Silas is a cynical journalist sent to interview Jo, the popular spin instructor. Slow burn. Dual POV. Great friend group, which I would've loved to have gotten to know more of. There was a 3rd act conflict that was pretty predictable but other than that a great debut novel with a strong mental health representation from both characters! Perfect example that what we see on social media is only a small glimmer of one's life and not true representation of every day life and struggles. Looking forward to future stories by Ana Holguin,

🎧 Audiobook +📗 E-book: Up Close and Personal -a standalone

✍🏾 Author: Ana Holguin- debut author

📃Page Count: 368

📅Publication date: 4-29-25 | Read: 4-27-25

🏃🏾‍➡️Run Time: 11:35

🌎 Setting: NYC

👆🏾POV: 1st person dual Jo and Silas

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Multicultural, Adult Fic

Tropes: male/female friendship, mental health, friends to lovers, mutual attraction, slow burn, workplace romance

⚠️TW: anxiety/depression disorder, therapy, online harassment, mental breakdown, MS-H's father

🗣️Narrator: Maria Liatis and Kellen Boyle voice all the characters with standouts from Jo and Silas. The reading style brought the text to life, and the author and narrators worked together perfectly. The pacing and flow allowed me to get lost in the story. The narrators paused and announced new chapters and there was a table of contents which helped me follow along.

Summary: Jo and Silas meet through a mutual friend Derek, who is marrying Jo's BFF Amber. Jo asks Silas to do a story on Haven Fitness Studio because he is a skeptical journalist who believes Jo is just a "so-called influencer."

👩🏾 Heroine: Johanna "Jo" De La Cruz, online fitness instructor/spin class- Haven Home

👨🏾 Hero: Silas Anders, 30, a journalist @ the Metropolitan Magazine

🎭 Side Characters:
*Amber-Jo's BFF, getting married to Derek
*Serena-Jo's BFF/moves to Japan for 3 mos.
*Derek Miller-Silas' BFF/old college roommate
*Zoe "Z" Friedman- Jo's mentor and boss
*Colin-Silas's boss and friend

🤔 My Thoughts: This really spoke to me as someone with the same disorder as Jo. From the therapy sessions, to taking medication, and using her coping skills i.e. journaling, going to a museum, taking Mike's class, and breathing. Silas also suffered from depression, so he understood Jo on another level. They kept things professional longer than I expected so when they finally did the deed, I felt the longing and release. There was a big misunderstanding which caused a 3rd act break-up, but it helped both of them. It's a HEA, but I think I want Serena's story!

Range of Emotions 😊😭🤣😔
*Spice: 4/5 🌶️
*Emotion: 5/5 🥲
*Couple: 5/5 🧑‍🤝‍🧑
*Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐

🙏🏾Thanks to NetGalley, Forever (Grand Central Publishing) | Forever, Hachette Audio, and Ana Holguin for this ARC & ALC! I voluntarily give my honest review, and all opinions are my own.

I loved Jo and Silas together 🥹. Even though they were so different, they complemented each other beautifully. Jo softened Silas’s rough edges, and he helped her find her voice beyond the spotlight. Their connection was the kind that grows slow and steady, but roots deep.

This story also shines a light on how irrational and isolating anxiety can feel. The mental health representation felt authentic, handled with care, and showed how love can meet you even in your most vulnerable spaces.

It’s a slow-burn romance that’s tender, honest, and reminds you that love is worth the risk.

Tropes you’ll find:
✨ Dual POV
✨ Anxiety/mental health rep
✨ Forced proximity
✨ Workplace romance
✨ Found family
✨ Slow burn
✨ Third-act breakup (not one of my fav. tropes)

If you loved Abby Jimenez’s Yours Truly, I think you’ll love this one too.

dnf at 30%. from the description of the book alone i had an inkling of how this was going to go, particularly regarding the third act conflict and that was already confirmed within the first few chapters of the book. i REALLY don’t want to read a book where this secret is held over their entire relationship, like why start a romance from a place of dishonesty :(

Jo De La Cruz is one of the best spin instructors in the city- this should fill her with joy, but it doesn’t. When Silas Anders, a journalist who seems to hate everything, wants to interview her, Jo hopes this will bring back her spark. But what began as something professional quickly turns flirty in this will they, won’t they novel.

