This was a really sweet, spicy, and swoony second chance romance. I enjoyed it very much.

I did a tandem ebook/audiobook read. The audio was well done. I appreciated that it was dual narration with different narrators for the two women. Both Natalie Naudus (Gemma chapters) and Catherine Ho’s (Celeste chapters) narration fit the character they were bringing to life. Natalie Naudus in particular embodied Gemma’s emotions and personality of the story for me, which made sense as the bulk of the book is from Gemma’s first person POV. (Celeste’s chapters were in third person POV.)

Onto the story. I thought the setup for reuniting Gemma and Celeste after eight years was a great one. Having them working together on interviews and digital media for couples from different generations worked well as a way to open the two of them up to conversations about their own love story, both its past and maybe potential hopes for their futures. It also gave an opportunity to highlight diverse love stories and viewpoints from all ages and walks of life. The couples they interviewed added a lot to the story.

I liked how Gemma and Celeste approached their past early on as they worked to establish profession boundaries at the beginning of their project. I think the use of third person POV for Celeste’s chapters somewhat prevented me from feeling like I really got to connect with where her head was at and the depth of her emotions at times, though I could appreciate the choice to differentiate between the women’s chapters in that way. I wanted a bit more of the in depth history between Gemma and Celeste, but I still felt the undeniable attraction and chemistry between them despite their many years of no contact. I believed in their second chance.

I also always have to shoutout any secondary characters who I feel really uplift a story, and Kiara and Val absolutely did that in this book. I loved their support of Gemma, and I loved that their relationship gave her a great, up close example of a healthy relationship.

Thank you to Forever for the eARC and Hachette Audio for the ALC, both via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

It was very nice to read about Asian MC’s for a change so that was a big plus for me. The story was overall very cute and interesting to get small insights to Korean culture and ways. It is always nice with second chance romances when they find their way back to the actual love of their life.

I struggled a bit with the fact that Celeste was so upset, still after 10 years apart, that Gemma did not wait longer for her before moving on. Four months is a long time for a college girl when your girlfriend just leaves and not communicate at all during that time and not tell why she left so not fair.

I listened to the audiobook and I loved the chapters narrated by Natalie Naudus, Gemma’s POV, but had some issues with the other narrator, Catherine Ho, that narrated the shorter chapters in Celeste’s POV. The switch between 1st person for Gemma’s chapters and 3rd person for Celeste’s chapters also something I did not love, and I would have liked to get more from Celeste’s POV than now given.

The narrator's are 10/10. Clear voices, engaging and varied tone throughout. Honestly made the listening experience great.

Now to the book itself, this was the bisexual representation I NEEDED and the WLW story that I wanted. There's something so real about the way things went for Gemma and Celeste. They were honest, messing up, and still learning alongside. They didn't know everything but they were honest, vulnerable. I honestly really love how much they learn and grow in the book. Another thing I loved about this book is the humour!!! That was fun!!

The spice: 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ It was hot, sexy and a WHOLE TREAT. Yes yes yes.

I thought the premise of this book was great and it was definitely a cute read!

I really enjoyed the dual narration, I'm a lover of multiple POVs in books and it's even better when they're narrated by different people, I feel as though it helped me get much more into the book! The audiobook production sounded good and I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

Book-wise, I really enjoyed the main characters and appreciated that they're backgrounds were well developed. It was easy to understand their wants and motivations since we were able to learn about their pasts and previous experiences. I loved the diversity of all of the characters and really enjoyed reading about the main character's project to directly address what love means for the queer community. The side characters also felt fleshed out in their own way and were given lives of their own to live, as opposed to just being their for the main characters, which was really nice to read.

My main issue with Love in Focus is just that I didn't really connect with the main character's relationship. Despite their backgrounds being deep, their relationship felt very surface-level. We know that they have been together previously, for quite a long time, and that it didn't end well, but I feel like not enough was done to address that and feel that it was appropriate for them to be together again. I feel like if they had addressed their issues with how their past relationship had ended and what transpired after that more, it would have been easier to feel invested in them getting back together again.

A couple minor issues that I had that may be more personal were the POVs and the ending. For some reason it really bothered me that one POV was in first person and the other was in third. It made reading the story very choppy for me and took me out of the reading experience every time the chapters switched. I'm not normally someone who cares if a story is written in 1st or 3rd POV, but the switching just didn't work for me. The ending involved lots of time jumps and a much quicker progression of the MCs feelings towards each other. I didn't hate it, but it also didn't seem like the best ending to me.

All things considered, this was a sweet read (with some spice!) and I'm always happy to see more diverse romance novels.