they get matching tattoos.

As the wedding dates approach fast, we watch Ali grow in her role while trying not to reconnect with her old flame, Graham. Graham is swoon-worthy. He's moved from New York to help his grandmother run a hotel that has gone under since his grandfather's death. I do feel like he led Ali on a little bit at the start, the two of them grab coffee (and sparks fly), but he omits the fact that he's engaged. The synopsis thankfully tells us that this is a marriage of convenience to help Claire, stay in the States while working her dream job.

This has so many laughable moments, Ali is a fantastic character and saw a lot of myself in her. I do think the timeline of the book was a little rushed, one moment we're in November, and the next we've suddenly skipped an entire month. I would have liked to see a bit more of the working dynamic between Ali and Graham. For such a morally grey topic, it seems like these two have a ton of support behind them, and in the end we get a happy ending!
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I would like to thank St. Martin's Press | St. Martin's Griffin, Lindsay Hameroff, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Never Planned on You in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions formulated are my own. Never Planned on You is scheduled to publish on February 18th, 2025 pre-order your copy today!

This was an interesting love story. Our two main characters Graham and Ali first meet on Ali’s last night in London and a drunken night of fun ends up in them getting matching crazy tattoos. Fast forward to 8 years later and Ali runs into Graham again in Baltimore in what feels like a moment of fate. Ali can’t believe her luck that she ran into this man again as she’s also on the cusp of trying to land a promotion and finally settle into a career. However, things go sideways when she meets Graham a few days later as the groom of the huge high society wedding she needs to successfully plan to get her promotion. What follows is a messy complicated series of events filled with angst and longing. I really enjoyed their chemistry, and their love story and would have given it 5 stars except the sneaking around behind backs cheating part gave me the ick factor… I know it was explained in a way that would be fine for a lot of people …. But it still bothered me. I received an ARC, and this is my honest review.

This is such a cute rom com and had me laughing and swooning the whole book! Also, a British grump in glasses is going to do it for me every single time;) Loved the whole concept, very much like The Wedding Planner movie except I liked he wasn’t truly engaged to someone for love!

There isn't a single negative thing I can say about this book. It was everything you could ever want in a romance and more. I about jumped for joy when I realized that Graham had popped back in Ali's life after their one night stand in London. I was rooting for them from the get go and about lost my mind when I realized he was engaged to someone else. At first, I was a little nervous because I didn't want Ali to get in between the engaged couple, but quickly realized that everything is not always as it seems. I also think that so many people can relate to Ali and her professional development. There is nothing wrong with switching careers until you find something you are really passionate about. It was hard to watch Ali struggle with feeling good at what she does but it just made her all that more relatable. This is my second novel by Hameroff and I will for sure read whatever she comes out with next!

10/10 for the meet cute in this novel!! What a fantastic origin to this second chance romance story -- it was fun and gave us such a great insight into our main characters personalities. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, especially Ali's journey and growth. It was fun, funny, light yet filled with substance! I struggled with some of Ali and Graham's choices and at times felt like I was just waiting to watch it all come crashing down -- that's the only reason this wasn't a full 5 star read for me. However, I would still absolutely recommend it to romance readers!

A second chance romance that definitely landed in the Jewish department for me. The representation was fantastic and everything I wished I had growing up as a reader. All the foods mentioned, the family dynamics, and Bar Mitzvah were well done.

On the other hand, Hameroff’s sophomore novel didn’t quite excite me and at times it dragged and I had to skim a little. Listen, I’m all for the pop culture references (Taylor Swift any day and every day) but this book had HEAVY references. If you’re not into that thing, definitely do not read it. Also I read some reviews about the cheating trope which yeah, it’s in here but it’s kind of a technicality? The FMC Ali isn’t in a marriage of convenience - but the MMC is and you know that from reading the description on the back of the book. My problem with that is he doesn’t admit it to her until 53% of the book and that just seems too late since the readers already known it for half the book, but hasn’t technically found out. I think the reader should’ve found this out earlier in the book or it should not have been listed on the back cover description and more so hinted at during the plot. Also, Ali’s past relationship is mentioned almost towards the end and it’s like why even bring it up this far into the book because it’s not background information at this point.

For the most part it is fluffy romance with cute tropes and it’s nice to see a book set in Baltimore. It just wasn’t a favorite book. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to read more Jewish representation, though!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!