This was a solid 3 star read for me!

The chronic illness rep I felt like was done very well. Obviously the entire premise of this story really points to massive issues within our healthcare system - I think it's really obvious where the author stands on that front and I had zero issue with it.
Evie was a flawed character and I did end up liking her, but it definitely took me some time to really get into her on her own. I think people tend to be harsher on female leads so honestly for me, I don't think there was anything wrong with how she was written, I just think she was written with a personality I don't relate to, but that doesn't mean that other's won't love her! I did really like Theo from the start. I thought he was sweet and supportive and an easy read for me.

Overall it was a cute story!

Thank you so much to Celadon books for the eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

I had a hard time getting into this book as in the beginning, there were a handful of characters and then you have to track which one was talking in that specific chapter. On top of that, there are also flashbacks thrown in that made it even more confusing for me. I had an advanced copy so I'm not sure if the end result will have the chapters marked better or not.

I did push thru it and I think in the end, it was a cute and interesting book. Theo and Evelyn grew up together and are inseparable best friends. Well Evelyn finds herself needing health insurance and Theo needs a bigger salary in in order to stay in his current apartment. So of course the solution is for them to get married. If you can push thru the beginning, then this might just be the book for you if you like marriages of convenience.

I found the premise of this story delightful. Longtime best friends who catch feelings when they enter a marriage of convenience sounded like a perfectly sweet story, and the details - Evie's chronic illness and interesting career; Theo's devotion to teaching; their shared passion for dance and Survivor - were interesting enough to give the story depth.

But. Evie. I just *could not* with this character.

Partly it may have been the diction of her internal monologue, which felt immature for a woman in her late twenties. But mostly it was her constant sense of victimization. Between her health condition and her absent parents, Evie has certainly struggled. But she's turned the struggle into her whole identity, and every tiny thing that goes wrong - including, once, a barista misspelling her nickname on a coffee order - becomes an example of how life has not given her a fair shake. Which then becomes justification for her generally awful behavior, especially toward Theo.

Theo, for his part, is a great cinnamon roll male lead. He's not just soft for Evie; he's a genuinely nice guy who works hard for the people and things he cares about but is also just flawed enough to be believable. He was the reason I kept reading the book - although more than once I wanted to tell him to take Evie at her word when she said they shouldn't be together and find somebody else.

Still, I did not fling the book down in frustration. I read to the end, which was (of course) sweet and I would probably read another book by this author. 3.5 stars.

Evie is an aspiring foley artist and has the opportunity to train under a pillar in the industry, but the internship doesn't come with health insurance and that's a deal breaker for her. Evie's best friend Theo is in a bind when his roommates move out leaving him with an apartment he can't afford on his own. There is an easy solution to both their problems - get married!

I did enjoy this book, but found it a little hard to get into at first. It may have to do with the miscommunication trope - I'm learning that's not one for me. I truly feel like this novel could have concluded in 100 pages if the main characters just had ONE conversation.

I adored Evie and Theo's friendship and it was wonderful to see how their relationship evolved from childhood to now. It made more sense to their initial apprehension to getting fake married understanding how enmeshed their families were.

Friends with Benefits also discussed difficult topics like family drama, parental abandonment, and chronic illness with such care and compassion. As someone who has experienced some of these things personally, it was nice to see them represented authentically.

Friends with Benefits was a cute and quick read. I think that if you enjoy the miscommunication trope then this one's for you! Evie is cute and quirky. Theo is the sweetest golden retriever (almost to a fault). I thoroughly enjoyed my time with these characters and will honestly never watch a movie the same way!

Huge thank you to Marisa Kanter, Netgalley, and Celadon Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review! This one was fun!

Friends with Benefits by Marisa Kanter is an utterly charming and delightful YA romance that will have you smiling from start to finish! Avery, a high school senior, agrees to a "friends with benefits" arrangement with her best friend, Ethan, thinking it’s a simple, practical solution. But, as you’d expect, things get complicated, and in the best possible way, as their feelings for each other begin to deepen. Kanter’s writing is sharp, funny, and full of heart, with incredible chemistry between Avery and Ethan that makes their slow-burn romance feel so real and compelling. The way Avery navigates her own growth, while trying to keep things casual with Ethan, is both funny and touching. This book beautifully captures the excitement and chaos of falling for your best friend. If you’re a fan of swoon-worthy slow-burn romance, Friends with Benefits is an absolute must-read! It’s funny, emotional, and utterly relatable, a perfect pick for anyone who loves a story about love sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

Friends with benefits by Marisa Kanter is a very cute friends to lovers marriage of convenience story. While I enjoyed this book it wasn’t my favourite.

I enjoyed the representation of grief and chronic illness. I loved some moments between Theo and Evie and their progression from friends to lovers. However at times the story felt repetitive and boring almost to a point where I was thinking of dnfing it.

