Imagine preparing for your date and chatting with your sister while she starts reading tweets about a date going wrong and it sounds very familiar. This is exactly what happens to Samiah. Her date wasn’t able to meet her at the restaurant she booked because he arranged to meet someone else there, and another woman commented on her Twitter feed that she is also dating that guy. So that’s how Samiah, Taylor, and London meet and ditch Craig of many last names for each other. It’s a friendship meet cute! Or meet disaster turned cute? I loved their friendship in this book. They’re so supportive of each other and have weekly Friday night dates with each other as they work on new goals.
Daniel is a new hire at Samiah’s company. They don’t work on the same team and they meet when they get their coffee fix in the company kitchen. But Daniel isn’t the software engineer he’s pretending to be - he’s actually there to secretly investigate money laundering happening through the software the company produces. So this is, of course, a really bad time to fall in love.
The romance works so well in this because both Samiah and Daniel were cautious about it, became friends, and then it became more. She’s not his assignment girlfriend, he’s really complicated the situation by having feelings. Samiah is now working on a new app she’s been thinking about for years, with the support of her new friends, on top of her job where she works a ton of overtime already. They really have to deliberately make time for each other and getting to know each other. As a reader, though, you know something is going to happen with the investigation because Daniel is undercover and may have to leave without a word. It’s so tense amidst their relationship going well. To be clear, Samiah is never a suspect.
I will spoil no further, Farrah Rochon has written an engaging contemporary romance that I see making many a reader’s top of 2020 romance list. Samiah’s worked her butt off in the tech field and creates opportunities for others who are facing the same barriers. Samiah is Black and Daniel is half Black, half Korean. I liked that we had both points of view because he’s on assignment so if we only had her POV we would have to wonder how much was truth from him.
I will say I wish Samiah’s awful coworker had more Karma rain down on her. But maybe we’ll hear more in future books.

Samiah is a great lead: she was fun, confident, and ambitious. I loved the premise of focusing on your career (so many romances have women set their careers aside for love and family), and her friendships and support system with London and Taylor (who are going to get their own books after this)! I liked how Daniel's job was really interesting - he works for a government agency that does undercover work to investigate money laundering schemes. It made this office romance much more unique to me. I look forward to reading future books in this series!

3.5 stars but rounded up to 4. Thank you Netgalley and Hachette for an ARC of this book.

I received an ARC of The Boyfriend Project from Forever Publishing via NetGalley. What follows is my fair and honest review. Warning: this review contains some mild spoilers.

I loved The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon, and that’s saying something since it included one of my least favorite romance tropes: secret identity (aka Liars Gonna Lie). Rochon’s secret identity + workplace romance was so well-written, I devoured the romance, despite my trope-induced misgivings. Here’s my quick summary:

After Samiah’s trip into the dating pool ended in disaster—and a viral video—she’s sworn off men. Instead, she and her two new best friends decide to focus on their “boyfriend projects,” those dreams they’d be accomplishing if they weren’t wasting so much time on finding a man. But just as she’s rearranged her priorities, Samiah meets her company’s newest hire, one Daniel Collins, who has an amazing résumé and a sexy, dimpled smile. Samiah wants to give Daniel a chance, but what if he’s just too good to be true?

As I said, secret identity romances are one of my least favorite tropes because I don’t like how lying plays such a central role in these romances. However, I loved Samiah so much as a character, and her budding friendship with London and Taylor, that I couldn’t walk away from her story. In fact, I think characterization is one of the strengths of this romance. Rochon does a great showing Samiah’s drive and her vulnerabilities, the challenges she faces and why she’s equipped to face them. While I don’t think Daniel is quite as well-drawn a character, I really appreciated his attitude towards his own lies. In a lot of secret identity romances, the liars tend to feel remorse and pain that’s centered around how their significant other will react. Daniel has this anxiety, but he also recognizes it’s wrong on its own, beyond Samiah’s reaction to it. It’s a little moment in the book, but it goes a long way for maintaining my respect for Daniel. I also really appreciate Rochon as a writer for including that. And while I don’t think there was quite enough groveling, I never think there’s enough groveling, so do with that info what you will.

I don’t read many workplace romances, so I can’t really evaluate The Boyfriend Project on those grounds. I will say, though the office is the site of some smoldering glances and smoking hot kisses, it’s not really the source of conflict in their relationship. While there are some questions about professionalism, the fact that Samiah and Daniel work together isn’t a hurdle in the path of their relationship.

Finally, I mentioned this above, but it bears repeating: I love Samiah’s friendship with London and Taylor. I think it’s great that Rochon emphasizes that Samiah has important and emotionally fulfilling relationships outside of her romance with Daniel. Seeing Samiah interact with her sister, Denise, and her friends helped build out her characterization. I also appreciated that we got to see Samiah accomplish her work goals, as well as her romantic ones.

