🎧 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 was really excited to see a fellow Latina leading Up Close & Personal by Ana Holguin. Unfortunately, the story focused heavily on the gym, which is not what I was expecting. There was very little romance or emotional connection, literally only one kiss until around 80%. I was bored and not invested in the characters or their relationships.

Maria Liatis as Jo spoke too slowly for my liking while Kellen Boyle as Silas was an okay fit.

Jo De La Crus is a world famous spin instructor with a massive following (including a fan account on instagram for her hair), but she is no longer feeling fulfilled in her career. Silas Anders is a prickly journalist who thinks that Jo can't be all that and that her gym is akin to a cult. He convinces Jo to let him interview her for his magazine but only if he attends her class. They end up spending time together and both realize that first impressions aren't everything.
This was a solid 3.5 read for me. I liked that both Silas and Jo showed growth throughout the book and I loved the pining. One thing that I didn't like was the third act break up which I could see a mile away (the hints dropped were pretty heavy handed.) Overall, this was a strong debut, and I look forward to reading more from Ana Holguin in the future.
Thank you to Hachette Audio and and Netgalley for the free audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

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.

Audiobook notes: I listen at various speed starting at 1.5x to build the story and move to 2x-2.75x speed. I enjoy the dual narration however the attempt of doing the opposite gender at times was a bit cringe.

Thank you Hachette Audio & Forever for the audiobook and arc in exchange for and honest review.

4⭐️ 1🌶️ 4🎧

I loved this story so much! I have never felt my GAD so recognized and represented than it did in this story! I feel the author did such a great job! There was a predictable miscommunication 3rd act break, but you’re able to prepare for it and can tell all will work out for a HEA.

Silas and Jo were so easy to connect to, and their characters were so relatable and realistic. Realistic lives, homes, jobs, friends, etc.

The was good, enjoyed listening to Maria Liatis and Kellen Boyle. Rated a 4 because I prefer a more gruff/deep male narrater.

Thank you Hachette audio and NetGalley for this ALC!

Truly enjoyed getting inside the brains of Jo & Silas.
I was hesitant at first at Silas' self-described "contrarian" personality, but ended up appreciating both characters for where they started & their growth journeys throughout the book.
Definitely more of a slow burn- at times I questioned the pacing and length of the book - but I appreciated the time spent building complex characters and situations.

This was my first Ana Holguin book but certainly won't be my last!
Audio notes - always love a dual narration! Both voices matched their characters well.

This was such a sweet and fun read! I absolutely loved that Jo was a Haven (a Peleton-esque exercise company) star. It was fresh and so interesting to be pulled into a whole new world that I know nothing about. And I loved watching Silas transition from, frankly, pretty judgmental to a full on convert.

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.

Jo is a cycling instructor who is basically a celebrity because of how life changing her classes are and Silas is the reporter who is ready to take her down to prove that there has to be something dark behind the industry. That was not my favorite part of the plot. It made me feel pretty icky.
I appreciated how quickly Silas realized he was wrong and how genuine he was in getting to know the true Jo.
After I got past my personal dislike of the premise at the beginning, I couldn't help but enjoy the chemistry between Jo and Silas, the way this story explored the dark side of celebrity, and the important way it addresses mental health.
All in all, I was happy that I listened to this story.

Thank you to Net Galley, Hachette Audio, and Ana Holguin for an ALC of this story.

With the mental health conversations this could’ve been a great book. Instead it’s overshadowed by a white man who tried to sabotage a Latina’s career and then realizing oh wait, maybe I don’t have to be a jerk after all.

Nothing like a white man thinking he’s better than everything people enjoy. I hated the MMC from the beginning and barelyyyy tipped closer to indifference by the end of the story. Not only was he mansplaining the entire time, his intentions were to “expose” her/her industry and then made her think their plan was all her idea! Like PLEASE STOP. No man should be trying to explain beauty standards to a woman, let alone a woman of color!! Less talking for white men please.

That being said, I did like the FMC and wish she could’ve found a happy ending with someone else!! I rushed to get back to her POV every time the story switched to the MMC. Unfortunately though, we get little to no Latinx representation which is something I was really looking forward to. All of our lived experiences are so different and that’s beautiful, but it’s not until the MMC finds out the FMC’s last name (beginning of the book) that there’s a hint of Latinidad mentioned. And then nothing else until around 50ish% where she mentions her parents are from a small town in Mexico. I was hoping for a lot more.

