I'm wrecked. Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins for this E-Arc - I have never needed anything more.

Fake relationship, friends to lovers, with mutual pining and idiots who fall in love. SIGN ME UP.

When I read Get a Life, Chloe Brown a few months ago I knew I had found a new must read romance author in Talia Hibbert and I was not wrong. The second installment of The Brown Sisters was just as emotional, funny, steamy, and heart wrenching as the first.

Somehow, this woman manages to weave together romance perfection and she doesn't shy away from hard issues like anxiety and stress which make her characters even more real. I laughed, I cried, I swooned, and I'll recommend it to any romance lover.

Content Warnings: Anxiety disorder, family death, emotional stress.

This book is addictive! Sooooo sweet! I’m mumbling “sweet and swoon” words like a sacred mantra for at least 45 minutes and I cannot stop! Ladies and gentleman: we officially have one of the dearest sweetest and hottest book couple and we’re introduced the best, charming, sexy, romantic, Alpha book- boyfriend Zafir ( Meaning of his name is victor, successful and triumphant one! Well, I may declare he triumphantly stole the most readers’ hearts!)

I still have regrets to give 4 stars to Chloe and Red’s story because it was one of my romantic reads of last year. So I’m so adamant not to do some mistake again and starting my review by giving five opposites attract, sizzling chemistry, entertaining, quirky romantic, intellectually ravishing, blazing, hot and cutest- sweetest five gazillion stars!

We’ve met Dani ( Her name is Slavic and it means “Morning star”! Even though our character is insomniac and night owl and she knows how to be shiny and energetic in the mornings thanks to Zaf’s uneaten protein bars!) at the first book and since I adored her sarcastic, witty, entertaining banters with her sisters and her quirky, likable antics, I was so excited to read her own book. In this book, we start learning more about her career driven moods, her ambitiousness to gain professional success.

As an academician she is really workaholic and she doesn’t do relationships because she tells everyone it is a distraction to prevent her keep eye on the ball and work for her career oriented aims. But of course she keeps lying to herself because her first serious relationship broke her heart into smithereens and she thinks she’s emotionally cold and awkward so she doesn’t have anything to give anyone and she cannot change her emotionally disabled situation.

Till she meets tempting security guard/ex rugby star Zafir Ansari working at her school, befriending her. Zafir looks intimidating, giving I’m going to kill in the middle of the night and getting away from your corpse without anyone’ notice looks but don’t be fooled by his gorgeous Hulk appearance. He is so delicately sweet, kind, nice and protective. He does anything for his family and the guy actually reads romance novels and enjoys them.

When the fire drill at her work place goes wrong, Dani finds herself trapped in the elevator. Luckily Zafir finds out Dani didn’t leave the school and comes back for her. He saves his milady, holding her into his big and muscular arms and they find themselves as social media’s hottest topic with this unplanned but sexy and romantic rescue attempt!

Zafir starts getting fundraising offers for his sports charity for kids. But getting more social awareness he needs to be photographed and tagged with his girlfriend. ( yes, everyone thinks he’s dating with Dani!) So he kindly asks Dani pretend as a couple for the great cause (he only thinks about the future of kids, right?) Dani accepts the offer. But both of them find out: they’re playing with fire. Zafir is romantic, possessive and he still tries to face his traumatic loss of his brother and father. And Dani is emotionally disturbed, rejecting to face her feelings but as long as they spend more time and get to know more about each other, they find out, they cannot stop to fall for each other!

During my read, I laughed a lot, I sighed a lot and my eyes filled with tears. I think I loved Zafir more than Dani. I silently prayed and hoped Dani doesn’t break his heart! Normally it should be opposite but we have best book-boyfriend material in this book. You cannot help yourself not to root and chant for Zaf!
Talia Hibbert did it again and wrote another fantastic Brown Sisters’ book. But this is also tormenting experience because we need to wait for one year to read the third one!

Overall: I TRULY DEEPLY HOPELESSLY LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH!

