Thank you to St. Martins Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!
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This is a solid new addition to the enemies-to-lovers trope in new adult literature. Noah wants nothing more than to purchase the fixer-upper next door that no one seems to live in, but then Grace arrives with no intention of giving up the house that is rightfully hers. They are at odds, but at the prospect of working together for a magazine article is just enough to force them to set aside their differences for a moment. Grace is about to graduate from design school, and Noah is redefining his real estate persona, allowing sparks to fly across the page.
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This wasn't a particularly new take on the trope at hand, but it was still a lovely read all together. The chemistry that their friends cite as seeing immediately between the pair, I personally didn't find quite as obvious, but they were lovable and I was rooting for them to work out. I particularly loved the found family and friends that make up the supporting cast, while the mother seemed a bit too Lifetime movie-esq, but an interesting hurdle nonetheless.

This book is cute! How to Love Your Neighbor is a sweet enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story about Grace and Noah, who live beside each other and squabble over their property. Thankfully, that bit ends fairly early on and we move into seeing these two show each other how friendship works (via themselves and others) and build up each other's goals.

I thought this was a pretty unique story set-up that I hadn't read before. Both characters had a lot of growing to accomplish, and it was good to see them also maintain their own personalities and dreams-that was a big part of Grace's narrative.

The book probably could be edited a bit shorter, and there are a lot of characters to keep up with that sometimes got confusing. Overall, it was a fun, unique read.

Recommended for you if you like HGTV reality shows and slow burns.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-ARC.

Seemed awkwardly stretched out - could be tightened up significantly, as much of the movement was repetitive or didn't add to the characterizations. Not recommended.

Cute secondary characters. Quirky heroine. Disliked the hero. Read about five chapters and gave up. DNF.

Thanks to St Martins for the ARC to read and review.

How to Love Your Neighbor is such a super cute read. This is my first book by Sophie Sullivan and I'm so in love with this one and cannot wait to read more by her. If you love those falling for the one next door or even grumpy neighbor reads, then you are going to just fall in love with this one. Grace is a sweetheart with all her odd jobs that will just make you smile. I love how she just digs in and has this big ball of energy. Noah is a bit grumpy and well not my favorite at the beginning. He will frustrate you but then make you fall in love with him. There is such amazing chemistry between Grace and Noah the more they are thrown together to finish Noah's house. Grace has an amazing eye for design and not afraid to get her hands dirty. Noah is a bit of a workaholic and trying to grow his business. I really loved this one. This is a cute read that will have you giggling at times. I could not put this one down.

First book by this author, but the title and cover made me want to pick it up. A cute story about young adults from different worlds who end up as neighbors and accidentally end up being renovating his home together. At first they can't stand each other (would he ever stop asking to buy her house), but do they eventually end up getting along? As they find out more about each other, they learn that they are more alike than they think. I really enjoyed some of the side characters and some of the 90s/early 2000s TV reno-show nods. A good closed-door romance with a little bit of language, but not too much that distracts from the book. Recommend for those who love a good rom-com.

I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

How to Love Your Neighbor was such a charming and funny romantic comedy. Rachel Lynn Solomon's blurb: "Sophie Sullivan’s writing feels like a warm hug," is right on the mark. There was something so comforting about this novel - you "felt right at home" so to speak. Grace and Noah have fantastic chemistry - they are both stubborn and have great banter. I haven't read Sullivan's last book, Ten Rules for Faking It, but that is definitely next on my TBR. Thank you to St. Martin's and NetGalley for the chance to read this novel.

This is an easy light read. It is a good book for a quick plane trip but it was just not what I typically go for.

I am not typically a fan of the enemies-to-lovers plot device and there was a lot of potential for a great read here. However, I have "enemies" becoming good friends in such a short period felt off and a disservice to the characters.
Grace just seemed to be a bit too timid for me. Noah was pathetic as the prototypical poor little rich boy. With the add dysfunctional families plot happening on both side it was just over worked and overdone.
Unfortunately, I didn't feel any chemistry with Noah and Grace. I would not recommend this book. It did not live up to the hype for me at all. It felt very shallow and flat. When reading a good enemies-to-lovers story you need to have conflict or chemistry and there was zero between Noah and Grace. I was not at all invested in their relationship and there was no spark to draw me in. This should be marked as Woman’s Fiction and not romance. But this is not a book for a hard cord romance reader.
Exchanges with Grace’s mom were childish. The dialogue and behavior was immature and annoying.
Monty was very much a light in this story. I love a grump!