The mental health representation, specifically on anxiety, is one of the only things that kept me going because I was veryyyy close to DNFing towards the beginning. Watching the FMC open up about her anxiety is what connected with me the most. When she said, “We love drugs!” I felt that.😌 (shoutout to my anxiety meds)

Oh, but “Adam Sandler chic”, EW. FREE PALESTINE!!

If you enjoy romance and any type of workout classes, such as Peloton, then this one is for you! Jo is one of the hottest and most sought out spin teachers in NYC. Silas, a journalist, is writing an article about Jo. I loved that Jo had real anxiety and some mental health stuff that she must overcome every day, some that stems from being a “celebrity” spin instructor. The relationship and romance that buds between Jo and Silus is adorable. He is so supportive in her well-being. This was a slow burn romance that was fun to read. This was a great debut from Holguin. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

I quite enjoyed it, but I did have a few complaints.

There were a few moments where it just didn’t hold my attention. However, the story itself was interesting. The characters were engaging, I liked both of them, as well as the chemistry between them. The writing style was also good. What bothered me a little was the miscommunication towards the end — definitely not my favorite trope.

But overall, it was quite an interesting and light read.

This was a really cute book! Minimal smut if that's not your thing, while still making it feel like nothing was missing story wise.
Jo is a fitness instructor at what is basically a Peloton studio. Silas is a journalist tasked with writing a profile on Jo, but he thinks the whole industry is just an influencer filled cult. Together they learn from each other and find romance along the way. This would be a great beach read for your upcoming summer vacations!

I took away 1 star only because Jo irritated me not even giving him a chance to explain lol

The voice acting was great in this! Both male and female actors had nice normal voices, no annoying quirks and both had good personality. I would listen to books read by either of them again!

Jo is at the top of her game as a cycling instructor with devoted fans all over her take her classes at home every day and hang on her every word. Silas is a writer best-known for hating cauliflower rice. When he is tasked with writing an article about Jo and what makes her fans so loyal, the two are set on a path of figuring out not only each other, but themselves in the process. As a fanatic of a certain real-life at-home cycling company myself, I loved Jo and getting an inside peak into her life and how she got to where she was. Silas is a kind and lovable cynic and I found myself rooting for him to not only fall for Jo, but for the at-home fitness industry as a whole.

This was a cute romcom and I really enjoyed the audiobook with the dual narrators. 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.

This one was definitely a slow burn. I appreciated how the story handled mental health and the vulnerability in both characters.

As. SN, I’ve been noticing this trend lately where characters are clearly not white, but there’s this vague mystery around their racial or cultural background. In this case, it felt a bit distracting, especially since it didn’t seem to impact the plot or the relationship dynamic in a meaningful way. I found myself wondering, what purpose is this ambiguity serving?

I kind of wish we didn’t get Sirus’ POV. I think his secret and the eventual betrayal would’ve hit a lot harder.

Set in NYC, this debut romance features a popular pelaton esque spin instructor influencer who gets vulnerable with the journalist that is writing a feature article on her life. Full of excellent mental health rep (the FMC has anxiety and panic attacks and manages them with therapy and exercise) and some great swoony moments, I really enjoyed this one aside from the deceptive way their relationship begins. Good on audio and highly recommended for fans of authors like Kate Goldbeck or Rachel Lynn Solomon. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!

CW: anxiety, panic attacks and depression plus a parent who dies from MS

2.5 stars ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

although enjoyable to listen to, this somehow didn’t really feel like a romance book.

honestly i was more invested in the mental health plot lines & fitness community critiques more (i still feel like the book could have dove in a bit more on those fronts as a whole, especially since silas’s piece for the magazine felt like a fluff piece that was obviously biased cause he likes jo, i definitely feel like he could have done an article discussing both sides of the fitness community like the pros and cons of what it puts out) i do think that part of the book had HUGE potential to really make an impact but idk it still felt a bit flat to me.

i wish the romance had felt more genuine and deserved, unfortunately the romance seemed like it came on all of a sudden.

the third act break up was really annoying to read, i’m personally just not a fan of miscommunication and silas really did give me the ick and seemed like he was playing the victim card a little too strong for a bit. he easily could have told her the truth when she was clearly trying to take things further but his best bet was to sleep with her first and then tell her over food???? and then when she sees the draft and freaks out and ns leaves he starts love bombing her with flowers and tries to quit his job? girl be so for real. pity party of one, you caused that.

This story was cute and had an interesting storyline. I enjoyed Jo as a character. I unfortunately thought the romance was a bit generic and Silas was sort of one note as a character. I wish we would've learned more about him and his backstory like we did with Jo.