So much thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers/Avon for sharing my most anticipated romance book’s ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

I read a few pages but with so much vulgarity and references to “f———,” I could not continue. I didn’t realize from the book’s description it would include the profanity.

Please sign me up for all the classes with Professor Dani Brown. This is another big winner from the insightful and hilarious Talia Hibbert. Long live the Brown Sisters.

I loved this book. There’s so much good happening here. Fake dating. Diverse, complex characters. Emotions that hurt in all the best ways. Chemistry that burns. Talia Hibbert writes GREAT romance. Great. Romance.

Thank you Avon and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book and all thoughts and opinions are my own. Take Hint, Dani Brown is set to release in June.

This was a very sexy and fun read! I love this flirty relationship between Zaf and Dani. I think it was so cute that Zaf had this crush on Dani and that he seemed more of the nervous and awestruck one. such a good romance with such fun and sexy dialogue and chemistry between the characters.

I really loved Zafir. He was a super cute, grumpy, gentle giant with a massive protective streak and very relatable anxiety issues. He was swoony for sure and just so darn nice! I also loved how open he was expressing himself and got a kick out of his romance reading addiction!

Danika was harder for me to get a handle on. I liked that she was brainy, sarcastic, and very goal driven. I liked how supportive she was of Zafir and how aware of him than she let on. What I didn’t like was how she hid her own emotional issues from him for as long as she did, without any true consideration for his feelings. Blind panic and all that I get, but the ending just flipped a switch too fast for me to really wrap my head around the dynamic change. I felt like I missed as much as Zafir did when all was revealed!

Overall though, I really enjoyed Danika and Zafir’s story. There were lots of heavy topics addressed yet I never felt bogged down by any of it. The romance was super sexy, like holy smokes sexy, and there’s no denying the scorching chemistry with these two...but! Things are more than physical and I loved exploring the emotional nuances between Dani and Zafir.

I received an advance reader copy from Netgalley/Avon and this is my honest review.

Even though Take a Hint, Dani Brown is only the second book in The Brown Sisters series, I think it could quite possibly be my favorite comedic romance series to date! I love the way Talia Hibbert combines sarcastic humor and swoon(y) romance seamlessly, BUT the difference between most other romantic comedy novels is the fact that there is so much depth packed into each installment! The characters are extremely well-developed— so much so that by the end you feel like they are your friends lol! Take a Hint, Dani Brown is a total and complete 5 star novel! This book needs to be a the very top of your summer reading list—highly recommend!

I fell in the love with this book right from the beginning. The heroine is a bad ass queer feminist who just wants to get laid. The hero a strong sensitive grump who loves romance novels. What's not to love?!

Dani really does not want to take any of the hints the universe (and her goddess) is giving her about Zaf. Despite his swoony, sweet, and sexy behavior, she doesn’t trust love, until she has no other choice but to accept it. This book deals with important issues and handles them extremely well. Plus, the glimpses of Red and Chloe were adorable. I am just in awe of the awesomeness and can’t wait for Eve’s story next!

This was delightful. It was just what I needed during the pandemic. I think I liked it even better then Chloe Brown.

This book captured my attention from the very first mention of the phrase 'honey on her tit' which just happened to be in the very first paragraph. Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert is a whirlwind of hot and anxious hero, bold and brilliant heroine, and adorably dorky dialogue. Someone bottled perfection and it is this book.


Danika Brown is an outspoken, full-figured, woman of color who is here to change up everything you thought you knew about romance heroines. The way she spoke, her thought processes, her strange habits... everything about her character was either laugh out loud funny or so relatable that I was actually sitting there going, "oh man, that's me, we're the same." It felt like I, as the reader, weren't sitting outside the book reading about her life, I was a part of her life. She's the kind of character you are honored to read about.


