Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for sharing this ARC!

Totally and Completely Fine did not live up to it's predecessor, Funny You Should Ask. This book was more character driven and I was not able to connect with the story. This is told in dual timelines and I think that made following the plot confusing.

listen… i loved it. another book that fits perfectly into the being with a famous celebrity and all the details inbetween etc etc etc. it was different than i expected with the different povs but i actually really loved that. it was 2 love stories in one really. between her falling in love with spencer to the present being with ben, it definitely made me tear up. a solid 4 star read.

4.5 ⭐️ What a beautiful story about love, grief, and taking chances. Also, Ben is swoonworthy! I wish I could’ve heard his accent in an audiobook. Oof.

Elissa Sussman’s Totally and Completely Fine is a heartfelt companion to Funny You Should Ask, centered on Lauren Parker—a widowed single mom in her 40s navigating grief, motherhood, and a surprise romance with her brother’s charming co-star, Ben.

Told in dual timelines, the novel explores Lauren’s past with her late husband Spencer and her present with Ben. While the emotional depth of her grief and family dynamics (especially with her brother Gabe) really resonated, the romance sometimes felt underdeveloped—likely due to the split narrative. Similarly, the resolution of Lauren’s conflict with her daughter Lena felt rushed, missing the weight it deserved.

Still, this is a poignant and nuanced look at love, loss, and rediscovering who you are. Recommended for readers who enjoy single parent stories, age-gap romance, and a touch of Hollywood glitz.

Thanks to Dell, Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC!

This reminded me so much of One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid well without the whole "your husband came back from being presumed dead" thing. Overall it was a story about grief and moving on but also having it be okay that there are bad days but life also moves on at some point. It was also a story about falling for a famous man while having a child behind you from a previous relationship which reminded me of the Anne Hathaway movie The Idea of You.

I love, love Elissa Sussman's writing. Will read anything and everything she writes as soon as I can get my hands on it (and thank you so much for the ARC). I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

As always, the writing is beautiful. It's a complicated, nuanced picture of grief, parenting, and what moving on can look like. I loved the Lauren/Lena dynamic, and the last act of the book really hit for me.

I believed in Lauren and Ben's chemistry, but at the end of things I was craving more of each of them sharing their inner lives with each other -- another few conversations that felt like they were really connecting. The "Past" sections were powerful and good but felt like they took some narrative oxygen away from Lauren and Ben, especially in the first 2/3 of the book, and Ben ended up feeling enigmatic to me. Lauren trying to avoid Ben early on also contributed to the feeling of knowing him less. It was an interesting contrast from "Funny You Should Ask," where Chani's whole job was to try to figure Gabe out, and she was paying very close attention and describing him in her piece -- I felt like I knew him much better.

Things that really hit, though: the pizza dough, the kitchen conversation, fixing the chairs, the Montana stars, the almond extract scene, Ollie, the return of Teddy. This one is going to stay with me.

I gotta be honest...I didn't need the sex. Or the crude references to it. I am no prude and I read my share of smut for that purpose, but I felt like the use of the F word, specifically, did not flow in this context at all. It seemed forced from Lauren's character. The language of touch would have been much more fitting, as I enjoyed that a great deal. Truly, the reference to the act was what I found crude and off-putting, not the dirty talk during.

Cuz I really loved this book in general. Like, the discussion of grief and "how" to do it was really well done. Cuz, like, there's no way to do it. It's a get through it thing. I cried in the end, more than once. I adored Ollie and Chani as secondary-ish characters. And the MCs are lovely. I love the idea of a 40-ish woman being hit on and then loved by a ridiculously hot 30 year old movie star...though I had to suspend some disbelief to get there. And the struggles of literally every character were very real and centering. I dug it. ♥

This book was a heartfelt and emotional ride from beginning to end. The chemistry between the main characters was electric, and their relationship felt both real and deeply moving. With just the right balance of sweetness, tension, and heartfelt moments, it’s the kind of love story that lingers long after the final page. Perfect for romance lovers!

