I was excited to read the sizzle paradox because of how much I enjoyed Makeup Breakup by Lily Menon. This book was a perfect romantic comedy with all the right elements. The trope of friends to lovers is always a fun one to read because the longing and subtlety of it. Theres also fake dating and a bit of a love triangle/jealousy situation that made the book fun. I enjoyed how Lyric and Kian's chemistry was visible from their first moment together. The addition of the college setting and her doctoral thesis brought the book to life and tied together the college sweethearts story.

Thanks NetGalley and st. Martins press for the arc. I had wanted to like this book because it seemed like it would be a fun quick read but I just couldn’t believe in the two main characters as a couple. They lacked the chemistry and seemed a bit unbelievably to me. .

Holy miscommunication! This book was one of the worst offenders I’ve read recently where a simple conversation could easily solve all of the story’s problems.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I was invited to read this title by St. Martin's Press. I enjoyed the previous joint book by Lily and Sandhya Menon.

Don't let the 3 star rating deter you. I quite enjoyed this book, but I was wavering close to 3.5 stars, it just didn't get over that tenth of a point to round up to 4 stars.

Lyric Bishop is a doctoral PhD candidate and her field is experimental psychology, with her thesis on the Sizzle Paradox. Essentially there's either sexual chemistry or platonic chemistry with potential significant others, but she hasn't found someone who has high marks for both sexual attraction and emotional connection.
Her best friend and roommate is Kian Montgomery, a doc candidate in environmental sciences. They have a great friendship. It seems though everyone around them thinks they are being deliberately obtuse, or clueless about how compatible they would be as romantic partners. I liked the side characters, especially Lyric's eccentric but lovable family, with siblings Amethyst, Opal, etc.

To get out of dating ruts and help Lyric with her thesis, Kian suggests *fake dating* and/or dating tutoring. It's cute how nerdy they are at times. But duh, sexual chemistry and their years of friendship on the line. I thought about Monica and Chandler from Friends when they hooked up in London, especially when the main characters go for a friend's destination wedding. Was their friendship ruined or enhanced? There were some steamy moments that I particularly enjoyed although I think the writers wrote the sex scene somewhat awkwardly at times.

I didn't think Lyric was immature, so much as just young, only 24 and a year away from a PhD. Not a lot of real life experience can make a person seem unformed or not fully an adult. My main frustration was the poor communication / honesty about their feelings between Lyric and Kian. If they would have just talked to each other and been honest, I suppose there wouldn't have been as much drama or romantic moment of declaring they're in love with each other at the end. (Not a spoiler bc w romance you expect a HEA)

I like the friends to lovers trope. It wasn't so much fake dating as they weren't trying to fool anyone. Kian"s baggage was his fear of being like his cheating dad, and Lyric was just in deep denial over her feelings for Kian, as she doubted her work with the Sizzle Paradox until she had scientific evidence. Definitely check this book out when it comes out June 14th, 2022! 3.3/5☆

Friends to lovers stories are always a treat and this story does it all. A lot of science to sort through, but a fun read!

I really, really wanted to like this. The summary had me expecting 'Love Hypothesis' meets 'Kiss Quotient' meets last year's Christian Lauren book with the title that never wants to stick in my head... but that's not quite what this is. Honestly it's the main character. She's way too immature for her age. I'm not saying she's not realistic, we've all met her in real life, but... I don't like her in real life. I'm a woman in STEM and women characters like this annoy the heck out of me. Maybe I'm just too old and jaded (at 29) for this story but it didn't work for me. Kian was fine but he was very much the typical flat romance hero. That works okay in a story where the heroine pulls her weight but here...

⭐️ rating: 3.5 STARS ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
📖 genre: romance
🔥 steam: open door romance

Things I Liked:
✨ The easy rapport between Lyric & Kian (at least in the first half of the book)
✨ Lyric’s ridiculously huge family!
✨ The fact that Lyric refers to her brother as “Maxie Pad,” a nickname I tried to use for my son Max but my husband put the key pan on that pretty quick.
✨ A pretty realistic picture of what college is like 🤣
✨ The writing style! There were a lot of points in the book that it felt like the characters were speaking directly to you - which was a fun twist.
✨ Dual POV! Especially important for a book that relies heavily on miscommunication. How do you know they’re not on the same page if you can’t see it?