This was not a bad book and I do think there is some editing that I hope is being done before the final release, but it was mis marked as romance in my opinion and left a lot to be desired. It felt tired and the characters lacked true soul and purpose.

A very involved story about two people and their families and friends. It had all the emotions of a possible relationship and some heartache. I was so confused, excited, perplexed, happy, and so on. Ups and downs and assumptions too

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an ARC to read and review.

This book was so warm. It was a typical enemies to friends to lovers, but I just felt so warm reading about the relationship between Grace and Noah. Grace, who has had to learn how to navigate life on her own due to a crappy upbringing, and Noah, who is eager to get out from under his father's thumb and strike out on his own, make a charming and lovely couple. Their chemistry was organic and palpable, and even though it was obvious they would get together, I really enjoyed the journey getting there.

If I had a complaint, I wish there was just a bit more conflict. Both of them struggled with being in a relationship due to their own circumstances, but it felt like the reactions they had to the conflicts were disproportionate to the conflicts themselves. But it wasn't egregious enough for it to detract from the story.

Overall, a good fluffy read with a lot of great home design and renovation twists.

I'm a sucker for the grump/sunshine trope. Seriously I love them so much. Throw in a dash of enemies to lovers and you have the perfect recipe for a 5 star read.

I enjoyed seeing characters who came from a dysfunctional families evolve and find love within themselves and others. Pushing passed comfort and learning to trust others is a key learning aspect for this story. I haven't read the authors previous works but definitely plan to read them now.

Oh boy! Starting this book I thought it was going to be a very stereotypical enemies to lovers read, but I was surprisingly very wrong! We start with these angsty challenging chapters but that facade is dropped fairly quickly. By the end of this book I was stuck with all the feels! Noah's transformation throughout the book is so rewarding and you were rooting for Grace the whole book. The side characters were so supportive and the parental enemies were so bad in such a good way! I am invested in this little world and want side novels for everyone!

While, this isn't really mentioned anywhere on netgalley or goodreads, but this is a second book in the series. I hadn't read the first book and it didn't hinder the experience of the second book, but I do think reading them in order would have helped a little bit.

Grace and Noah share a fence line and an opportunity to put themselves on the map for more than homeownership as Grace, an about to graduate interior designer, takes on Noah’s remodel. Under the watchful eye of a well-known interior design magazine, Grace is challenged with showing Noah what it takes to turn a house into a home. Through many cozy vibes and a few shared plates of brownies, Grace and Noah find that home isn’t found in a place, but in each other.

This was a cute story of two people from different backgrounds, trying to make a name for themselves as they discover who they truly are. Grace focuses on not losing herself in a relationship like her mom did while Noah fights out from under his father’s thumb.

While a cute story, I wish the conflict had been more believable and the characters had shown more growth. The story followed the path I expected but was a bit slow going to get there. It was just ok for me.

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the ARC!

Just not for me
2 stars

This is my first book by Sophie Sullivan and what appears to be her second published book after last year’s Ten Rules for Faking It.

From the first, I just couldn’t get into this story no matter how hard I tried. The writing style, while obviously accomplished, was very wordy and felt like streams of random thoughts rather than a coherent and clear descriptions. I found myself continually re-reading sentences that I didn’t quite understand the first time round. This really dampened by enthusiasm for this book which never picked up again, sadly.

There were a whole host of characters in this story and a really rich picture is drawn of Grace, Noah and their friends, families, co-workers etc. While that may work for some people, I found it a bit much, if I’m honest. I want to care whole-heartedly about our couple, not half-heartedly about a whole bunch of folk. Each character was well-written, however. Morty stood out as very true to life - it’s a shame, then, that he made me feel equal measures of guilt and annoyance.