I recommend The Boyfriend Project to any contemporary romance reader. Fans of Talia Hibbert’s Get a Life, Chloe Brown and Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering may particularly enjoy The Boyfriend Project.

5 stars

This book starts off with probably one of my favorite first chapters I've read this year. It's hilarious and it manages to give women, specifically Samiah, Taylor, and London, back power in an incredibly crappy situation. I love how these three women took this bad moment, flipped it around, and formed a solid friendship between them that could give them all just what they need.

Samiah herself is incredible and strong, with a high (and well deserved) level of self respect. She is honestly an inspiration for how to believe in and fight for yourself. She’s intelligent and hardworking and will stand up for her worth, something that a lot of women don’t tend to do in this stupid patriarchy. Added to that all the obstacles she faces from white supremacy in our culture? Bow down to her.

Daniel is such a good man and though he makes mistakes, he usually knows how to say and do the right thing to help support Samiah. These two together are a power couple and I hope we see more of them in the rest of the series. Which I’m assuming will follow Taylor and London. I can't wait!

My experience with The Boyfriend Project was complicated: I loved the main character, Samiah Brooks, but didn't care much for the romance. Samiah was a young Black woman in the tech industry and I liked reading about the obstacles she faced in a world that was predominantly young, white men. After being catfished by the same man, Samiah befriended two other Black professional women and their support for each other was delightful. While I enjoyed the Samiah, the romance was too straight forward for me. I most likely struggled with the romance because I refer a slow-burn, and this one was straight forward. In addition to a straight forward romance, there was a deception plot point that didn't endear the love interest, Daniel to me. As much as I enjoyed the female characters, The Boyfriend Project was mostly forgettable.

What a delightful romance book. I throughly enjoyed this story of Samiah and Daniel. I liked the point of view switches. And the side characters were really enjoyable as well and added a nice comic element.

This started off so good! It was sassy and funny and just made me so excited to read this one. However, it didn’t stay that way and it started to feel like a chore to pick this book up. The best thing about this book was the female friendship that was shown. Their friendship started from something awful but soon transformed into something beautiful.

The romance, the writing, and the two main characters fell flat. The writing was more telling than making me feel anything. I wanted to love this but sadly couldn’t. I expected so much more than what I got. Maybe I had my expectations too high?

Cellphones are ubiquitous in our world and have opened up visibility to events as they happen, whether via video or live tweeting. Samiah finds this out the hard way while getting ready for a date with her boyfriend Craig, when she’s horrified to discover that he is actually out on a date with another woman. (Oh, and using the reservation SHE made for dinner!) Samiah decides to confront the louse at the scene of the crime and what follows becomes a viral video of her meeting Craig’s TWO other girlfriends Taylor and London and the three dumping him in the most glorious fashion publically. Afterwards the trio gets drunk and eventually decide to stick together, swearing off all romantic entanglements for 6 months in order to work on the themselves and their dreams.

To her chagrin when Samiah returns to work in R&D at a tech company, ALL of her coworkers have seen the video including the cute new guy Daniel although unlike everyone else he is thoughtful and actually asks how she is doing. Samiah is intrigued but determined to spend her 6 month dating hiatus working on a new app she was developing, not crushing on her intuitive coworker. For his part Daniel is also interested but tries to ignore the attraction since he is actually working undercover investigating a money laundering ring possibly tied to the company Samiah works for…and because her coding and programming skills, she is one of his suspects. (Eek!)

While Samiah and Daniel both try to remain professional, given that this is a romance we know how it will end up of course. But after her experience with Craig, what happens when Samiah eventually learns Daniel’s secret? Well you are just going to have to read it to find out for yourself! I definitely enjoyed the read especially as it was the first book I’d been able to actually finish in weeks! I’m looking forward to Taylor and London’s books as I really enjoyed their personalities and how they meshed as friends with Samiah. (And I need to find out what happens with Taylor given where she ends up at the end of the book, but no spoilers from me!)

Thank you to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and Netgalley for the chance to read this early!

I had never read any of Farrah's books before I picked up The Boyfriend Project, but I'm definitely going to be remedying that soon because The Boyfriend Project was wonderful!

There were so many things about this book that I loved! Our protagonist, Samiah Brooks, is a smart, beautiful, and driven Black woman who is killing it in the computer science field. A young professional on the rise, Samiah heads up her workplace's outreach program among numerous other projects, while also secretly working on her own social networking app. Her own worst critic, Samiah expects perfection from herself, and her character definitely opened my eyes to how much pressure women of color can feel to not make mistakes and to pave the way for other women of color, especially in STEM fields.

