Petition for Kosoko Jackson to please write more romcoms!

This book combines two of my current favourite tropes; fake dating and second chance romance, and it was one of the best romcoms I've read in a while. Especially because it has a really distinctive and genuinely funny main character, who I know will stay with me for a long time.

It did take me a little while to get invested in the romance. One downside of the book to me was that I felt like we didn't get to know Hudson really well. Basically what we know of their relationship is that Hudson stands up for Kian in several instances, and Kian (understandably) seems to have a thing for that. I would have loved to see a little more of what initially brought them together, but even so, I did feel really invested in the romance towards the end.

I’ve been itching for another romcom that would cause my belly to ache from laughter, and Jackson’s first foray into adult romance didn’t disappoint. I’m So (Not) Over You is hilarious with a capital EVERYTHING. Being inside Kian’s head is like having a good friend unknowingly go off on a monologue, complete with random, spot-on, and not-so-obscure-but-also-super-obscure-yet-totally-relevant pop culture references. Kian is surrounded by a solid support group of his bff Divya and brother Jamal. Divya and Jamal are such fleshed out characters; I totally wouldn’t mind a love story between the two.

I was excited to read this one and waited a long time to be approved for this ARC. Unfortunately, this book did not work for me. Kian's character was very inconsistent and all over the place. I couldn't get a good idea of his character. Hudson is very pretentious and flaunts his wealth. Major turnoffs.

I'm sad that this didn't work for me.

This book is hilarious, witty and well written and legit made me audibly laugh while reading. I absolutely loved how it opened and couldn't get enough! My only issue was that I wanted more of a look into their previous relationship and wished there was a bit more there. I love second chance romance, but I need to know what brought each character back to this point.

I enjoyed Kosoko Jackson's I'm So (Not) Over You. This queer second chance, fake dating romance had humor, heart and plenty of pop culture references. The steam was certainly steamy. The story kept me engaged enough to finish it.

All that said- I had a hard time fully engaging with Kian and Hudson's relationship. We never learn about what went wrong with Kian and Hudson's relationship for them to break up originally. Without that back story it was hard to connect with their current status much less root for their second chance. I needed that backstory for the rest of the threads to pull together into a complete picture.
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So- I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. But I enjoyed it enough to read more by the author.

Thank you to Berkley and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

CW: homophobia, sexual harassment

I'm so torn about this book. It has so many elements that just scream to me. Second chance, fake dating, single POV. This book takes place partially in Boston and made me so happy to see it. The secondary characters were wonderful and a delight. Kian was hilarious, chaotic, almost fresh out of college and still figuring out his life.

But I struggled with Hudson. He came back, as the breaker upper asking for something from Kian, and just didn't seem apologetic for breaking up with him. I never was able to get a read on him, and part of my distrust with him was he never really apologized and we never found out why they broke up. They supposedly dated for years but at times seemed not to know each other, and just never talked about the breakup. It made it impossible to invest in their relationship. They were clearly sexually attracted to each other and I loved all of the consent, but it felt like a huge jump when they were back in love and getting back together. At times it just felt mean, Hudson not giving Kian a heads up about his family and just dropping everything to fake date him. and then Kian pretty much doing the grovel at the end. Maybe if we got Hudson's POV I would have felt differently but I just couldn't connect with these two and honestly wished Kian had gotten his HEA with Wallace.

Steam: 3

This book aligned with a lot of other books that I have read and LOVED in the past. Unfortunately, this one just didn't hit the same bar for me. I thought it was aesthetically pleasing, with the style and charisma strung throughout. But there was a certain depth that was missing for me. I ate into the fake dating trope but really wanted more to come out of the actual relationship between the characters. There wasn't enough that connected the different scenes, it made the relationship seem almost fluffy instead of real and tangible.

I'M SO (NOT) OVER YOU has several things going for it: It's a refreshing take on the fake dating trope, a second chance romance (which sets the stage for great embedded conflict), and the pacing is quick and snappy. Kian is sharp and sassy and quick, and the narration allows him to dive down into his feelings.

That said, the pacing also got bogged down by Kian's deep dives into his feelings. I found the ratio of dialogue to internal thoughts to be a bit off, with conversations slowed down by Kian's ruminations. Kian also makes a lot of pop culture references to explain his feelings, but I'd say about half of them fell flat for me.