Totally and Completely fine was TOTALLY worth reading! I finished this one in about 24 hours, and I cannot emphasize enough how much I absolutely adored this one. AH. All the freaking feels.

This book. Ah. It weaves back and forth from the past to the present. In the past, we learn about Lauren's childhood, teenage years, and her life with her late husband, Spencer. We grieve with Lauren as she loses her dad and faces the complex feelings of a struggling teenager. In the present, Lauren is grieving her late husband while parenting a sully, father-less teenager. Lauren is merely surviving the present with the support of her mom and her famous brother.

When Lauren and her daughter decide to visit Philadelphia, where Gabe (her brother) is filming, Lauren meets a hot younger man (Ben) who makes her toes curl.

There was so much I loved about this book. Ben and his black henleys and combat boots. Lauren's wild and scandalous teenage years. Gabe finding love with Chani. Ben not backing down.

I 100% recommend this book and hope I have a chance to review the audio version. I just adored so much about it. There was a little spice, a whole lotta tenderness. I just really, really liked it!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballentine for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 Stars! Recommend!

DNF at 30% - Grieving widow trying to move on with movie star and learn how to connect with her angsty teenage daughter. Thought I would love it but I couldn’t get into it. Dual time line one that follows her as a teenager. That may have been the problem. I really don’t love teenage flashbacks and there were some very cringy moments. Also very insta love. I get it he’s a hot movie star but...

Thanks to NetGalley for this advanced copy. I really wished I enjoyed it more.

This book felt so different from Sussman’s others, but still an excellent read. Sussman does reflection so well— you understand her main characters’ thoughts and feelings so well without losing any of their dynamics. I will say, Ben was a little too perfect and I would have liked to see some flaws, but overall, a very enjoyable read.

This was an interesting book. I would call it more of a contemporary fiction than a romance book.

The book switched viewpoints between chapters chapters from the main character in the present and in the past. I found myself rooting more for her and her husband in the past than the current story unfolding in the present.

Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced release copy

3.5 Elissa Sussman is, as always, a solid story teller. This book overlaps and intertwines with the story from her other novel Funny You Should Ask told from the perspective of that MMCs sister instead and is focused on her life. This story is told in alternating timelines, one occurring in the past as we watch her relationship with her late husband bloom and grow. The other centered in a present whirlwind romance, that starts out largely physical, with a movie star. Oddly, I found that I was soooo much more drawn in by the part of the book exploring the past and her love story with her late husband, which really does not bode well for my satisfaction lol. we know how thats ends. It was overall and entertaining read, well written, and it thoughtfully explored grief and renewed hope. It just wasn't a bullseye hit for me. I do recommend though, and I'm grateful for the ARC!

I’m a big Elissa Sussman fan so I was excited to receive an ARC for this book! I liked that it expanded the universe from her previous books. The book itself felt heavier than her previous books but still a cute romance at its core.

I enjoyed "Funny You Should Ask" so I was excited to see "Totally and Completely Fine" was on here. I really wanted to love this one, but something fell short. I liked the flashbacks of Lauren and her late husband, Spencer. I liked the idea of Lauren and Ben in present day but something about them just doesn't sit right. I wanted more of a middle-aged woman getting her comeback and happy ending and while I guess she got it, it wasn't feeling real.

Totally and Completely Fine picks up where Funny You Should Ask, Gabe and Chani's story, ends. That is Gabe returned to his hometown of Cooper, Montana to reopen a rundown theatre and produce a show starring Hollywood's newest heartthrob, Ben Walsh. This time the story is about Gabe's widowed sister, Lauren and her hinted at romance with Ben who is ten years her junior. This book is smaller in scale focused on Lauren's current life with her daughter and looming romance with Ben and the past with her dead husband in Cooper.