Overall, I think if you love the friends to lovers you’ll enjoy this book. Thank you go NetGalley for this e arc!

This is a cute, angsty friends to lovers romance. The story jumps from the present to several times in the past. I liked the overall premise, but the FMC drove me crazy. She just seemed super immature to me and all over the place, and expected MMC to jump for her.

Also, I am all for liberal, feminist, LGBTQIA+ stories - but I’d prefer it to be a natural part of the story. It felt like the author went out of their way to really hit you over the head with certain concepts all within the 1st chapter, where it seemed out of place in the context of the story. It would have felt more real to make mentions throughout the story instead.

Overall an alright story for me. Some spice but relatively light.

DNF’d at 8% :( This makes me so sad because I truly did have high expectations for this book, hence why I requested it from @netgalley!

The writing, while already being in my least favorite tense (third-person), was difficult to navigate? It felt very choppy and incohesive, and I often found myself questioning what exactly was being discussed in the present moment.

Evie is wildly immature for someone her age. When a character is the same age as me, I like to find them relatable, as if the dialogue is between me and a friend. If you would have told me she was 16 years old, I would 100% believe you.

There were many opportunities for the book to include elements imagery that would have highlighted Evie’s talents and struggles, but instead, the “fluff” details were redundant (i.e. Imogen living off a further exit x Hinge date ghosting).

Overall, I wanted way more out of this book and I found myself struggling to pick it up every time I grabbed my kindle.

🙌 What worked for me:
• The flashback chapters. I loved seeing actually seeing Theo and Evie's story playing out on page in this chapters.
• Theo and Evie's relationship. I could feel not only their chemistry but also how much history, comfort, trust, etc. they had with each other.
• The chronic illness rep. I have a chronic illness (different from Evie's) that is generally controlled but when it suddenly isn't controlled is debilitating, so I appreciated the authentic representation of how that can feel.
• Evie's career choice. Foley artists are really cool, and I loved that this book talked about them.
• The overall plot. Was it predictable? Yes, but in a good way.

🚫 What didn't work for me:
• Miscommunication. It's strong in this one. I was very frustrated.
• Therapy rep. I never thought I'd say the therapy rep in a book was too much or didn't work, but here I am. The MCs talk about their therapists all the time yet somehow don't listen to a thing their therapists say.

🤜 Would I recommend: Depends. It was a cute, quick read. I enjoyed it overall, but I wouldn't put it at the top of your list.

Read if you enjoy:
✔️ Best Friends to Lovers
✔️ Chronic Illness Rep
✔️ LGBTQ+ Rep
✔️ Cool jobs
✔️ Overcoming abandonment

Thank you Celadon and Macmillan audio for the review copy!

This one didn't work for me but it might be just right for other romance fans, take a look at other reviews as what doesn't work for me might not impact others!

Friends with Benefits was a miss for me, strong audio production and narration bolster my review of the audiobook, but the story did not land for me. I found the writing, right from the start, repetitive and the repetitive/writing style issue made the FMC seem very young and juvenile, hard to connect with, throughout the book. For me I need to be cheering on the main characters, waiting for the HEA or big coming of age moment and here I didn't find myself wanting to see the plot through. The romance fizzled for me, felt flat and forced and I say this as a huge fake dating fan, I am usually easily won over by that trope!

Marisa Kanter hit the mark with this adorable romance with a marriage of convenience between childhood friends to lovers who slowly fall in love.

Treatment for Evie’s Chrohn’s disease is expensive and often struggles to make ends meet with a dancer’s salary and as an aspiring Foley artist. When her best friend since forever, Theo, an elementary school teacher, offers to marry her in exchange for health benefits, years worth of buried feelings start to resurface as they start to spend more time together as roommates and “husband and wife”. I enjoyed the flashback scenes highlighting how Evie and Theo’s friendship started and progressed. I loved their familiarity with each other and found the mundane moments they shared at home to be so light, cute, and refreshsing- it added a nice balance to the more serious topics of grief, mental health, and chronic illness. I also want to applaud the much needed representation of chronic illness and the broken healthcare system.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read as it cast such a unique twist to “friends with benefits”. I also loved the side characters and the humour (specifically, Theo’s students) and how caring Theo was!!! The way he loves Evie is so tender and pure <3

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for the ARC 💌

Marisa Kanter’s Friends with Benefits is a heartfelt, slow-burn friends-to-lovers romance that wraps timely issues—healthcare inequality, chronic illness, and financial precarity—into a charming, witty package. At the center are Evie Bloom and Theo Cohen, whose friendship pulses with history, chemistry, and the kind of everyday intimacy that makes you root for them from page one.

Evie is meticulous by necessity. Her career aspirations as a Foley artist require it, but so does managing her chronic illness. When a dream fellowship comes with no health insurance, it threatens to derail everything she’s worked for. Theo, on the other hand, is the epitome of stability, a caring elementary school teacher facing the harsh reality of LA’s housing crisis. Their solution—a marriage of convenience—seems pragmatic, even genius. But it quickly becomes clear that emotional logistics are never so tidy.