As other reviewers have pointed out, we're not sure why Kian and Hudson broke up in the first place, and that makes it hard to invest in the second chance part of this romance. It also made it hard for me sympathize with Hudson. I was Team Move On, Kian.

The book really gets at a bigger topic of anxiety, especially at the very specific point in life that's post-college, pre-career. Juggling familial expectations--and perceived disappointment, real or imagined--along with internal pressure to succeed and perform and please.... this book really digs into that moment for the characters, and for me, that was the more compelling piece of the plot.

I enjoy checking out new authors and the premise of this story appealed to me. Within 5% I was impressed with the fast pace, snappy dialogue, and the use of internal discourse to provide background on the main couple. Kian and Hudson were previously in a relationship—former boyfriends who broke up “forever,” or so they thought. But now Hudson needs a fake boyfriend to attend a family weekend, and he asks Kian to fulfill that role. I was pleased to note this new twist on an old trope.

There’s also an underlying trope of a super-wealthy family who “expect” their son (i.e., pressure him) to follow the family into their business. But Hudson refuses and instead plans to be a psychologist. To be honest, Hudson annoyed me throughout the story. He was wishy-washy about almost everything. His role in the previous breakup was never explained, but since Kian was apparently very hurt by the breakup, I assumed Hudson was at fault. His personality ultimately faded into the background, whereas Kian’s personality was more upfront—in fact, at times, in the reader’s face—and his opinions much stronger. (Kian had an opinion about everything!) There was a power imbalance here that I’m not sure the author intended. Two days after finishing the story, I have only a vague memory of Hudson, but I’m still reeling from Kian’s drama.

I found Kian’s character, his abrasive manners, and his pontificating on his opinions to be off-putting, and I simply couldn’t warm up to him even when we were shown his softer side. Then there were a few issues that bothered me as well. One is that we never learn why the couple broke up in the first place. To me, knowing that would have gone a long way toward understanding Kian’s hurt over the breakup and Hudson’s desire to get them back together.

Another thing that annoyed me, as a mental health advocate, is the fact that in one group scene one character states: “or crazy—wait, we don’t use that word anymore, right?” [name] said. “It’s ableist, babe.” My first thought was “Kudos to the author!” But then, later in the story, while self-reflecting, Kian used the word idiot, which is a prime example of ableist language and much more derisive than crazy. It’s a hot-button issue for me, so I was doubly disappointed that the author’s recognition of the use of ableist language was not ingrained enough to carry through.

Overall, this story is complex with lots of twists and turns and provides a nice change of pace to the usual M/F “I need a boyfriend for a wedding” trope. The fact that the main characters are gay and Black is refreshing. The supporting cast, including Hudson’s sister and Kian’s bestie, are well-developed and strong, and I believe many readers will love this story for these and a variety of other reasons. But I simply didn’t engage with the characters—they didn’t capture my heart—and so, by the end, I was not invested in their long-term plans and didn’t care if they got back together or not. Sad, but true, and so only a 3-star read.

Thank you to Berkley for an advanced copy of I'm So (Not) Over You in exchange for my honest thoughts!

Star Rating: 3.5 stars
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Pub Date: February 22, 2022

I found this book highly engaging! It is definitely the queer rom-com I've been waiting for, and I was not disappointed. This book pulls from themes of family ties, strong friendships, and at the end of the day, the importance of choosing the right love for yourself. The quality of this book was really good, and I would have rated it four stars if not for my dislike (generally) of Kian. I found him rude, honestly, and I couldn't get beyond that opinion. I couldn't resist Hudson's charm, though, and I found myself rooting for him and Kian despite Kian's generally bad attitude.

The story, the writing, the relational ties, though, are all top notch in this book. This is just an instance in which my rating also reflects my feelings on a major character. I think I would have also appreciated some flash back scenes as to why Kian and Hudson didn't work the first go around because that would have given some gravity to Kian's attitude in the present. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this story.

Full review posted to links after embargo date.

