Make Up Break Up by Lily Menon Sandhya Menon (2021/02/21)
Rating 3.5/5 Stars

Disclaimer: Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher (St. Martin's Press) for providing me with an eGalley to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This story follows Annika Dev who has created an app called Make Up which is used to help save relationship. She thinks her rival Hudson Craft’s stole her idea because she had a summer fling in Las Vegas with him. Now he has an app called Break Up which is used for people who want to get out of relationships.

Annika thinks that Las Vegas will be the last time she ever sees Hudson but all this changes when he moved into her office building. To make Matters worse he’ll be competing at the EPIC investment pitch contest which is a contest Annika needs to win if she wants to keep her app working. But as they spend time Annika realized that Hudson probably didn’t steal her app idea and he’s not as bad as she thinks he is.

I enjoyed this story. I enjoyed the banter and chemistry that they character had. I also really enjoyed the side characters, I found them to be a nice addition to the story. I really liked that Annika was a female CEO and was super hard working.

What hindered my enjoyment of the novel was the heroine. I found her extremely unlikable. At times I really couldn’t sympathise with her. I also found that she kept referring the hero by his full name which was funny at first but got repetitive after the 30th time. I wished the story was told in dual POV I feel like I would have enjoyed the story more. This story is supposed to be an enemies to lover story but I felt like the enemies/hatred was so onsided it was really obvious that the hero did not feel the same way as the heroine from the very beginning. Ultimately, I really wanted to love this story, but I found the reasons who why they both created their apps way too predictable.

Overall, I do really like Sandhya Menon’s YA work so I definitely would be interested in reading more of her adult novels. Once again, thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eGalley to review.

TW: Mentions Death Of Loved One, Terminal Illness, Car Accident, Racism

thank you net galley and st. martin’s press for providing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. wow i loved this book. i loved the plot and the romance. the writing style was amazing. i couldn’t help laughing out loud at some points. there were many plot twists i didn’t see coming. hudson craft was my favorite character. i loved him so much. the only thing i didn’t like was how immature the main character acted sometimes. that wasn’t enough for me to lower my rating though. i highly recommend this book:)

2.5 stars rounded up

What I liked
-light, quick read
-strong friendships
-Annika's loyalty to and love for her dad
-women in tech

What I didn't like
-the apps that were the center of the controversy
-the time to resolution and so much skirting around everything
-repetitive mentions of Las Vegas and EPIC. It felt like these were the only things that were key events in the whole book and both are so overly mentioned

Maybe I'm just not cut out for the enemies to lover trope? This one just missed the mark for me, personally.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/St. Martin's Griffin for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 stars

Make Up Break Up is a love-to-hate-to-love romance between two CEOs. One is Annika, a woman who struggles with the launching of her app Make Up that wants to help struggling couples by working on their communication. The other is Hudson, the successful man behind Break Up, an app who helps people break up with their partners without having to do it themselves. After a week together in Las Vegas and leaving each other behind, Annika is persuaded that Hudson stole her idea. When the both of them will be forced to work close together and compete against one another for investors,

Overall, I wanted to love this book but sadly I didn't really connect with the story or characters. The Hate to Love trope is always fun to read about but I didn't like the main characters all that much. Some of the fights made me cringe and I didn't react when they grew closer. But just because this romance didn't really work for me doesn't mean you won't like this especially if you love hate-to-love tropes in an office or something like that.

(Thank you for letting me read and review an ARC via Netgalley)

Ultimately, it seemed clear early on that this book was not for me. I liked Menon's book under a different name, When Dimple Met Rishi, and therefore I assumed this one would work for me. Even when I saw other people saying there was too much tech talk, I thought, "Well, I felt like that was lacking in Dimple," and was still pretty sure I would like it. But there's something about these 24 year old characters that feels so juvenile and also just... awful, that I couldn't seem to get past it. I know this book is for someone, but I am definitely not the audience for it.

This book felt very young adult, only with the constant reference to a one night stand and the related steam. However, some of the steamy scenes were so cringy that I had to skip parts.

The YA feel does make sense as this author is an established YA author under her real name.

While reading, I kept thinking of how this book feels familiar as if I’ve read similar ones in the past. Nothing felt new or unique about the story to me.

If you are working on anything that can be proprietary don’t tell anyone until you’ve completed it! Because of that, I did not have empathy for The core story line that the app idea was “stolen.” (Can it be considered stolen if you TELL the person all about your idea?)

There were many times when she would refer to him as “my sworn enemy” yet we were never told or shown WHY she hated him so much.

It was hard to connect with the main characters as they did feel very one dimensional. I did like Annika’s friend the best as she did show some sense during the story.

The ending did give a little redemption as they both said they were working on the app so they could talk to each other.