This book was such a fun ride. Jo is energetic and fun, but layered, however, the character I really loved was Silas. Call me a sucker, but I love when someone can change their thoughts about things and then double down and admit they were wrong.

Overall, this book was a solid 4 star romance read! It was a fun light book, perfect for summertime!

Thanks to netgalley and the readforeverpub team for the ARC!! This book publishes April 29th!

Thank you to Forever Publishing for the eARC and Hachette Audio for the ALC.

It’s only been a few days since I read this, but I’m struggling to remember anything really relevant about it.

Up Close & Personal wasn’t necessarily bad, and I do believe the narrators did a great job. I think I just didn’t connect to the characters. Silas is a journalist and even after spending so much time with Jo, he was still so suspicious of her and her motives…at the halfway mark of the book. He kept thinking she had a secret. And of course she does! She’s an adult human, you are not entitled to every event of her life.

I did like Jo, and I really appreciated the mental health representation. I love that by the end of the book, Jo is so much more open with her friends (her found family!) and is learning to love herself and support her own boundaries.

I know this is a debut, and I hope to read more from this author in the future.

Up Close & Personal has a cute premise and would be a good book for folx who love anxiety rep, those who take spin classes, and love an easy rom-com read & vibes. However for me, for the type of reader I am, I do always tend to seek more introspection, reflection, and depth.

The story fell flat for me… I was not bought into the relationship between the couple and wanting to see further development on the mental health difficulties the FMC character was displaying as well as the MMC past mental health struggles that seems to be their “connection” & “relatability” point to each other. That somehow how his experience if validating for the fmc. Yet, in the mmc pov we barely grazed his vulnerabilities, leaving the heavy themes on both ends to be surface level. At some point, it felt like information and facts were shared about spin and mental health to check it off and make them correlate to one another.

I will say I loved the inclusion of how the main female character was dealing with her anxiety with the deep breaths, but I wanted this to go deeper to feel her struggle with anxiety, panic attacks. Additionally, it took a good chunk of the book before realizing the FMC was Latinx and would have loved more the intersection of the Latinx identity. 

I wanted more on many levels and even how things got resolved in the end. 

The book and audiobook reads like a rom-com movie, which is an okay comfort, easy read if you go into it with this mindset.

Thank you Forever for the arc in exchange for and honest review.

Jo De La Cruz is a superstar spin instructor. There are waiting lists for her classes and she streams to thousands. But she is burning out after over a decade in the spotlight. Silas Anders is a writer for a NYC magazine. He pitches the idea to interview not expecting her to be more than a fitness instructor with a pretty face and good PR. He uses a friend connection to meet her and pretends he doesn’t know who she is when they meet. She agrees to a feature interview. The getting to know you begins.

This contemporary romance that isn’t as light as the cute cover makes it appear. Jo suffers from anxiety, but she is self aware. I like how the mental health issues were discussed. Nothing about this story was comedic to me other than a few quips from her two BFF’s. I love that they have check ins and codes for help that are always answered. I also like having the story told from both characters' POVs. In some ways the story is a standard formula with an easily predictable and preventable near end break up. Even though there is some background given, the main thing I knew about them was work related.

I appreciate the romance progressing naturally. There is looking, a bit of longing and they manage to keep it professional until the story is written. I didn’t love that future work was only revealed as a line or two in the epilogue chapter. I wasn’t convinced that was a better fit than staying with her company. But that is me being nit-picky, and also shows I did care what happened to her character. This is the author's debut novel and I would read her again. In fact I’d like a romance for her lawyer and best friend Serena.

Thank you to Forever for the advance reader copy. These opinions are my own.

I am so glad to have read this debut romance. It features Jo, a fitness instructor. Silas arranges to meet her, so he can interview her for his magazine. He has a reputation for take down pieces, and he plans the same for Jo.

It took me a lot longer to like Silas than Jo. I was quite glad for the dual POV here because if it were only single POV for Jo, then I don't know that I would have ever liked or rooted for Silas. But I was able to understand him and his conflicting feelings.

My favorite aspects of the book were the strong mental health representation for both main characters. And I also really loved Jo's amazing friend group who showed up for her, even when that meant Face Time at odd hours from other continents.

