I'm so glad I was able to read this book, I appreciated the novelist element and how it was used in the romance genre. The characters were everything that I was looking for and was glad they worked in this, they were everything that I was wanting and so glad I got to read this. Lee Taylor has a strong writing style and thought the overall concept was so strong.

This book pleasantly surprised me! From the description, I expected it to be a romcom similar to ones I'd read before, but instead I got a story that had a lot of heart and tension told with a unique voice. The book title initially went over my head, but even though it's a bit silly I think there's more than meets the eye to be had with this debut.

I don't know that I could place a similar writing style to the author's - the way that the story is told definitely flows, it's understandable, but it has a literary quality to it (especially at the beginning). I actually think it maybe takes the style a bit too far at the start, but by the midway point I was engaged with these characters and thought the last 30% was excellent.

This book does has its fair share of the miscommunication trope, but I think the interesting elements make up for it. I was charmed by the MMC, I could feel the anxiety and stress of the FMC at the beginning of the book, and I enjoyed the HEA when it finally came to be. This could have been a predictable romance (which would have been fine!) but this new author managed to surprise me in fun ways and create a story that felt distinct.

The pacing in this story is also a bit different than your 'typical' romance novel, and the premise seems spicier than it ends up being (though it's definitely a sexy book). There were some elements I wasn't a fan of (the middle section had some conflict and scenes I didn't particularly enjoy) but overall I really did like this story and would be interested to see what this author puts out next!

Loved it! Such a fun and clever plot, great character development, and a story that had you on the edge of your seat, feeling all the feels.

I love Josh. I love Bridget. This was one of those books you can’t put down and then as you near the end, you feel sad that it’s over.

While I’m typically not a fan of the miscommunication trope, I thoroughly enjoyed the miscommunication and tension it created with this read. And, lust to love may just be my new fave.

I can’t wait to see what Lee puts out next.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC access.

5 ⭐️
3.5 🌶️

A fantastically funny frenzy of fake love, true love and a romance novel in the making. Such a cute romantic comedy that is sure to lift your spirits.

I liked this book! It was unique, but still had some favorite tropes. It has spice and sort of a fake dating scenario, but more like a doing it for “science” kind of vibe. There were a few things that threw me off: Kissimmee is not anywhere near the Everglades and while I enjoyed the dual perspectives, I think they could be distinguished a bit better. Overall this story had humor, heart and a HEA, what more could you ask for? Thanks for the ARC.

Rounded to 3.5 stars.

To be honest, when I got an email offering me access to this book, the title alone was enough to make me laugh and download it. It took me a second to get the joke in the title (IYKYK) but that happens to be one of my favorite expressions to use, and I often figure out ways to sanitize the phrase, so I can definitely make use of ‘a satchel of Richards.’ Fortunately, I also loved the idea of the story and the characters, and was curious to see how everything unfolded.

Although it hasn’t been featured in the news lately, Florida is a state that has actively worked to ban and censor books, so when Bridget leads her class in a reading of her favorite childhood book A Wrinkle in Time, it lands her in hot water. She gets suspended, and has to reevaluate her life—with two LitFic novels that aren’t selling and a mortgage on her tiny beachfront home that she can’t pay without her teaching job, she is forced to find a new means of earning money to pay for her house and enough food for her ginormous dog.

I really liked Bridget’s character for the majority of the book, and I adored Josh from start to finish—he’s basically the perfect guy. Bridget is pushed to consider writing spicy romance by her new agent, but the problem is that she is inexperienced and doesn’t know enough to convincingly write romance. Her life is about as spicy as Wonder Bread, and the closest she’s come to dating lately is fantasizing about the very attractive guy who jogs past her house daily. Her agent has suggested she get some real life practice and translate that into a spicy romance.

This leads into a whirlwind of entwined lust and cooperative writing sessions between Bridget and what seems to be the perfect man. I fell in love with Josh faster than Bridget did, although my feelings about her fluctuated a bit throughout the reading. Initially, readers are treated to the three-ring-circus that goes on inside her mind and it is a bit endearing although revelatory in some ways. Despite her life falling apart around her, she still manages to be a lot on the judgy side and doesn’t appear to have learned the cliche about people in glass houses. She isn’t even quiet about it—she says the quiet part out loud in such an awkward way almost every time that I felt secondhand cringe.