Overall, I wanted to enjoy this book as I was looking forward to it but it just missed the mark for me.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing to me so I requested a copy to read.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during that 2nd attempt, I have only managed to make it halfway through so I'd rather stop here and state that this book just wasn't for me.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Annika Dev is developing an app called Make Up, which will study conversations between partners and show them how to fix their relationships. Hudson Craft moves into the office down the hall from her. His app is called Break Up, which is a service that will send someone to your partner to break up with them for you. Hudson and Annika had a spontaneous fling in Vegas in the previous summer. She told him about her idea for an app and then he stole her idea to make an app to break people up. Now, they’re not only neighbors but they’re also competing for an investment that Annika needs to save her company from bankruptcy. They have to figure out how to put their differences behind them to create successful businesses.

‘Hate to love’ is one of my favourite romance tropes. There was a lot of tension between Annika and Hudson right from the beginning. Annika had strong feelings against Hudson immediately. I wasn’t sure why she hated him so much, and the complete details of what happened between them wasn’t revealed until the final pages. Her feelings would have made more sense if their first encounter was described earlier in the story.

The final quarter of the story was very intense and emotional. There were very high, exciting parts and some low, devastating parts as well. The plot became much more solid as it progressed. There were some things that were revealed in the final parts, such as the details of Annika and Hudson’s first encounter, which would have been better if they were revealed at the beginning.

This was a good ‘hate to love’ romance. I’m looking forward to reading Lily Menon’s next romances!

Thank you St. Martin’s Griffin for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Annika Dev is what one would call a romantic, but she knows love isn’t always sunshine and roses. She knows love takes hard work and understanding, which is why she and her friend are developing Make Up, an app that will help couples communicate better.

Hudson Craft on the other hand believes relationships typically end and he believes the break up should be quick and efficient like many things in our fast paced lives. That is why he developed Break Up, an app that allows you to use a service to break up with your partner.

Annika is pretty set in the idea that Hudson stole her app and is majorly benefitting from it after their week long fling at a conference in Las Vegas. Now Hudson’s company has moved into Annika’s office building and she’s not sure how much more she can take.

This one was a tough read for me. I found Annika’s character very unlikeable from the very beginning. The whole storyline for me was just off and I couldn’t connect with it. Without giving away some major points of the book, this to me was just not well put together and I didn’t really like the flow. I also felt like the last bit of the book was just sloppily thrown together in a rush to finish the story. This one was a big let down for me and gets 2.5 stars.

Annika has a great idea for a relationship app: it helps those already in one talk each other through disagreements and difficulties in a healthy way, keeping fights from becoming break-ups. She just has to convince angel investors that her concept is worth it, or she won't be able to pay the rent on her office space and her dream will end in total failure. Adding to her stress is a rival app created by her former one-week stand, Hudson. Despite it being the total opposite of her relationship-saver (it basically hires stand-ins to go break up with your partner FOR you so you don't have to have those uncomfortable conversations yourself), it's wildly successful and Hudson's face is on the cover of tech magazines. They had a good time during their brief fling, but with their different approaches to love, it's obvious that they could never have been anything more. And now they're enemies, sabotaging each other's networking parties and presentations, each trying to outdo the other so they can get the investors to choose their app. Only their rivalry, while driving them both nuts, is also a heck of a lot of fun. And maybe, despite their differences, their original connection wasn't doomed to fail after all...it might have been the beginning of something big for them both.

This was a cute romance, but it didn't entirely work for me. I had a hard time connecting with Annika because she was just too uppity and happy on her high horse to be sympathetic. Hudson's app was ANATHEMA to everything she believes in (that was said no less than 10 times) and she "could never be with someone" who capitalizes on people's heartbreak like that. It was really hard to like her! And Hudson, despite actually seeming swoony, just randomly chose to change his whole approach to life for no apparent reason at the end so they could have their HEA. It was all too sudden and convenient, and it didn't make sense with everything he'd been saying up until then.

However, I liked the supporting characters more (June and Ziggy were favorites), and the writing was fun and easy to read. I felt like this was a tentative step between YA and adult romance (this is Meron's first book for adults). So I'm interested to see whether she can write a more believable plot and a more likeable heroine with a little more practice.

**Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!**

This was a disappointment for me, as a lover of Menon's YA work. Unfortunately, the traits she makes pop in teenagers carry through to her adult characters where they just don't work. The two leads met off-page before the book began and due to a betrayal that is unexplained, Annika hates Hudson but Hudson remains a fan of Annika despite the hostility that radiates off of her.

From the start Annika is hard to get on board with -- why is she hemorrhaging money on downtown LA real estate for an app that doesn't need to be consumer-facing yet because it's still in development. Why is this book not set in Silicon Valley where there is actually a cut-throat app development culture.