Authors often think that if they're going to write an alpha hero he has to be possessive, brash, tough, and strong, both physically and mentally. But Zaf is a example of what a man can be when they actively work against toxic masculinity (in fact, in the book he does work against it). Zaf was a thoughtful, kind, quiet, romance-reading man (yup, you heard me right. He's one of us!). Whenever he opened his mouth I was positively stunned by the insightful things he had to say and, as someone who suffers from anxiety, it really meant a lot to read about a character who experienced similar symptoms. Not to mention, it was nice that it was the hero with the disability and not the heroine like is most common. I absolutely loved that Danika always thought she knew what was going to come out of his mouth but she was almost always wrong because Zaf was constantly blowing her expectations of the male form out of the water.


Talia Hibbert has given new life to the romance genre with her characters that are both out of the box for the genre as a whole and also incredibly relatable. These characters could be your family, coworkers, classmates, but you won't be able to put down this book without calling them your friends because they'll feel that real. Take a Hint, Dani Brown is a pleasing, heart-warming, belly-laughing read that you'll be recommending to all your friends

Loved this second in the Brown Sisters series - so much heart and so much fun. Hibbert’s characters are full of emotion and depth, and I love the gender dynamic reversal. Very modern and thoroughly enjoyable!

Friends, I got very lucky in the ARC lottery. One might even say I won the ARC lottery by receiving a copy of Take A Hint, Dani Brown.

Danika Brown doesn't do relationships, not when they all surely end in disappointment. No, she'd much rather focus on her career and academic pursuits than waste precious energy on romance. But if the universe could just send her someone to take the sexual edge off...that'd be a dream come true. Someone who can keep her satisfied without expecting more from her than she can give.

When former rugby player and security hunk Zafir "Zaf" Ansari "rescues" Dani from a workplace fire drill, Dani reads it as an obvious sign from the universe that Zaf might be the person she's been looking for. When a video of her rescue goes viral, both Zaf and Dani see it as an opportunity– if they fake a public relationship together, Zaf gains publicity for his non-profit, and maybe Dani can convince romantic Zaf to be her partner in the bedroom. As long as they can both agree to part ways with no strings attached at the end, it's win-win for everyone...right?

Talia Hibbert does something that I absolutely love and she does it really well: she writes male characters that transcend the typical character profile in contemporary romance. In Take a Hint, Dani Brown, Zafir "Zaf" Ansari is complex and utterly ideal. He's intelligent, a former pro rugby player, an uncle, a friend, and the founder of a non-profit that focuses on young men overcoming toxic masculinity. He's an avid reader of romance novels and he believes in the importance of acknowledging your feelings and being truthful about them with others. He suffers from deep grief and persistent anxiety, frequently facing it down by reminding himself of who he is, where he's been, and how to move forward. In Take A Hint, Dani Brown, anxiety and depression are represented well:

"He wasn't going to tell her about the heights his anxiety had reached, or how it turned out depression could fuel rage like nothing else, or how bleak it felt when the fire ran out and the demons were all you had left."

Zaf is a male character you absolutely admire, and I love how TAHDB includes struggles we so infrequently read in male characters. How often does a male character openly suffer from anxiety and worry about their loved ones dying suddenly? How often does a male character understand and express that in relationships, it's not your job to change your partner, you should just accept them as they are or move on? Not often, that's the answer, and it's a ringing theme I've noticed in this series. I love the male protagonists the most.

In the same vein, TAHDB also features a female character that's outside of the "normal" quirky we frequently read in the genre. Dani Brown is a witchy, socially awkward, academically driven PhD student who has no time for romance, thank you very much. Romance ends in misery and disappointment every time, so she's taught herself to avoid it. She has strict rules in place to prevent herself from getting hurt ever again. She has goals that she wants to achieve, she's unwilling to sacrifice her drive and passion for someone who wants her to change, and she doesn't have time to be someone she's not. She's not the romantic type to remember anniversaries, or so she's told herself. She's also a character that has qualities we don't always read–she's not a sweet, clumsy, sometimes funny heroine. She's a sarcastic, focused, highly intelligent character that's thinking three steps ahead with dimpled thighs and a great rack. She's blunt and straightforward in what she wants, and that's something I love to read in female protagonists, even if it hits you over the head sometimes.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, there's a few things I wish I'd had more and less of. I wish I'd had more of Zaf's struggle with the grief he feels from the loss of his brother and father, how it's ever persistent and changes, how it's affected his family and his relationships with them. I wanted more on the why's of starting Tackle It and there are some plot points that we never find resolved (as an example, accepting a job with his former team that causes him much anxiety). In this, we only get little tastes. I wish I'd had more backstory or reflection on Dani's history and how she became so cynical on love and romance. Again, we only get little tastes. And I know it's part of her character, but I wish I'd had a bit less of Dani's internal monologue because it's redundant. We know that Dani "doesn't do relationships" but her brush-offs are frequent, her rationale static, and a huge part of her change is almost overnight. There's not much reflection on that, either. And finally, her grand gesture was, sure, outside of Dani's comfort zone, but a little underwhelming in the end.