Too be honest this book is kind of boring. It doesn't have any of the excitement Funny You Should Ask has and fails to stand up in comparison. Both deal with past trauma and grief, but the way the characters experience the emotions are different. For Gabe it was through addiction and for Lauren it's through avoidance. She's avoiding, pushing and pulling at her feelings for Ben the entire book, which is a real thing that happens but the way it's written doesn't feel satisfying to read. Plus the hero is plagued with 'loves her for no reason' syndrome wherein Ben the hottest man alive is just immediately in love with Lauren after they bang one time. For a book that spends a lot of time making the experience of grief so relatable to the reader, Ben's intractable devotion to her feels unearned and unbelievable in context especially since we the readers don't get to read about their sexual connection until the end. If we'd gotten a scene earlier in the book it would have shown why Ben and Lauren are falling in love. There's some humor and sitcom level shenanigans to even out the disjointedness, but overall meh.

Totally and Completely Fine is one of those books that perfectly captures the messy, unpredictable reality of dealing with life when it feels like everything is falling apart. Elissa Sussman writes with a raw honesty that makes the characters feel incredibly relatable, especially the protagonist, who’s trying to convince everyone (and herself) that she’s totally got it together. Spoiler: she doesn’t. The story balances humor and heartbreak really well, and I found myself laughing one minute and feeling genuinely emotional the next.

What I really loved about this book is how it doesn’t pretend that healing is a straight line. The protagonist’s journey toward figuring out what she really wants – and how to be okay with wanting it – is messy, real, and full of setbacks. Sussman’s writing is witty without being cynical, and she really nails the feeling of trying to keep it together when your world feels like it’s spinning out of control. If you’re into contemporary fiction that’s equal parts funny and poignant, this one’s worth picking up.

This book was not totally and completely fine. In my opinion it was just meh. Over sexual prose and instalust just doesn’t do it for me. I felt like I was reading two different books at times when we were going back and forth. The author tried to add emotional depth to the book with the grief but then we would get pulled right out with the cringy over done lust. Hated the way she portrayed the mil. Hated that there wasn’t more of a slow burn and did t really like the Mfl or mml. The chemistry they supposedly had never came through for me unfortunately. I don’t think this author is for me.

A story about family and grief and learning to live life after tragedy. As a 25 year old girl I'll admit I might not be the target audience-- I've never been married, had a child, or widowed. Regardless, this was heartwarming while still be so raw about how messy life can be, how messy being a teenager is, and how messy relationships are.

There was a pretty large portion of the story that featured and referenced Gabe and Chani from Funny You Should Ask. As someone who had barely remembered their story I was still able to follow along, however I would recommend freshening up on their timeline to throughly enjoy the book.

Totally and Completely fine is not complex, its not hard to understand. It brings you into an emotion we have all had, grief, love and excitement. This book looks into the truth many of us have felt, but try not to think about it as often because well its sad. Losing someone and trying to go on with life after they are gone, the thought that in some way you are sullying their name, you feel guilt because how can you move on when they can’t.

Lauren is a newly single mom who has to live life without the man she grew up with. Not only that but the worst is she has to parent a preteen, if I know anything from my preteen years, its hard out there for her. But soon she not only is being a single mother trying to navigate through grief and loss she remembers she is also a woman who loves and she deserves it. Through it she questions her life without her husband who was kind and caring. The question is “ am I allowed to move on so quickly?” Then it became "what will people think when I move on?” Lauren has been there for those she loves and the answer is everyone deserves to be loved and to love. No one should feel shame or guilt for wanting to give their hearts another chance, because one of the worst pains can be losing someone you once thought you’d get the chance to grow old with. We sometimes think death is the end of life, but what if it's just the beginning of a new one.

Elissa Sussman really put me in my feelings with this one, I didn’t lose a spouse but a mother of sorts. I questioned a lot of things when I lost her, I gave up trying, and sometimes I know she wouldn’t have been happy with me about it. This book put it into perspective that life continues and those we no longer can see may still be there cheering us on. We can still stop every now and then and drop of flowers and talk to them. Some way there will be a sign, or a person who can give us a new meaning.