I felt like the exercise aspects of the book were incredibly well done. At no point did I feel there was too much pressure to be a certain size or body shaming. That's not always the case with exercise romances, and I quite appreciate it. Instead, I feel motivated to go work out because it just seemed really fun.

Debut author of a contemporary romance. Set in NYC, it initially gave me How to Lose a Guy in 10 days vibes with our MMC writing an article on the FMC (and there was some skeptism and secrets).

As a whole, I enjoyed the book. I liked the MMC - it felt like a little #hefallsfirst trope and he was a good midwestern/golden retriever boyfriend.

While there was a decent slow burn, I didn't super love the 3rd act break up - but overall a decent read!
I'm gonna round up to a 4⭐ - I would read more from this author.

3.5 ⭐

“she kisses me - It’s sweet and tender like a promise, her lips soft and sure against mine. In the future, I’ll call this our second first kiss. Because this is the moment when everything is laid bare—all of our jagged edges and frayed wires on full display— and it’s all the more beautiful for it. We have a lot to figure out. But despite all the uncertainty, there’s one thing I know: in the beginning, I was wrong about Jo, and I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in my life”

Cynical journalist × his latest subject - it was something.

Silas took a while to grow on me. He is jaded, or cynical - ready to believe the worst of everything under his guise of critique I guess. In the beginning he was making me roll my eyes. The first draft he wrote? I would have punched him for that language I swear and I didn't even know Jo that well at that time. But he comes around. He grows, and my favourite thing about Silas is probably how easily he accepts his prejudices and how he corrects himself in the process. He handles Jo with care and respect and a softness that melted even me.

Jo was my favourite part about the book ( second only to her friend group). I loved how real she seemed - her mental health struggles with anxiety has been some of the best written in my opinion. It shows in her every action, in her day to day life. I was so proud of her - how much control she took of her life, how she chose to jump off the edge she kept talking about, how she found happiness and held on to it. It was beautiful.

The third act breakup was a little annoying - mostly because I saw it coming from miles away. Every time Silas mentioned about the first draft staying open on his laptop, I just knew this was going to blow in his face. And it did. He deserved it though :p

In the end, it brought them closer and it was a pretty good conclusion to the story.

Definitely pick it up if the following interests you -

- Journalist × his subject ( spin class instructor)
- forced proximity
- slow burn ( one graphic smut scene)
- found family
- anxiety rep (FMC) with mentions of struggle with depression (MMC)

The book comes out in two days - thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

I love that we had a romcom that featured anxiety. Anxiety is so tough and it was nice to read a story about it but also where there is laughter and love. This was a fun story. It was a little different from my typical romcom’s and that’s what I loved about it.

I really enjoyed this romcom. Up Close and Personal is a bit of a slow burn but the characters are very well developed and the writing is great. It is dealing with a multitude of topics such as mental health, the importance of friendship, the pressure of social media and life in the public eye as well as professional ethics. The main characters, Jo and Silas, are likeable and come across normal and humble, they actually feel like real people. They both are successful in what they are doing but are far from perfect and both are struggling with their own issues. The book is told from their alternating POV’s which I always enjoy. If you like fitness/Peloton and health themes, this story is for you. All in all, it’s a great debut, a charming and sincere novel that shares some good bits of wisdom. I am looking forward to the author’s next book, and I would positively love to see a sequel to Jo’s and Silas’ story!
Thank you Netgalley, Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Ms Ana Holguin for gifting me a digital ARC. I truly enjoyed the opportunity to read it and the above is my honest review and own opinion. Publication date is 4/29/2025.

(Actual: 4.5⭐, rounded up) This book was so good and so refreshing to read in relation to the standard romcom formula! Definitely one of my favorite romcoms of the year and I particularly loved the GAD representation featured here (as someone who is clinically diagnosed with it as well). I felt like it was handled both fairly accurately (though of course I know it does differ from person to person) and with care/sensitivity. This book had a nice blend of lightheartedness and deep, thought-provoking moments, neither of which ever felt forced or too cheesy. Highly recommend!

2.5⭐
Thank you so much to Forever and Netgalley for providing an advanced copy of this. All thoughts and opinions are still my own.

I'm really torn on how to rate this one because I really enjoyed the first half of this book. But the latter half caused me to dislike it more and more as it went - in fact I pretty much skimmed the last chapter & epilogue. 2.5 stars feels a little harsh but in the end, I really just didn't enjoy this one.