This one was absolutely a slow burn and I loved it. The romance was steamy (whew, so good) and drawn out and there were so many moments of friendship. I loved the concept of fake dating after a social media mishap because it makes the scenario far more likely today than other plot lines you find in the genre. I don't always enjoy the friends to lovers trope, but it was done really well here. However, there were moments when I felt like it the build up and slow burn was too drawn out, too slow moving, particularly in the middle (about 60% of the way in), and I found myself wishing for something to happen, wishing for just a tiny bit of drama to keep me intrigued.

Misgivings aside, Take A Hint, Dani Brown was a fantastically written, funny, thoughtful story from Talia Hibbert including characters I'll remember and I can't wait for her next book.

*Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

I absolutely needed this LOL Romantic Comedy! I loved Get a Life, Chloe Brown (so much) and I almost think I loved this more! The mix of laugh out loud banter, steamy chemistry, and very relatable issues of anxiety and self-confidence issues was exactly what I needed in these trying times. Dani and Zaf have been low-key flirting forever when a gallant moment is turned into a viral video. Zaf is mortified but it turns out the publicity is helping his non-profit get noticed. As a devoted fan of romance novels, he floats the idea of a brief fake relationship. To his surprise Dani agrees. This is a fabulously fun and meta take on a classic romance trope.

Dani and Zaf begin each workday exchanging a coffee for a protein bar and some outrageous flirting to go along with this "breakfast." But everything changes after Dani gets stuck in the elevator and Zaf takes it upon himself to save her. Can this ongoing meet-cute actually hold some real sparks or is this just heat in the moment. Fun and playful romantic comedy.

I am ALWAYS here for fake dating, and Talia Hibbert does that trope so much justice in this follow-up to Get a Life, Chloe Brown. I had liked Chloe's story but found myself relating so much to different parts of Dani and Zaf's experiences that I enjoyed this follow-up way more than the original. Dani and Zaf are both such well-rounded characters, and their issues (with grief, with relationships, with anxiety, with work, etc) are so believable and the development over the course of the book feels natural and earned. Plus, the dialogue is wonderfully banter-y and fake dating shenanigans are always a good time.

I love Talia Hibbert's romantic novels- she's a maestro of all the elements: witty banter, steamy sex scenes, moving romantic moments and Fabulous character development! Take a hint, Dani Brown is a romantic pageturner. This second novel in the the Brown Sisters series focuses on Danika-a PHD Grad student-Professor who has a fondness for Security Guard on campus and former Rugby Star Zafir. Danika asks the Goddess for a new friend with benefits in her monthly Moon rituals. After a short while Danika is given the hint! When that happens romance and steamy interludes ensue.

Sexually explicit modern romance isn't my usual genre preference, but this fast, funny read was a nice diversion. I enjoyed the diverse, unique characters and their loving and supportive families. Recommend to readers who enjoy a rollicking romance with steamy sex scenes and snarky conversation.

Recommended for fans of contemporary romance, even those who haven't read the first volume in the Brown Sisters series - it does a great job of explaining previous events without feeling like you missed out.

Like Talia Hibbert's other book, I enjoyed her inclusive perspective on romance novels. I like that the male protagonist and not perfect, he has his own struggles with mental health.