I really wanted to love this – I’m a big fan of second chance and fake dating. But this really, really fell flat for me. Some of it could be “it’s me, not you”: I found Kian’s constant pop culture references super grating, and the writing style overall felt very juvenile. Hudson’s family is crazy wealthy, and I find myself disliking that more and more these days, and there’s just a lot of talk about money here – what he spent at the tailor, the cost of flights, the cost of jewelry – for Kian being pretty anti-rich folks. His family also just, like, totally sucks. They’re all awful. Also, if the Spotlight journalism team that Kian wants to work for is the Globe’s team, they don’t have a CEO?

But my biggest issue is that the linchpin to the second-chance romance is that the people involved understand why they broke up the first time and how to work through it this time. We do not know why Hudson broke up with Kian, so we cannot be sure that they will be able to weather whatever it was the second time around, and for that reason, this book does not have an HEA to me. You’re welcome to disagree! I am totally unconvinced.

Anyways, I think I probably would have liked this more if I were ten years younger. Alas, I am not, and thus the book was just not my thing.

This book was disappointing. I really loved the premise--a second chance romance, where two exes have to fake date because one never told his family they broke up--and the cover is adorable, but, unfortunately, it did not live up to its potential. Don't get me wrong, there were some bright spots. It started strong, and there were a couple of good scenes here and there. The characters--including the supporting characters, like BFF Divya--were great. But the book dragged immensely, and it made it difficult to want to continue.

But more jarringly, is the fact that WE ARE NEVER TOLD WHY KIAN AND HUDSON ORIGINALLY BROKE UP (or rather, why Hudson originally broke up with Kian). Typically in a second chance romance of this style, it's because of some miscommunication or one lead making the choice for the other ("you're better off without me" "don't give up on your dreams and move to be with me" etc.), and it's unveiled as the story goes along. But we don't get that here. It is never explained. So in my opinion, Hudson is just an @$$ who broke Kian's heart, and Kian is the pushover who takes him back without much groveling. And perhaps I can accept this once, but this happens twice in the book. Kian is a total dead fish and should have ended up with Wallace instead. Hudson does not deserve Kian. And therein lays the problem...

It's not the worst written, and like I said, the character and the premise have potential, so I'd give another book by this author a try, but this one was not for me.

Thanks to Berkley for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

4 stars - 6/10

This was a fun and tropey romantic comedy with lots of witty banter, character development, and steam. Even though it was a romance, I have to say that my favorite relationship was the platonic friendship between Kian and Divya! I recommend this book for lovers of high steam and relatively low stakes.

I so desperately wanted to love I'm So (Not) Over You, especially after loving Kosoko Jackson's Yesterday is History, but it just fell flat for me. The premise (fake-dating between exes, second chance romance) seemed to be everything I wanted and more, but I just couldn't connect with Kian or Hudson. I'm also personally not a very big fan of pop culture references in books, and I'm So (Not) Over You was riddled with them. I think other people will probably love this one, as it's got some witty banter, a lot of cute tropes, and a wonderful premise! It just wasn't for me personally.

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for this eARC! This book is one that you can wholly sink yourself into. It is witty and quick and funny with all of the pop culture references weaved throughout that keep you on your toes. Along with a fake dating with the ex/ second chance romance plot that is so wonderfully easy to get wrapped up in. And the chemistry between Kian and Hudson is ELECTRIC! Right from the top, did I know why Hudson and Kian weren't together anymore? Nope! But was I on Kian's side right away? Absolutely right! The book staying in his POV the entire time, as opposed to a Dual POV worked so well, giving the reader time and space to live in Kian's head and fall in love with Hudson right along with Kian as he was falling (back) in love himself. I would gladly pick up whole other books in this world about the interesting and well formed siblings and best friends that exist around Hudson and Kian and help kick their butts into gear. What an utter unrestrained delight of a read!

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: nope
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

This is an incredibly stylish, charismatic romcom with a lot of potential that, for me, didn’t quite come together emotionally.