Married to her job, Samiah doesn't have time for girlfriends, but when she and two other women (London and Taylor) discover they are being played by the same guy via Twitter, they band together and form an incredible bond. Supporting each other through work struggles and family drama, these remarkable women decide they're going to focus on themselves and reach for their dreams while leaving dating behind for six months, but of course, that's exactly when handsome, sweet new guy Daniel Collins is hired on to work alongside Samiah, making her re-think all her rules.

The romance, humor, sass, and intelligence of this book had me sprinting through the pages. It was a romcom I didn't ever want to put down, and I was rooting for all of the main characters from the very beginning. This book comes out tomorrow, so definitely pick up a copy because it is definitely one to read! Thank you to @readforeverpub @thisisedelweiss and @farrahrochon for an eARC of this amazing read!

While this is a romance novel, what we both loved the most about it was the emphasis on the other story lines - friendships, work, and family. The book focused for a large portion on the friendship between the three Black women in this book who were all succeeding in their different careers and supporting each other’s endeavors, while also showcasing the issues that Black women often face in professional settings and how they supported each other through those hardships. Having this be such a focal point was really refreshing especially since we all know it is so tough to make friends as an adult, and the way their friendships so fluidly form in the novel was wonderful.

We both enjoyed how independent and confident Samiah is, as well as the fact that she is an insanely successful badass Black woman working in the tech world. There are not many novels that we’ve read in which the main female character works in STEM, and we loved this aspect of the novel so much.

From the romance side of things, Samiah’s relationship with Daniel was also great, and it was really wonderful to watch her learn to let her guard down and open up to someone after being treated so poorly in her last relationship. Daniel is really supportive of Samiah’s career goals, which we loved, but there were some questionable moments when Daniel made decisions that I, Cristina, didn’t fully agree with that ultimately kept this from being a five star read for me.

Ultimately, if you love a workplace romance with a good portion of Black female friendship then I think you’ll really enjoy this book! Rochon’s writing keeps you wanting to read more, and we can’t wait to read the books from London and Taylor’s perspectives. We both highly recommend this one to anyone who enjoys romances, but does not want the romance to be the only plot line. It comes out this Tuesday, June 9th, so we definitely recommend you run to your local independent bookstore and get your hands on it!

This book was unfortunately a DNF for me. I really wanted to love it, and it has got plenty of excellent qualities. The writing is strong, and the characters are instantly likeable. The plot is really where this book lost me. It's all over the place, with many different agendas going on. It's a romcom, with a dash of spy novel? It just didn't work for me. That being said, I am new to the romcom genre, so this might just not be my thing! Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the ARC.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-arc and audiobook. I started reading then switched to the audio.

This book was a timely read for me. It reminded me how much you can learn from a character’s experiences - even in a cute romance book. I loved the dialogue between Samiah and her friends (women supporting women) and between her new co-worker Daniel.

I can’t wait to read the next books about the trio featuring London and Taylor’s stories.

Thanks to NetGalley and Forever/Grand Central Publishing for this eARC.

This wasn't my favorite of the recent romances I've read, but the setup and main characters are very fun! Samiah is an excellent programmer/manager at a tech company who makes two new best girlfriends when they realize they are all being catfished by the same mediocre, scamming man. They make a pact to put dating aside for a while and concentrate on some other life goal. For Samiah, this is an app to make friends (which did sound like a good idea imo). BUT a new man, Daniel has just started at her company and sparks are flying. Unfortunately, Samiah doesn't know that Daniel is there to investigate financial crimes....

I really liked Samiah and Daniel - they are both good people, and Samiah is a fellow Rice alum! The friendship between the three women who were catfished (the other two will presumably have books of their own) was also really lovely, though I would have loved to see more of it. The thing that didn't work for me as much was the writing style, it just didn't have a lot of flow, sometimes due to details about the Austin setting or the background of some tech issue or Daniel's law enforcement job. This was totally a personal preference and I still enjoyed seeing where the story and these characters went.

This is the type of strong, independent women I want to read about. This book was sexy and sizzling and the spark between the two love interest is hot. I had so much fun reading this book because it does give light to the fact that women in the work place have to work harder than their male counterparts and co workers. Such a good read!

I really liked this book! It had a great heroine and female relationships. I liked that there was a twist to the main love interest and it kept me reading, wanting to know what was going to happen and how this would all be resolved. I liked how conflicts were resolved (like adults) and that we are getting more on the secondary characters, Taylor and London.

I'm really happy I decided to read this one and will be reading more in this series from this author!

