I really love the premise but this is a relationship that should not work out... It was unhealthy.... toxic and messy... I anticipated that this would be a light hearted romance and it was the complete opposite. However, I did enjoy the focus on mental health and the authors writing style. I didn't love the romanticization of a toxic relationship but would still give the author another chance with different love interests.

The Heart of the Deal by Lindsay MacMillian

Q.O.T.D: If you had to title your love life, what would you call it?

A.O.T.D: Plenty of Fish because this is the dating app I met my leading man on. 😂

Description:

Rae is in a romantic recession.
 
The Wall Street banker is single in New York City and overwhelmed by the pressure to scramble up the corporate and romantic ladders. Feeling her biological clock ticking, she analyzes her love life like a business deal and vows to lock in a husband before her 30th birthday. 
 
The Manhattan dating app scene has as many ups and downs as the stock market, and outsourcing dates to an algorithm isn’t exactly Rae’s idea of romance. She considers cutting her losses, but her friends help her stay invested, boosting her spirits with ice cream and cheap wine that they share in their sixth-floor walk-up while recapping cringe-worthy dates.
 
And then Rae meets Dustin, a poetic soul trapped in a business suit, just like her. She starts to hear wedding bells, but Dustin’s struggles with depression will test their relationship, and no amount of financial modeling can project what their future will look like.
 
Can Rae free herself from the idea she had of what thirty was supposed to look like and let love breathe on its own timeline? Or is she too conditioned to stay on the “right track” to follow her unpaved intuition?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What a great emotional read that any woman could relate to.. Good reminder that life isn’t black and white and sometimes we need to sit with the “grays” of life and no we can’t plan everything out.

Thank you @netgalley and Alcove Press for providing me a copy in exchange of an honest review.

Please look up content warnings for this one, there are many.

I do think this was a really good debut novel. Lindsay MacMillan has great writing, well-thought out characters and so many important things to say. This one I think could've just been executed a bit better, as there are a lot of sensitive topics included.

Some gorgeous writing, and absolutely heart-wrenching story but I think it didn't feel realistic at times, and some topics felt too brushed over. I adored Dustin, and I really felt his pain. Rae on the other hand, I really struggled to connect with her and found her annoying and selfish.

A lot to love, but maybe just as much to not love about this one. Though this wasn't a hit for me, I would absolutely try to read from MacMillan in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and Alcove Press for an eARC of The Heart of the Deal.

This book pleasantly surprised me! I really enjoyed it and could relate to quite a few of the struggles.
It is a really great book for the 20-somethings about living in NYC and dealing with the daily challenges of dating, working, figuring her life out. It's very poetically written and there are beautiful descriptions.

Such a cute little story! I enjoyed this one and think many others will as well. Relatable characters and beautiful growth throughout!

Great story line and easy read.
Heart warming and relatable. loved it!
Would like to read more from this Author in the future.

** Thanks to Netgalley and Lindsay MacMillan for this ARC. This is my honest opinion about this book **

I didn’t manage to finish this book. It’s not a DNF for me, but I quickly stuck on the beginning of the book. I couldn’t concentrate on the book, the story, the characters. The reason is I think a mixture of the slow beginning for me, as well as my mood of the moment, I failed to get into history.

I don't think this is your typical romance book.

I keep the book aside to try to read it again later.

This one was a lovely read. I really enjoyed reading this one. I just love this kind of books.
4 stars read for me

The Heart of the Deal had an enticing premise: fall in love now <at the age of 25> to be married by 30 and having kids. Rae's got high standards and her best friends, the Sparkettes, are vowed to keep her to them. Will Rae be able to find a true love and have magical love with an online source? Or is the heart of the deal right in front of her?

MacMillian had a promising idea and touching characters. However; I was unable to click with her characters and follow the author's writing style.

As a woman who's currently trudging through her twenties without a clue as to what I'm actually doing, MacMillan's THE HEART OF THE DEAL really resonated with me. It's an excellent commentary on modern romance and the importance of female friendships!

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Rae is a Wall Street banker who is single in NYC and at age 25, trying to meet two goals - professional and personal. She wants to climb the corporate ladder in a male dominated world where there were no women of power in her office. She also wants love, marriage, and kids. At her 25th birthday party, she maps out at what age to meet those romantic goals. On a whim, or let's face it, forced onto her by her 3 BFF's, Rae enters the dating scene via an online app.

The app brings several one-time only dates into Rae's life, then there is Dustin. He is also in finance and when she talks to him in her banker terms, he can keep up. Rae falls for Dustin, but he comes and goes out of her life and it really confuses her. Eventually he is honest with her - he struggles with depression. Through the years they come and go together, Rae sticks by his side until she can no longer and makes a major life change.

The Heart of the Deal is a great read - the characters are easy to identify with. I had trouble putting down this book as I needed to see what happened at each birthday - I HAD to know.

This book was great! The characters, writing were lovely. I struggled putting this book down cause thats how good it was. The platonic love has my heart, this book is everything!