It’s got a fucking amazing premise though: it’s fake-dating meets second-chance-a-love type deal where the guy who dumped the protagonist asks him to play boyfriend to a family wedding because he hasn’t got round to telling his folks they’ve broken up. And I really cannot emphasise enough just how brilliant I find this as a way to authentically queer a set of genre tropes that are—for better or worse but undeniably—embedded in heterosexual mores (and it’s not my place to speak on this, but I suspect assumed whiteness must be a factor too). And please don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising those genre tropes for being that way per se (romance is still predominately m/f, a greater percentile of people in the world are straight, that’s just the way it is numerically speaking) but it does create a challenge for queer writers because the experiences or fantasies that are common enough to (cis white?) heterosexuals as to be recognisable as actual tropes don’t necessarily feel that way to queer people, nor speak to their life experiences.

Faking dating is a really good at example of this because, like, ye standard fake dating set-up for an m/f romance is “I basically need a warm male body to take to a family event because we still live in a world where women are deemed to be failures if they don’t have a romantic partner and the romantic lives of women are seen as public business.” Within that context it makes complete sense for a heroine to take her best friend’s brother she’s met twice or a man she spilled coffee in in a lift: the social cache of not being single, and the fact m/f dating comes pre-enshrined in an approved cultural context, means the heroine turning up with a strange bloke at a family party will be met with enthusiasm rather than concern. By contrast, if you’re a queer person, especially if you’re a queer man, and you show up with some rando in tow you’re more likely to get a response among the lines of “why did you bring last night’s Grindr date to Cousin Ermintrude’s wedding, what the fuck is wrong with you”. Or worse, “do you have to flaunt yourself like that, this is supposed to be a family event.”

The fact of the matter of is, it’s too easy to look at the romance genre and assume that making it queer just involves sticking queer people in it. And, you know, sometimes that can work and I’m not going to knock it. But it can also be a deeply disorientating experience to queer readers because it doesn’t always feel … about us. It feels like it’s using us to speak to people who aren’t us. Because being queer (and, again, I’m sure this goes for being Black and queer but I don’t want to make assumptions on behalf of people who aren’t me) is about cultural context as much as its about personal identity. And what’s so compelling about Jackson’s writing—over and above the elements of the book that didn’t quite click for me—is the way he makes not just the tropes he’s deploying but the whole of framework of genre romance work in support of the story he’s telling: a romcom that’s funny, sexy, tender and smart in ways that feel inseparable from and fully reflective of both its queerness and its Blackness. That’s whole hell of an accomplishment and it made my queer heart sing.

Where it kind of came unstuck for me—and this may well be a me thing—is around the relationship itself. I actually really loved both characters. Kian is a nerdy, insecure eminently relatable protagonist, who is slightly adrift in his early twenties, pining for his ex, trying to break into journalism, and his interior monologue made me laugh and wince in equal measure. Like, that is a man who can deliver a zinger, very often at his own expense. Something I think the text navigates slightly less successfully is his, well, just how blunt he can be. On the one hand, it’s really satisfying to have a protagonist who says what he feels and what he thinks, but given that this can be as hurtful and problem-causing, as it can be helpful and liberating (I mean, in life as well as in fiction) it always came across as a little narratively untethered: like you never know if Kian is being a dick or saying the thing that needed saying, and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s neither, and I really wanted to see that worked through as a character trait. Not that I was looking for Kian to change necessarily but given how sensitive he is to the power of words in general (he’s a journalist after all) I never got the sense that he (or the text) ever really came to terms with his tendency to use them recklessly. Of course, Kian also has anxiety so “blurting out his brain” may just as well have been related to that.

His love interest is Hudson Rivers: the wayward son of an extremely wealthy Black southern family. I felt like there was a lot less to Hudson than there was to Kian, or at least we see less because we’re never in his head. But then an on-going discussion point of the genre is the difference between books that have co-protagonists and books that are anchored mainly in one character, with the other being a subject of desire. Hudson, though, is a very successful subject of desire. He’s very much portrayed as a southern gentleman, which is not usually a fantasy I have access to because when I read m/f books with a hero like that, he tends to come across as someone who would be uncomfortable shaking my hand. So there’s something really satisfying and subversive about being presented with many of the hallmarks of that kind of hero (the old-worldly charm, the protectiveness, the secret vulnerability) embedded in a Black, openly queer character. It feels like a very “I’m in your base” move except by base I mean “genre” and “killing all your dudes” I mean “queering all your things.”