Things I wasn’t a Huge Fan Of:
✨ Personal Opinion Alert: Friends-to-Lovers is my least favorite trope. The amount of miscommunication that’s always included drives me up a wall.
✨ I wish there had been more sexual tension build-up? Like they went from nothing to something? I needed something else.
✨ Lyric was SUPER focused on her supposed inability to fall in both sexual & romantic love. Even though it was obvious from the beginning she couldn’t because her heart was otherwise occupied.

In conclusion: would recommend to those who enjoy Friends-to-Lovers and a healthy amount of very entertaining banter.

I was so excited about the premise of this book: a Ph.D. student studying physical and romantic chemistry who is unlucky in love realizes her roommate and best friend is the one for her. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the story and started dreading sitting down to read it. The two main characters are both Ph. D. candidates at an Ivy League university, yet are so unbelievable oblivious to their own feelings. I understand being a little oblivious, but they kept emphasizing how the only person they felt comfortable with was each other and it was painful to read. I also don’t understand how they constantly had time to go on dates and hook up with other people. The entire first third of the book is them seeing a variety of other people which is just not what I look for as a romance reader. Honestly, I just found myself confused by the plot of this book, and both characters were so painfully oblivious that they were completely unlikeable. I wasn’t rooting for either of their success and I couldn’t finish the book. I understand that a main tension of the friends-to-lovers trope is the unwillingness to ruin the friendship, but it was set up poorly in my opinion. I would be willing to try a future book from this author, but this one was not for me.

Thank you @NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the ARC of The Sizzle Paradox in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed the Sizzle Paradox. I stan the fake dating trope. So even though the reader knows where the storyline will end, it still proved a fun read. There is spice, and heartache, and spice, and fun, and love. There wasn't any standout moment that really made me fall in love with this book or that set it apart. However, it is still a solid 4/5 romcom read! I look forward to reading more from Lily Menon.

The Sizzle Paradox is a best friend, discovers feelings for each other rom-com. I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the book. I thought the first half and second half of the book were a little disjointed. I also thought the romance seemed to come out of nowhere. The first half of the book had the two characters denying any chance for romantic feelings and then all of a sudden they are passionately in love with each other. There was no in between, or even realizing of feelings.

This book had one of my least favourite "problems". The "we both have feelings about each other, but won't communicate". If Lyric and Kian had just talked to each other, a lot of the pain they inflicted on themselves could have been avoided. Even though they were not great at communicating, I still thought the story was cute.

Despite the flaws, I still did enjoy the story. I liked how good of friends Lyric and Kian were and I loved how good of friends they were. They had some great banter back and forth as well. I also thought Lyric's family was really interesting and they added a lot to the story for me. I also liked that the story had a STEM focus, which I found interesting.

This was a quick, easy and light read, which was why I gave it three stars despite the problems I had. I will continue to check out Lily Menon's books in the future! Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of this book. All opinions are 100% mine.

I was super hyped for this book but honestly it ended up being a huge dissapointement. The plot of this book doesn't actually kick in until like halfway through this book and absolutely nothing happened before that. This was just so painfully boring to read. The second half didn't even pick up that much, in my opinion. I can excuse a lack of plot though if I really like the characters. However, I couldn't care less about these characters. They were so one dimensional it got on my nerves. I also absolutely despised the romance. It was incredibly underdeveloped. Our two leads keep insisting they could never be together in the first half because they 'know each other too well', which is probably the dumbest reason I have ever seen for why two people won't date. How about 'I just don't have feelings for them'? That makes more sense and is much more simple. Either way, then the romance starts going in the second half and the fact that these characters have feelings for each other just seems to come out of nowhere. There is absolutely no chemistry between these two and I just couldn't care less AT ALL. I legitematelly can't tell you a single positive thing about this book and that's just such a painful thing for me to say because I kept reading in the hope it would get better as I was so hyped for it.

“You seem so unfazed when I said I was moving out, I thought there was no way you felt the same way I did.”

This one piece of dialogue describes our MC, Lyric, almost to a T. Unfazed. She has some endearing characteristics, but they seemed disjointed. Even when her family and friends were brought into the story, Lyric had a 40 foot wall up. If she were to have had some backstory that helped explain this trauma, I could’ve overlooked it.

