Erin La Rosa

Sam and Damon were close friends in high school; Damon wanted to be closer but Sam was afraid of breaking his heart when she inevitably felt compelled to leave town just like her estranged mother. Now she's back home to help her grandmother move out of the family home, and Sam finds her old CD player with the last mix tape Damon made for her inside. Turns out it is a time-travel/possessed/haunted CD player showing Sam an alternate timeline with Damon. (Suspend disbelief, please, you'll have a lot more fun than over-analyzing why or how this is happening, especially since it's never explained.) Over time and as Sam is shown various stages of their alternate timeline romance, she realizes that she may have had a happier life if she'd made a different choice with Damon back in high school. But is that really true, and is it ever too late for happiness? I'm sure we all have those things or people we wonder "What if?" about, and I absolutely loved this concept! I also loved the idea of music being the vehicle of choice for showing the alternate timeline, and the author captured the feel of the early 'aughts very well. The childhood friends to lovers trope is my kryptonite, and it works well here. And while this isn't a second chance romance in the traditional sense I think it was close enough to make this a wonderful redemptive romance. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this story in exchange for my honest review!… (más)

I really wanted to love this. Alas, I ended up barely finishing. Food and romance? With a sprinkle of fake dating?!! Those are all totally my Jam! Unfortunately, this book couldn’t turn out a tasty dish with all those ingredients (see, I can also overuse baking analogies)!

Nina and Leo did enemies very well. However I didn’t buy the later “to-lovers” part. Leo was too downright nasty to her a lot of times for me to get on board with them especially since he was supposedly in love with her from the beginning! I didn’t buy their romance, and truly the only thing I liked was the brief separation at the end. LOL.

One of the few things I liked was the mental health inclusion.

I overall felt there were the right ideas, but they were put together funny. A shame.

Thanks to the Publishers and NetGalley for the ARC
… (más)

I was intrigued within the first two lines; in love by the end of the second page. Sometimes you just know that a book is going to be a new favorite from the first chapter—that was Plot Twist for me.

The leads were relatable without becoming stock characters common in so many rom-coms. Sophie was a curvy pansexual romance author who has never been in love. Dash was a short tattooed indie actor trying to find his place in the world with his new sobriety. That already made for interesting and compelling characters, but then they both got bonus points for talking about crafting and candles. As someone who loves making decorative concrete candles, I feel like I just met my new book BFFs.

This book did a wonderful job of covering tense topics, while still retaining the joy and laughter found in rom-coms. I loved this book, and am already looking forward to buying it in paperback when it is released. This was an easy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating from me and I 10 out of 10 recommend.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.… (más)

If only they could talk. Oh, wait… How non- and intentional miscommunication not only derails a decent story but an entire novel.

“For Butter or Worse”? This amusingly cheesy title (and Helen Hoang’s prominent endorsement on the cover) made me read this. Sadly, it was mostly a waste of my reading time.

Chef Nina and restaurant chain owner Leo co-host a cooking show and don’t get along. Once she drops out of the show, Nina discovers she’s losing even more business than before and agrees to fake-date her “enemy” Leo. Leo is in a pretty similar situation and, thus, agrees to this charade as well.

At this point, I should have stopped. Fake-dating and enemies-to-lovers in one book? That’s a recipe for disaster but Erin La Rosa had to add a lot more ingredients to her novel and as its sole cook, she creates a hotchpotch of topics that are each highly relevant - and thoroughly neglected.

There’s, of course, the subject of sexism in the food industry. To be honest, I have next to no clue about the food industry but judging by the number of famous male chefs I know versus that of famous female ones, this seems fairly obvious.
It doesn’t really get explored in any meaningful way, though.

Let’s add anxiety and panic attacks to the mix - pretty much the only thing the novel has to say on the topic is that “the symptoms of a heart attack [are] virtually indistinguishable from those of a panic attack”.

We’re still not done yet because next to be added is “extreme burnout”. Thankfully, the author refrains from making any big assumptions on that one - apart from it being dealt with conclusively in a mere six therapy sessions…

Social media toxicity also had to be added, right next to toxic masculinity represented by the transgressive stereotypical ex-boyfriend. Stress eating and lots of other miscellaneous issues serve to further enrich this mess.

I could look past all that if the remainder of the story made up for it but, alas, there just isn’t enough of a story in this: They fake-date, they discover they harbour feelings for each other - and decide to keep silent about those feelings, sometimes actually expressing the exact opposite of what they feel and want from each other. I kept thinking “TALK TO EACH OTHER!” (Yes, in all-caps.)

It is so unbelievably annoying to me when authors resort to such simplistic devices: Both Nina and Leo can’t be teenagers anymore. They’ve each actually accomplished a lot. And, yet, they don’t talk.

Two out of five stars.

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Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam… (más)