And the thing is, that when Kian and Hudson are on page together, they have a really strong connection, with great dialogue and fantastic chemistry (there’s a making-out-in-a-car scene that’s just absurdly hot), and there’s a few romantic set-pieces (Hudson declaring his feelings, for example) that absolutely hit the spot. It’s just … how do I explain … I felt I was missing many of the structural elements that give a fictional romantic relationship its broader shape beyond its component parts. Like, to me, (and, again, this is might just be about the way I personally think about romance narratives) it’s not enough to hit the beats (and now they kiss, now they argue, now they reveal parts of themselves they haven’t previously): you need the connective tissue that gives the beats their meaning for this particular couple.

To take a concrete example, before the book begins, we learn that Hudson broke up with Kian abruptly—and that this has left Kian heart-broken and lacking closure. And while Kian does allow us to see something of their previous relationship through his memories, we never actually find out what went wrong between them or why they broke up. Kian’s friend Divya (the supporting cast, by the way, are also excellent, whether it’s Kian’s aggressively successful younger brother, or Divya the ride or die friend, or Hudson’s hard-as-nails-take-no-shit grandmother) offers some insight—something about Kian nagging Hudson about his family, I don’t even know—but it’s not enough to make it feel real on the page. And, of course, I’m not saying there needed to be a deep and significant issue that split them up and squats over the text like a giant squid. Small things, or unresolved tensions, or whatever. But we never find out what they were. We never find out why Hudson did it. And they never … ever … talk about it. Apart from Hudson briefly acknowledging that he really hurt Kian and Kian agreeing that he did.

I should add that I’m aware that the book is deeply concerned with masculinity, especially as it intersects with Blackness and queerness, and that issues of emotional vulnerability feed into that. Like, one of the things we learn from Kian’s recollections of his relationship with Hudson is that Hudson is very charming and sociable, but rarely actually expresses what he really thinks or feels—which, again, contrasts in significant ways with Kian’s tendency to say what he means to the point of, arguably, saying too much. And I can maybe see why having them explicitly NOT talk about what happened was meant to show they’d both moved beyond it. But given that what little confrontation they have involves Kian storming into a taxi shouting “I’m so over you” (which is a total lie) while Hudson stands silently in front of his house in a towel, it didn’t feel like closure so much as them both being trapped within the aspects of their personalities that, to some degree, hinder their own happiness and maybe drove them apart in the first place?

I really don’t want to approach a book that has put so much thought and energy into subverting tropes, both large and small, by being “well this is how the trope works so you have do it like that” but, for me, what a second-chance-at-love arc hinges upon is believing that Relationship Round II is meaningfully different to Relationship Round I. And if you don’t know what went wrong in Round I, it’s hard to understand what is motivating Round II, you know? I mean, it’s easy to see why both Kian and Hudson are attractive, and attractive to each other, and Kian has been internally pining for Hudson since chapter 1, but Hudson’s romantic motivations remain kind of frustratingly obscure. I mean, he was the one to initiate the breakup. What happened in his head and heart between then and now, and during the few days he and Kian spend fake-dating, that made him realise he wanted to try again? And then, when they hit the emotional nadir and Hudson accuses Kian of exploding a family event in vengeance for the breakup, this too came kind of out of left field for me. Nothing in Kian’s behaviour to Hudson or at the event itself had suggested he was harbouring bad feels and they’d literally just spent the previous night having very sexy, intimate sex and talking about their emotions (although I’m a bit confused that neither of them, in the two and a half years they’d previously spent dating, ever thought to ask the other why they cared about the thing they wanted to spend their life doing?) so … so …why was this happening? It didn’t even seem to play into any of the hints of Hudson’s insecurities as previously revealed: nothing he’d said or done over the course of the book suggested to me an uncertainty about Kian’s motivations or the reality of his feelings. I mean, he doesn’t even say sorry for dumping him out of the blue: doing something like that to someone, and then making a play to get them back, doesn’t seem like the behaviour of someone who’s secretly concerned they’re just being used or is particularly uncertain the other person still cares about them.