This isn't a romance novel, although it does have romance. It is a novel of adult life. A story of a woman, Rae, working in a job that she's good at, but doesn't love. She's also looking for love, someone to connect with in a deeper way. The book covers five years of Rae's life from 25 to 30, and we see her grow, learn, and make difficult choices.
She's old school and doesn't have a lot of faith in online dating apps, but her friends convince her to give it a go for a while, and help her write a profile. Her roommate Ellen found her boyfriend this way and believes that she can too.
Rae is a data analyst in an investment firm, and her work is good as she truly understands the numbers she works with, but this isn't what she thought her life would be. She wants to be a poet, but doesn't know how to do that and still make a living. She also wants to start a family by her early thirties, but the lack of a man in her life doesn't make that look likely soon.
So, as she tries dating with some of the men she meets online, she eventually meets Dustin, a man in the same industry who also has a poetical interest in life and who she can really talk to. It becomes clear early in their relationship that Dustin has struggles with depression, and this aspect to the novel takes it to another level. As Rae navigates her inner feelings and dreams and tries to make them real, she also sees Dustin as he really is, a flawed human being like herself, with his own issues.
This book had a depth that I really appreciated and that made it impossible not to care about these characters.
A great read.

tried to love it but it's really not a rom-com and i found the writing style really dense and overly descriptive that slowed down my reading and over all enjoyment of the book.

I didn't enjoy how Dustin took advantage of Rae and took her from granted even with his depression.

The ending felt flat and underwhelming after forcing myself to finish the book.

Overall, just wasn't the book for me i wanted to read a witty rom com like the blurb promised and instead got a contemporary (dramaish) fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

THE HEART OF THE DEAL
BY
LINDSAY MACMILLAN.

The story begins as Rae turns 25 and follows her journey to her 30th birthday.
Rae has a blossoming career, but can she find a way to have it all? She wants to find love and she can’t ignore the very loud ticking of her biological clock.
When Rae meets Dustin through a dating app, he seems like her perfect match. However he has his own demons to battle.
Where will Rae be by her 30th birthday?

This book is by no means a light read. There are some heavy subjects dealt with. As a reader I did feel like i’d been through an emotional spin cycle by the end of the book.

The story is very well written and has great depth. There are some complex and endearing characters.
Overall, this is an enjoyable and emotional read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Out now in all formats.

With thanks to Netgalley and Alcove Press for a digital arc of this title.

This was such a beautiful and winding story. As a person in their mid-20s such a hopeful and beautiful yet realistic outlook on life. The main character is so perfectly realistic and relatable and I loved how her relationships/friendships were described. Going through life is hard, but stories like this help us to remember how beautiful it all is.

TW: depression, self-harm, and toxic relationship

First, may I say that this book may not be for everyone, and it could be triggering for someone, especially since this book has a self-harm scene in it.

I really want to enjoy this book mostly because of the cover and it is labeled as ‘chick-lit romance’ but it is much more than that. So, these are some things that I don’t like in this book:

- I don’t know what the author trying to make with Rae constantly switching between Stu and Dustin. It’s frustrating for me.
- The whole Dustin and Rae relationship is toxic. I wish we could see more of why Rae kept trying to ‘fix’ Dustin. Like it’s impossible if he doesn’t want to be fixed! He is the only person who can help himself. Dustin keeps pushing her and her happiness away, and I think that’s definitely not good for a relationship.
- The ending? I know that it’s an open ending, but God why Dustin…

I feel like if The Heart of the Deal was labeled not as Romance and Chick-lit I would understand it and not expect more sweet and fluffy romance. But anyway, for a debut novel that brings up a hard topic (depression) I think the author did a good job! I really enjoy the whole finance topic in this book.

I really enjoyed the message that Lindsay MacMillan and the relationship between Rae and Dustin. MacMillan did a great job and I will be reading more in the future.

I read in the blurb on Amazon that this book was "moving, funny, and timely". This is not funny at all and, at times, quite a heavy read.
Rae is in love with love and has a plan for her life. On her 25th birthday, her plan is at the point where it has to be initiated in order for her life to go where she has dreamed it to be. Meeting "the one" is imperative. A dating app algorithm puts Dustin in her sights and it seems like her destiny is unfolding.
Lindsay's writing is heartbreakingly sad. Its relatability for me was unanticipated and I was not in the right headspace without the balance of humor I thought I would be getting. It put me more in mind of The Moment I Met You or Always in December - both books I loved - but going into both, I was better prepared for the levity. So, I would recommend to other readers in that vein.
Thank you to Alcove Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy. All thoughts in this review are my own.

This isn’t your typical light and fluffy romance, it’s about mental health and finding what you want out of life. Rae just turned 25. She’s single, lives in NYC with her best friends and works on Wall Street. She has a timeline that by thirty she wants to be married. She starts using a dating app and finds Dustin. She thinks Dustin could be the one but he struggles with depression. Rae isn’t sure she can be the person Dustin needs. Will Rae be able to meet her goal of being married by thirty?

This is a slow burn book with every little romance. It’s more about Rae learning that she can’t “fix” Dustin and his mental illness and that she needs to let things happen more organically and not worry about her timeline. I actually didn’t like Rae and Dustin’s relationship. I thought it was very unhealthy (both for Rae and Dustin) and I wasn’t rooting for them to be together. I did think that the author did a great job portraying someone with depression, it was very realistic. I also loved Rae’s group of friends and how supportive they were. Overall it was an ok read.

A huge thank you to the publiser and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.