One thing about Bridget that I did love was her way with words, when she wasn’t veering off into a farce of unbalanced humor during her early interactions with Josh. It was easy to see how her abrasive and judgmental words and behavior are hurtful, and it frustrated me to watch her hurt people who haven’t done anything to her. I’ve been in situations where I get tongue-tied, but luckily I can keep my own stream of consciousness in my head the majority of the time I’m in those situations. It was when she said overly critical things right to a person that I had the hardest time connecting with Bridget, since I have worked as a therapist and put a lot of attention and work into what I’m saying and ensuring that it isn’t hurtful even if I fall short sometimes.

Josh, on the other hand, was as close to the perfect man as I’ve ever found. He’s physically attractive (read: basically Adonis), he’s well-educated and highly intelligent, hard-working, caring, and sweet, and in the true test of the ‘good-ness’ of a male love interest, he even picks up his grandmother and her friends on Sundays to attend church. Yet somehow, Bridget isn’t able to think of him in any other terms than how he looks and how many abs he has for far too long. She further objectifies a man who has spent his entire life being judged based on his appearance, which made it really hard to be fully on her side. However, she isn’t all bad. She turns out to be sweet and caring, and she makes one hell of a grand gesture during the story, plus she is incredibly devoted and caring towards Sally Girl, her horse-sized Irish Wolfhound. I firmly believe that how people treat animals says a lot about them, and that someone who loves and appreciates their canine companion as much as Bridget obviously does can’t be all bad, right?

The romance that develops between these two is off the charts spicy. It leaps off the page and I enjoyed how they both explore their physical relationship and how they feel towards it. However, this story falls on the safe and overdone romance trope of miscommunication, and I don’t understand the excessive reaction that Bridget has. Her behavior smacked of what I’d have expected to see out of her young students, and it makes it hard to believe that she is a real grown-up.

Something I rarely bring up in ARC reviews is editing, because many books go through a final proofread/edit/copyedit process before publication, but this book was absolutely riddled with errors and formatting issues that should have been caught before now. Josh might have been named something else in previous drafts, because multiple characters in radically unrelated settings call him by the same nickname (“T”) that has no relation to any part of his name. Chapters are told from the perspective of both Bridget and Josh, but initially we only get Bridget chapters, and it was confusing when they switched it up. There’s an increasing number of chapters towards the end of the book where the narrator changes mid-paragraph. Naturally, this was always a jarring experience, taking me immediately out of the story and back a paragraph to figure out what the heck happened and when the narrators switched. This occurred in a lot of the chapters, and it was hard to differentiate between their voices, which sounded too much alike to me.

Overall, I enjoyed the majority of what I read in this story, with the exception of a few things I didn’t like about a character or plot point. It wasn’t until I sat down and organized my thoughts after finishing the book that I started to notice the things that I didn’t like, and they impacted my star rating. Having a hard time telling between different character voices and struggling to identify when a narrator switch occurred had a negative impact on my star rating, as did the aspects of Bridget’s behavior that I had listed above. At first I was drawn to her quirky, unusual thoughts and chaotic life, though eventually her overly critical nature of only others but also herself, which appears in the guise of her mother’s voice, made it hard to stay connected to her. Ultimately, I found myself reading for Josh, who read as the main character for me. By this, I mean that it was his chapters I found myself looking forward to, and even finding myself outraged on his behalf, and angry at his love interest. Typically, I gravitate towards the identified MC who is nearly always female in the romance I’ve read, but in this case, the love interest and his outcome far outweighed that of the FMC. However, going into the reading with some of these critiques at the forefront of your mind might make this a higher- or lower-rated read than I did.

Bottom Line: A fun read despite its flaws, and pretty good for a debut. I’d read another of her books any day.

This was such an interesting take on storytelling! The first half is from the FMCs POV, the next 30% is from the MMCs POV, and then the last 20% is a back-and-forth POV within each chapter. I don't think I've ever seen it done exactly that way, and it worked pretty well. As a debut novel, I thought this was a great story! While the pacing was a little uneven in spots, overall, I was invested in the characters and the issues they needed to work through. I also thought it was fun to have a romance writer who doesn't understand how to write spicy scenes, and the cover model who wants to be more than a "body".🥺 Absolutely worth your time!💖
4.25🌟