Hudson isn't great either! His app lets people break up with someone without speaking to them face to face which seems incredibly gross and it's massively unclear why he launched it, why he is so passionate about it, and why it's so successful with no criticism of how gross its actual application is (it's men who don't want to deal with the reality of women possibly having feelings at being dumped).

So begins a series of petulant sabotaging pranks that are supposed to be a fun hate-to-love war... and all of this feels more appropriate for Menon's YA work. Annika is on the verge of losing her business and is behaving like a literal child. The romance makes no sense. The business subplot makes no sense.

Basically, give me more YA, please. Menon is excellent at it.

I really loved the sound of the premise to Make Up Break Up, especially the enemies to lovers trope (my personal favorite), second chance romance, and really, most of all, a smart, strong female main character in Annika Dev, who I loved to see was Indian American. Yet this rom-com didn't quite work for me in the end. I loved the idea of Annika's Make Up app and would have really enjoyed reading more of how it worked since Menon did such a great job bringing tech into the book without making it too technical, you know what I mean? I know it's an app that I'd use!

But as much as I loved Annika's passion for the Make Up app, her friendship with her best friend June (my favorite character in the book because she's adorable), and her drive to succeed on her own merits, I really, really disliked the person she became when faced with Hudson Craft, rival app developer of the app Break Up and her steamy one night stand in Vegas. She became childish, mean when around him, and not someone that I would like to be friends with at all--the total opposite of the person that I originally thought she was, and it soured the story for me. Sure, the two were rivals, and assumptions were made on both sides, but I felt like Annika just needed to stop acting so immature because the "rivalry" was so obviously one-sided (hers).

In a lot of ways, the book was predictable. I honestly cared more about June than anyone else--I'd read a sequel about June! Overall, it's a cute, quick read.

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the DRC. All opinions are my own.

I started this before Royally Wild and had no problem putting it aside. I almost didn’t finish it. I just wasn’t impressed in this. I loved the concept, but it just fell flat. And honestly, I didn’t like Annika. I felt like she was super judgmental of Hudson - and June and her dad. I would pass on this if I were you.

A geeky love story. Two tech developers do battle for dominance. With witty repartee and sneaky tricks they try to get one over each other. All the time what they are really fighting is the attraction they feel for each other. There are also secondary characters who add layers of flavor to to story.

I just....did not care. I didn't like either character, I hated the decisions they made, and I just could not find myself caring for more than about 30 seconds at a time. SO much potential, but this just wasn't a book for me.

DNF at 6%. Sometimes you can just tell early on that a book isn’t the right fit for you. Yes - I’m reading this for the romance. But when it’s a romance where their jobs are a key part - I need to be able to at least somewhat believe in their jobs. And the amount of terrible business decisions Annika had made and shared in the opening chapter already made that hard for me. Ultimately, this isn’t a good fit. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

After loving Booked for Christmas I was so excited to see another Lily Menon story being released. Make Up Break Up was such an entertaining enemies to lovers/second chance romance read. Annika and Hudson are rivals with apps that are in direct contrast to each other and they are both aiming to win the same investment. I really loved their chemistry! It had the sparks that I love with enemies to lovers romances which had me flipping the pages. Once I started I really did not want to put this book down. I wish their emotional relationship was more developed so it flowed more throughout the story. I also wish Annika had more character growth throughout the story. I loved that she was a strong character but some of her actions were a bit over the top for me in trying to one-up Hudson. I appreciated the side characters and thought they really added to the story, especially Annika's dad. Overall, I really enjoyed this story and it was such a fun escape. If you want a romance to fly though I recommend picking up Make Up Break Up!

Annika and Hudson are two up and coming business owners. After a recent fling in Vegas, their paths cross again...with one issue. Their new businesses are exact opposite of each other. Their new start ups also could prevent any sort of future relationship. Can they overcome these hurdles to and start a relationship? Will their jobs stand in the way?

Cute. A bit predictable. However a definite recommendation. Perfect read for Valentine’s Day.

The setup of the book was incredibly strong but I felt like it lacked a lot of the material that it so dearly needed.
While I cannot say I have been a huge of the author's books in the past, it was sad to add on to the list of underwhelming books. I did think that this had so much potential.

I was very excited to read this book. However it never grabbed my attention and I had to struggle to finish it. Annika and Hudson's story is a combination platter of second chance, enemies-to-lovers and opposites attract tropes. This should have been an explosion of goodness but just somehow fell flat. I got no sparks of any kind from these two and I found their childishness annoying. Of the two, Hudson was the most likable but if I am 100% honest, I did not care for either.