The setup and themes for this were fantastic. I love seeing other sports (in this case cycle) in romance outside of the typical hockey, baseball, etc. And this deals heavily with mental health, found family, and the fitness industry.

Overall I think this handled the mental health aspects well. The heroine, Jo, deals with anxiety and the hero depression. On page it discussed the stigmas around mental health disorders and not feeling shame or embarrassed.

But I just never get on board with this romance. Because the hero was the most bland milk toast of a love interest...

Seriously what was his personality? We got lots of insight into Jo but outside of the hero being a writer and some vague mentions of college he could have been replaced with literally anyone. There was nothing there.

On top of that, the final conflict was dangled over our heads too often and too blatantly. I spent the entire book just waiting for that bomb to drop and grew annoyed and frustrated every time it was brought up.

While this definitely wasn't my favorite book, I do think there was a lot of potential here. There was nothing bad or blatantly offensive, it just lacked the character depth and development to make me feel anything for their romance. So I'm definitely still interested to check out this author's next book.

“We can be honest about what makes us who we are, and people love us all the more for it. At least, the people that matter”

So I almost want to say that this leans more fictiony than romance until the last 40% of the book. Not in a bad way whatsoever, it made me appreciate the characters more and their journey.

This follows a journalist named Silas who gets assigned a piece on a Haven’s (think soul cycle lol) top cycle instructor, Jo. At first he’s skeptical about her and the cultiness/cliqueness of cycling until he meets her and finds out that shes more than she seems.

Why I said this feels more like a fiction book is due to the mental health rep and the way both MMC & FMC’s jobs and the interview takes precedence over their budding romance. It definitely focuses a lot on what they both struggle with but it made their connection feel more authentic.

Also, I’m a sucker for any book that takes place in my home, NYC. It’s so fun to recognize the little details sprinkled here and there!

This book WOWED ME’!! Where do I even start!?
The fact that the FMC is Mexican already intrigued me becuase I rarely see that kind of representation in books. This also had an amazing mental health (anxiety/depression) rep. Since I am both a Mexicana and have dealt with anxiety depression, my heart just fell in love with this book! It was also very well written.
Jo and Silas are so sweet. I love how we got to see them fall in love and it didn’t take long drawn out chapters to achieve it. The slow burn was perfectly done and I was tearing up at the end. He’s a sweet grump and she’s sunshine that struggles with the dark!
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!! One of my favorite reads of the year!!

Instagram famous spin instructor, Jo, suggests an interview to Silas, a journalist who is known for being a hater. Jo has never given an in depth interview, so why is she doing this now? Especially when she doesn’t know Silas had already been tasked with writing about her. We follow their relationship as it relates to interviews and Silas digging into the “cult-like” trendy culture.

This slow-burn, dual POV romance in NYC had me smiling, thinking about life for those that are famous-adjacent and what all that entails. The mental health representation in this book was wonderfully done. Thanks to Net Galley for this early read! Although predictable, I would definitely recommend it.

This was a cute romcom and I really enjoyed the dual points of view . Overall the book itself was pretty formulaic and very slow burn which almost made me lose interest, especially with the third act breakup which could have been avoided if they just spoke to each other. Overall though I enjoyed it and it kept me entertained.

Jo is leading the perfect life as a celebrity fitness trainer. Or is she? It's Silas' job to find out what's behind all of her success as he's tasked with writing an article about her. Their initial skepticism is quickly replaced by a mutual admiration. We're treated to a delicious slow-burn, hoping that a real relationship can come to fruition...but a potential betrayal might ruin everything!

I adore rom-coms that focus more on emotional connection than spice, and this delivers. We're treated to care-taking and careful consideration when it comes to anxiety and depression, which was much appreciated by this reader. The spice was on the lighter side, but still hits the mark, in my opinion.

The conflict in the final act wasn't super gripping. The characters didn't feel fully fleshed out until a little further into the book than I'd have liked. Otherwise, this was a super solid rom-com that delivers on pacing and great writing. I can't believe this is Holguin's first foray into major publishing! Looking forward to seeing what else she gets up to!

I'd like to thank Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Netgalley for the eARC of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.