Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review. I’ve read a few Mazey Eddings books prior to this one and I really enjoy how she mixes the fun of a standard rom com with real-world relationship issues. This book is no different. This book is an enemies-to-lovers/grumpy sunshine/second chance romance but this time SHE is the grump and he is maybe not sunshine completely but a mostly sunny day. One of the things I liked about this book is that it models healthy communication between 2 people who clearly have a lot of trauma in their past. Yeah, sometimes it was messy but that’s real life. There are quite a few spicy scenes in the book. I don’t typically shy away from that type of content in books but I felt like a couple of them were timed wrong storyline-wise and I found myself skimming them. That said, she does write great scenes!! Solid 4 star book. It does deal with toxic workplace, bullying, death and bisexuality but Eddings handles all of that with care.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for honest feedback. I really enjoyed the beginning of the book but halfway through it really slows down and there’s just not enough of a connection between Kate and Charlie to keep you interested. In fact, for a book billed as romance the romance almost feels like an after thought through the entire story. I also felt like there were a lot of side plots in the book that could have been removed. There was so much to the plot: the sister, the snarky ex husband, a drifting college aged daughter on top of being a fake author finding romance again that it just got to be too much. I think if they had cut out some of those the book would have felt more succinct. I’m still giving this one 3 stars because Josie Silver is a good author but this one could have used a little bit more editing to really make it shine.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review. This book is going to end up being one of my favorite reads of the year. I fully expected this to be some cutesy little romance book but it packed quite the emotional punch. The book is split into two POVs: Sadie (our FMC) and Jaylie (her D&D character). At first I wasn’t sure how I would like Jaylie’s storyline but I ended up looking forward to them. And kudos to Woods for using that storyline to advance the relationship between Sadie & Noah in such a unique way. The relationship building between Sadie and Noah is a little subtle at first but I think it goes really well with Sadie’s overall plotline. And I felt that their relationship blossomed at a pretty good pace for a book Reagan considered “slow burn”. There is a pretty toasty open door scene but for the most part the focus of the book is on the emotional relationship. Also, you do not have to be familiar with D&D to read this. I know absolutely zero about it and I still really enjoyed this book (and I’m also kind of intrigued about the game)