This is billed as an enemies to lovers trope but there really wasn’t very much enemy-ing, in my opinion. Certainly not the hard-core hatred that I’ve seen - and liked - in other books. It was all a bit tepid. And that goes for the love scenes, too. If a story is strong, I don’t need sex to make a book a winner. I feel that in this book, had the doors stayed open, it might have helped this book somewhat. But I’m not going to fault a book simply because it doesn’t have decent sex in it.

This is a really difficult review to write as I hate to be negative, especially as I’ve read other reviews where they have just adored this story, cast of characters and the love between Noah and Grace. I just felt very little, and my lack of connection with Ms Sullivan’s writing style really was the beginning and end for me.

If you’ve read and enjoyed Sophie Sullivan’s first book - Ten Rules for Faking It - then I have absolutely no doubt that you’ll love this story just as much. It’s not one for me, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad story so if you fancy it - buy it. I hope you loved it where I did not. Sadly just 2 stars.

This was a fun take on an enemies-to-lovers trope. It was pretty unbelievable that Noah, a hunky, wealthy guy moves in next door to Grace who is hoping to slowly renovate the little house that she inherited from her grandparents. She’s about to graduate from design school and he’s come out west to escape his interfering father.

For no real reason a writer at a design magazine senses the sexual tension between Noah and Grace and demands that Noah hire Grace to decorate his beach house in exchange for coverage of the transformation. Really? A writer would, without knowing anything about a woman’s decorating skills, would make such a requirement for coverage? However, if you suspend disbelief for that plot device, you might enjoy their interactions.

I did enjoy their encounters and how Grace sassed Noah in a way he wasn’t used to. I had questions about her decorating plans. It seemed that she did a bit of magic on her designing program and then they just jumped into going shopping and buying furniture and knick-knacks.

Then when Grace’s despicable mother comes around trying to mooch off Grace and making all sorts of dire blackmail threats, Grace just tells her off and the mother slinks away. That was certainly easy.

Despite these nitpicks, I did enjoy the book.

I voluntarily reviewed an advanced reader copy of this book that I received from Netgalley; however, the opinions are my own and I did not receive any compensation for my review.

4 stars

This story was really cute. I loved the characters, especially the side characters (looking at you Morty!). Would have liked a bit more resolution with the parents, maybe an epilogue, but other than that it was a great hea book at just the right time.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Grace is a determined and hard-working interior designer who wants to get her name out there and start her own business. She gets the opportunity after her grandparents leave their house to her in their will.
Noah, the handsome guy she saw at the beach, turns out to be her annoying and self-absorbed neighbor, whose only interest is in purchasing her house and negotiating with her.

The book starts with some tension between the two, until they are forced to work with one another to design the perfect home together. I do enjoy a good romance book every once in a while, but I have to quite honestly say I struggled to get through this one. I didn't feel like there was anything special between Noah and Grace. I kept wondering to myself as I was reading, what was so special about her that made this guy change and want to settle down?

Some parts of the book moved smoothly while other areas seemed to drag on for too long. I was expecting the happy ending, exactly the way it was, but it almost felt like it took too long to get there.

Overall though, this was a light and easy read and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for some romance. I give it 3.5/5 stars and I would be interested in reading more books by this author.

If you’re looking for a cute, feel good story, How To Love Your Neighbor is going to be the perfect fit for you.
There is a small group of well fleshed out characters. Our main couple is Grace and Noah. Grace is a college student majoring in interior design (among her numerous other skills) while Noah is a budding philanthropist and business man trying to carve a name for himself that doesn’t involve his father’s influence.
The banter and interactions between these two range from comical, to sweet, to funny and everything in between. I really enjoyed their growths as the story progressed. (both personally and emotionally as a couple) Their paths deal with some heavy topics. While it can make the story drag just a bit, I don’t think it would as successful without them.
Highly recommend, cant wait to see more from this author.


E-Arc kindly provided by St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Loved the premise of this book but fell a little flat for me. It took a while to get into and it was more fade to black. I tend to prefer books with detailed spice but am okay if it’s not in there if I fall in love with the characters and their love story, that didn’t happen for me in this one though. Nothing necessarily wrong that I can pinpoint, it just didn’t capture my attention.

How to Love Your Neighbor was a romantic comedy. Unfortunately I did not enjoy the characters as much as other books by this author. I learned more about how their homes were decorated than I knew about the people. Would be a fine beach read.