In any case, after all this goes down, Hudson’s sister finally seeks out Kian and explains how they were both wrong about Kian, and that Hudson is super sad now. She also encourages Kian to seek him out so they can be reconciled. And when Kian points out that Hudson hasn’t done any seeking of his own, she basically just shrugs and says ‘that’s how it is for him’. So Kian goes to find Hudson and HEA ensues. And once again we may be in personal preference territory, but this did not land for me, romantically speaking. Because essentially we have a romantic lead who dumped the protagonist with no explanation and later treated the protagonist badly yet again (on the basis, let’s not forget, of zero evidence) and, on neither occasion, took any initiative to apologise, fix it, or offer even 50% of an olive branch (unless we were meant to read the original fake-date request as an olive branch in disguise, but I don’t think it’s ever stated that Hudson was using fake dating as a ruse to get them back together). This leads to Hudson, for all he’s incredibly winning on page, feeling a bit static, in terms of personal growth or character development. At best, I guess, Kian has learned to read past Hudson’s silences and his inability to face his mistakes to the point they no longer hurt him? But at worst, we just have Kian stuck with a guy who will move back to Georgia every time they have a fight because he can’t be the one to say sorry first. And maybe this is a broader commentary on just how utterly we are enmeshed within the coils of toxic masculinity, or how sometimes you just have to accept the limitations of the person you love because you love them, but … I don’t know. I think maybe I just wanted Kian to get the same big romantic gesture as any other romcom protagonist? Not something that felt so compromised. But, in writing that, I’m concerned that I’m bringing too many of my own perspectives and preferences to the book (to say nothing of my own privilege) so please do take what I’m saying as necessarily and explicitly limited.

In any case, regardless of whether the romance arc speaks personally to you, I would still thoroughly recommend this book. It’s bold and ambitious and exceptionally clever in its exploration of the class, privilege, race, sexuality, and the complexities of identity. And in case that’s making it sound overly heavy going, it’s also just really engaging and funny and full of Star Trek references. And I mentioned the making-out-in-a-car scene, right? While not everything about this book ended up quite landing for me, I admired it very much and am so very excited for whatever the author writes next.

Unfortunately, I didn't love this one! I wanted to so badly - a Black m/m romance written by a queer Black man? Yes! Please! But this one just didn't work for me. It felt half-baked, or like one half of a dual POV book. I just felt like I was missing so much of the character and story. The book is funny and casual, but the prose didn't make up for the missing story for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for this ARC.

CW: Drunk driving, alcoholism, sexual harassment

I was so excited to read this book. There is such a massive subgenre in romance of m/m, but so few of them are actually written by queer men (I could rant about the implications of this for about a decade but that is not what this review is for). So when I saw this GORGEOUS cover, I was so excited to read an m/m romance written by a queer man, and Black romance at that!

However, I just didn't love it. It didn't feel finished to me. It felt like a first draft. Written in 1st person single POV, it felt so one-sided to me. I didn't understand Hudson at all and I was missing so much of the connective tissue of the story.

For a second chance romance (a fave trope of mine!) I have actually no idea why they broke up in the first place, nor do I understand why they like each other or why they work together in the end. It also seemed like they were only broken up for a few months, and with them both being so young (Kian is 23), the timeline really didn't work for me. I was just missing the really crucial aspects of what makes the trope work.

The prose itself was casual and engaging, but the story and the scope of the book really fell flat for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for this ARC.

CW: Drunk driving, alcoholism, sexual harassment

I really wanted to love this one because of the gorgeous cover but it wasn’t one of my favorites. Needed more of the background story of the couple. And honestly by the end I wasn’t rooting for them to be together. However, the humor in this one is great. Overall I enjoyed it and would still recommend picking it up.

There seems to be a trend in YA/New adult to bring old tropes from fanfiction/romance and use them in new YA novels. I appreciate that an old trope works for some people, but I would like to see more original ideas. The idea of "pretend boyfriends" is nothing new. That being said, younger readers who have yet to encounter this premise may find this book to be a fun read.

As always, this is well written. Jackson is a great author. Sometimes I find the Jackson is a bit heavy handed with the political correctness... ie. having friends calling each other "colonizer" as a joke. I suppose there's never anything wrong with exposing readers to words/political movements they may not be aware of.

There is a lot of diversity in the characters - which is great.