Thanks so much to Netgalley and the publisher for access to an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

From the title and description of the book to the cute, colorful cover, I was so excited to dive in and to soak up the story, and from there, to see what else would happen at the Second Chance Cafe later on in the series. Now, I'm glad that I ended up getting my hands on this for free so that I didn't have to make the mistake financially. Grumpy x Sunshine is one of my favorite romantic tropes, and I have always loved a good, cheesy Hallmark movie, so the idea of a grumpy, overworked professional from the city coming in to close down the only business keeping a small, rural town going and falling for the brightly colored cotton candy girl of his dreams once he's there had me frothing at the mouth.

But this book fell so flat for me in so many ways, and multiple times within the first few chapters I was actually insulted by the way the characters and their thought processes were being portrayed. I mean, Christopher nods at Harper at one point in what she called 'a weirdly formal way of his' and then she immediately ends up assuming that he's from Japan? Which I think may have been the red flag that finally tipped me over the edge into DNFing the book. 32% in. Because that was too much to handle on top of the way that Christopher kept putting himself down in his own mind every time it was suggested that he might enjoy something that made him appear remotely effeminate (Hallmark movies were only something he watched because of his sister, obviously) and the cringey, juvenile way that so many of Christopher's chapters specifically were written (his coworker openly bullies him *in the office* by calling him the most boring man alive--which doesn't seem particularly scathing but is still pretty darn unprofessional).

But aside from all of my concerns with the redflags of the book, the couple--from the start at least--had very little chemistry together, the focus of every single person in this town on the love life of one girl (however on brand for the hallmark comparison it was going for) was a little heavy handed when I'm used to more fleshed out casts of characters with lives and interests of their own, and the apparently 'grumpy' male lead was the farthest thing from it. If anything, Christopher was a neurodivergent workaholic, and if that had been leaned into more and the book had been written fully from Harper's perspective rather than as a dual POV (it was generally Christopher's chapters that seemed to struggle finding a cohesive voice), then I may have been able to stick with it a bit better.

It's kind of a curse of the contemporary romance genre that a lot of people go in expecting a story to have little to no substance outside of a cheesy romance and an HEA, but I have read so many that have so much more heart, chemistry, and weight thrown behind them that still succeeded in giving all the same warm and fuzzy feelings this one was trying to give, and I just wish it had delivered.