Kanter shines in her portrayal of Evie’s internal conflict: her desire for independence clashes with the vulnerability of needing help. Theo’s quiet longing and deep understanding of Evie add emotional weight without ever veering into melodrama. Their dynamic is tender, funny, and sometimes frustrating in the best way—like watching two people dance around a truth everyone else can see.

What elevates this novel is how thoughtfully it balances romance with real-life stakes. The plot might hinge on a classic rom-com trope, but the execution is grounded and honest. Kanter treats chronic illness with the respect it deserves and interrogates the very American problem of tying health and housing security to marriage without ever losing her narrative’s warmth.

Friends with Benefits is a love story, yes, but also a story about boundaries, survival, and the courage it takes to let someone in—even when it feels impossible. Funny, nuanced, and full of heart, it’s a smart, satisfying read that lingers long after the last page.

I am a huge romcom fan and I just finished a good one. Friends with Benefits by Marisa Kanter was so much fun.

Lots of great rep in this one, which I loved. Childhood friends-to-lovers and miscommunication tropes are front and center. I wasn’t a big fan of Evelyn—she pushed people away but wanted them to stay. Theo was the standout for me, especially with his teaching moments and Survivor love. The ending was solid once everyone got it together.

I received this book as a NetGalley ARC.

This was a cute read with a good friends-to-lovers story line. Overall was a good and fun read. The miscommunication and lack of communication is the part that brings it down for me. However, this book is elevating the standards for friendship to relationships all around. I want what these two characters have in regards to support and knowledge over their other half. I'm so happy I was able to receive an early read of this book!

I love friends to lovers romance books and when you add in a marriage of convenience, I knew I had to read this one. While I think this book is good, there are others within the genre that I liked more. I appreciate the Chron's rep as I live with someone with the disease and I know how much of a toll it can take physically and emotionally. Even with Evie's condition and my real life experience with her disease, I didn't really care for her character. On the opposite end, I thought Theo was sweet and charming. I didn't really feel the romantic connection between Evie and Theo and I'm not quite sure why, but for me it made the book just ok.

Thank you NetGalley and Celadon Books for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. This book was the best kind of surprise.

Full disclosure: I didn’t even read the plot synopsis before I began reading. Simply saw that it was recommended by a favorite author and decided to go in blind. I’m so glad that it did.

This book checked so many boxes for me: a protagonist with a super niche career (it’s always fun to learn about something new!), representation that doesn’t feel trite, and many of my favorite tropes. Most notably, this book has all the long-term pining and angst of friends-to-lovers wrapped in a marriage of convenience plot line. Oh, and miscommunication done well, in a way that feels realistic.

Even the fact that this book was written in the third person, present tense—something I normally loathe—didn’t detract from its charm. In fact, I read this one sitting. Was hooked from the very first page and lost a night of sleep over it.

Theo and Evie have romantic chemistry, yes, but beyond that, you get the sense of just how much they love each other as friends, which makes their mutual hesitance about a deeper relationship very believable. This book is about so many things, but ultimately it’s about learning how to trust someone, even when life has let you down over and over again. And, even more so, about learning to trust yourself to make the right decisions, even if they weren’t modeled for you.

Again, I’d like to shout out the representation in this book, both LGBTQ and chronic illness. Often, representation can feel very performative or “after-school special”, but here it felt like a natural extension of the characters. As someone who suffers from chronic pain and illness, I always appreciate it when it is well handled by an author.

4.5 stars out of 5, and I am looking forward to Marisa Kanter’s future work.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

This book was tough for me to get into. Right off the bat you know how the book is going to end. I wish I could’ve gotten into the writing/author but it was difficult.

This was a cute story but fell flat for me. I usually like the marriage of convenience trope but this felt just a little too cliche. I want to still try more from this author in the future though.

Evie and Theo have been the best of friends since they met at dance class as kids. Now as adults, Theo is an elementary teacher and Evie is trying to work as. Foley artist, doing sound for tv and film. When Theo needs a roommate to stay in his apartment, and Evie needs heath insurance to be able to take part in a Foley fellowship, they decide to solve both problems by getting married. While they think their arrangement of convenience won’t change anything, it obviously will.

I breezed through this book in a day. It’s pretty apparent from the description how things will end up, and I was interested to know how they would get from point A to point B. It’s a variation on a fake dating trope. Their shared interest of Survivor and how he also used it in his classroom is entertaining. Evie had moments where she annoyed me, because she’s one of those characters who can get in her own way, but I did like how her character was complex and shed a little light on what it could be like having an autoimmune disease to constantly manage.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Thank you to Celadon and NetGalley for the invitation to read this book.