It was also interesting that for a character who is getting her doctorate in Psychology and the baseline of the plot is on her unveiling her thesis, I wouldn’t have known without it being said and hinted at so many times. I wished her character would’ve been more mature. If she was so advanced as to get her doctorate at the age of 24, you’d think there would be some maturity to show that level of excellence.

I wish the author wouldn’t have made EVERY other date/ relationship Lyric and Kian went on go or end so miserably. It made waiting to the very last chapter for her and Kian to figure it out, a miserable read.

I did like the combination of many tropes. A little Love Hypothesis, Crazy Rich Asians (Kian’s family), and Hot Jocks novels by Kendall Ryan.

Tags: #easyread #romance #bestfriendstolovers

This book follows Lyric Bishop, attempting to complete her doctoral thesis on sexual chemistry in romantic partners, and Kian Montgomery, her best friend and roommate. Lyric believes she is a fraud and can't complete her thesis since she has not had a successful relationship, and Kian offers her to tutor her on dating strategies in order for her to finally find a good match.

I really enjoyed the STEM setting! Although, for actual PhD students or people who have acquired one, a lot of the terminology used is incorrect and could be frustrating to read. You also don't need to have experienced your research topic in order to write about it, but if that was what gave Lyric a writing block, I'll take it!

This book is a classic best friends to lovers, which I thought was really cute. I was happy for them in the end, despite my confusion at how two best friends could have had such a terrible communication flop. Also, while I usually enjoy the fake-dating trope, the premise for this one didn't make the most sense.

Despite this, there were still aspects of the story I enjoyed. Honourable mention to Lyric's family, I loved them! I also really liked the banter between Lyric and Kian; even before everything, they had a solid friendship. Overall, the romance between the two was endearing, which is why I give this book 3 stars! An easy and light read, and good to pick up if you enjoy STEM based romances.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC!

I had hoped to enjoy this book as it seemed like it would be a quick, fun read. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t believe in the two main characters as a couple or even as functional adults together. There was no real great tie in to the big Sizzle Paradox thesis. It was a big miss for me.

someone compared this to the kiss quotient so obviously i needed to read it and i wasn’t mad! i really enjoyed it :)

2.5 stars
This was a quick easy read. I enjoyed the banter between the characters but the constant miscommunication didn't do it for me. I enjoyed the women in STEM and a lot of the sidecharacters. The main characters didn't seem like grad students to me though and this book felt very YA rather than adult.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was adorable in every way! The writing and plot were great, and even though it may have taken me a little to get into it was a quick read after. Solid 4/5 stars!

2 stars

I really wanted to like this one, what with both halves of the main couple being grad students struggling to find love and professional success. Having just graduated from my own grad program while muddling my way through the job market, I figured that I would be all in.

Unfortunately, this ended up being a pretty big miss for me. I didn't really buy Lyric and Kian's relationship as best friends, let alone lovers, and the fact that almost every conversation they have with other people in the first half of the book was about how they weren't interested in each other made me want to scream. The pacing of the friends-to-lovers portion of the storyline felt particularly uneven with really one major instance pushing that forward before they share their first kiss, which then catapults things into full throttle. The one big sex scene is fun, but the happy ending rang hollow for me because there wasn't really anything to latch onto in these characters to demonstrate that they have grown as people and are ready to finally love each other.

Beyond that, there is a huge plot hole in the actual science of The Sizzle Paradox that Lyric is using for her research that I just could not get over. While her dissertation is focusing on the physical and emotional aspect of what makes us fall in love, the Sizzle Paradox that she uses in her own life is primarily focused on sex. If she was just using it to measure sexual attraction, totally good! However, she constantly complains about how she hasn't been able to find a relationship to fulfill BOTH facets using this method. Again, we have a good concept that is not executed to the best of its ability.

I'm sure there is an audience out there for this book, but I think I'm just not in it.

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

Thank you to SMP Romance for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I'm going to be short and to the point. I was throughly enjoying this book, until I got to the halfway mark and the author included the quote 'delinquent, unemployed, baby brother."
I don't know why I need to explain why this view is about 20 years outdated, but considering marijuana is now LEGAL and has been proven by SCIENCE to affect people less than alcohol, how about we stop villainizing it and using stereotypes like delinquency and unemployment? And also not villainize unemplyoment, especially in the current lcimate?

This ruined the entire book for me.

A witty and fun friends to lovers romance, great banter and chemistry. Well written and evenly paced, a quick read that's perfect for summer.