I'm really conflicted about this review for a couple reasons. I loved that this was about a black woman in tech who knew all her stuff and it doesn't shy away from talking about the micro-aggressions she goes through in the workplace. But at the same time the plot about WHY Daniel was at her workplace just didn't interest me all that much. I honestly felt like there was a lot on that conflict that the romance took a back seat. So while I did enjoy this one, there were things about it that I didn't enjoy.

Right off the bat, the book starts with Samiah finding out her boyfriend has been two-timing her, with two other women. I loved that instead of being angry at the other women the three band together against the jerkface. They even become friends because of it. I liked that a lot!

I got to be honest, I don't think I would want to work in tech. It sounds like a complete nightmare to me. At one point Daniel says he has to make an excuse to take a phone call outside because Trendsetters wants to provide their employees with everything so they don't have to leave the building. Yes, so they don't have to leave the building! That annoyed me so much, because these tech companies basically want you to work 24/7 and that part of America society annoys me so much.

Things get a little dicey at the end of the book because of Daniel's job, just as you would expect it to. But don't worry there is an HEA! I enjoyed this one, but I just don't think workplace romances are really my thing.

*I received a review copy of this book, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

After a disastrous date goes viral, Samiah and her two new besties vow to prioritize themselves. No dating. When Samiah meets the new guy at work, the attraction is mutual. But is Daniel all that he seems?

Samiah and Daniel are such a great couple! One of my favorite parts of this novel was the banter between them. Their struggles toward their HEA felt very realistic. I also liked that the reader was able to hear so much of Daniel's thoughts and not just Samiah's. I don't know much about the tech world and enjoyed seeing a female main character working in a STEM field. This was a bingeable read that included some of my favorite things in a romance: great chemistry, steam and a bit of intrigue. Can't wait for the next book in the series!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was laughing out loud from the beginning of this steamy office romance. Samiah was an amazing heroine she was smart and witty and I loved reading along as she learnt to stand up for herself and take charge of her life and what makes her happy. Daniel the hero was a sexy ex marine who was so sweet and lovable he always knew just what to say and his grand gesture at the end was on point! I can’t wait to read what happens with London and Taylor, Samiahs new bffs in the next 2 books.

I received an ARC of this book to read through NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon is the first book in what looks to be a delightful new series. Samiah Brooks is getting ready to go out when her sister reads live tweets to her of a date gone wrong, and she realizes that the man is her date and that he cancelled dinner with her to go out with someone else. The scene where she, the woman tweeting the date, and a third woman he was stringing along confront him at the restaurant had me cackling with glee.
Daniel Collins works for a government agency that investigates financial maleficence. He expects this new assignment at Trendsetters IT solutions will be a quick find the bad guys and out, but getting access to the information he needs is more complicated than he first thought and then there is Samiah, talented, smart, funny and gorgeous, and as much as he tells himself he can’t get involved, he also knows he can’t let this woman get away, but what happens when she finds out he’s not who he says he is? Every bit of this book was a delight to read, with a nice balance of humour angst, and I highly recommend it. Medium Steam. Publishing Date: June 9, 2020. #TheBoyFriendProject #FarrahRochon #ForeverGrandCentral #ContemporaryRomance #bookstagram

cute!

I liked this! We follow the story of Samiah Brooks, who recently discovers the guy she's been seeing has been cheating on her. She confronts him while on a date with another woman, only to find she's not the only woman who's confronting him. The three women quickly realize he's been lying to all of them. The altercation is recorded, posted to social media and quickly goes viral. Samiah and the other two women, however, become friends and decide to take a break from dating and focus on bettering themselves. A new colleague, Daniel Collins, begins working for the company Samiah works for and sparks quickly fly! But Samiah wonders if it's too soon for her to open herself to someone, all the while, Daniel is hiding a secret from Samiah about who he really is and also wonders if he should even be dating her.

This felt like a typical, easygoing rom-com but there were certain aspects of it that I really enjoyed. Both characters had cool jobs, especially Daniel and I liked the way his job worked into the storyline; I just wish the way in which his job centred around the plot contained more detail when it wrapped up. I would've loved a chapter that showed him figuring out who the "bad guys" were.

Another enjoyable aspect of this novel was the friendship among Samiah, Taylor and London. It was amazing reading about a group of successful black women! I loved how they stuck together and by one another and were also very honest with one another. It felt like my own group of girlfriends!

The chemistry and romance between Samiah and Daniel were lovely (I really loved Daniel, what a sweetheart) and there were a few good steamy scenes!

I think the ending left a little more to be desired though; things could have been solved between Samiah and Daniel so much easier if she'd just chosen to understand his predicament a bit sooner and I found that very annoying (like would you chose to be mad?? *eyeroll*). But! It seems as though we were set up to get Taylor's story next, which I'm very much looking forward to!

Overall, a cute read!

3.5/5

Thanks to NetGalley & the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review!