Insta has the power to be used for good. Not everyone can be prefect and there's pride to be had in failure. Millie has ADHD and its impacted her whole life but keeping it real on Instagram shows you how her mind works. Millie has feelings for Pete but is afraid to express it so instead they become an Insta couple. The one thing I disagreed with was how Millie 's mother was portrayed through most of the book. I can't wait to see what the author writes next!


******************I received an ARC for my honest opinion from NetGalley.*************************

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.
Sadly this book was a DNF. I tried to like the main character but she was just too over the top and her dialogues made me roll my eyes. I’m sure other people will enjoy this book but as someone who also has ADHD, I couldn’t relate with her at all.

After being fired from her job for the nth time, Millie decides to go to visit her influencer best friend in California.
When her other best friends Kate and Bree help her pack, they rediscover the little black dress they shared in college, which bought them all luck & make Millie take it with her.

Wow what an amazing debut this was. It was unexpectedly emotional & steamy and touched my heart in so many ways. I loved the vibes of the becah town with surfing being the prime focus.

Millie' ADHD was represented in the most wholesome manner. She was quirky, funny & not afraid to try on new things. The book centers around social media & its impact on this picturesque town. So many funny yet serious moments were depicted regarding the app & it's effects.

But my favorite part of this was the romance. I think this is portrayed as women's fiction but the romance was such a primal part of this. I LOVED PETE SO MUCH THAT IT HURTS. Goofy turned hot, he was everything to melt my heart.
I loved the relationship between him & Millie; how hot, charming & swoony it was. Both were foolishly in love with each other but kept their feelings under wraps except for the... you know hot hookup sessions.
The grand gesture was the sweetest & i couldn't have imagined it any better.

Thank you Netgalley & Sourcebooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In the spirit of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series comes the story of four friends that share a perfect little black dress. Millie Ward loses her PR job in NYC and decides to visit her friend and college roommate Quincy in the small surfer town of Peacock Bay, California. The town is home to social media influencers who want to promote the town and lifestyle as idyllic no matter the reality. Quincy’s brother Pete runs the family hotel and Millie has crushed on him since college. While visiting she tries to grow her own social media following.

There is a lot more about the social media aspect than I was expecting. Pete is anti sharing everything, some things are given a false narrative and yet everyone goes along with anything as long as the town is promoted. I found that whole aspect a little odd. Especially when a major influencer is really the enforcer and yet no one calls her on it and just accepts she knows best. The whole story takes place in only a few weeks but the romance feels less instant because of their back relationship in college. I like that Millie talks about her ADHD and her character certainly demonstrates the behavior in some of her impulsive actions. Pete is great as the laid back surfer boyfriend. But I had issues with the lack of real communication between Millie and Pete. And I’m not sold on the potential HEA. I get that she gets the guy but she drops a potential real job to go do something I envision as part-time retail work. I’m not sure I’m happy with that.

The characters and friends are fun and enough to have me looking forward to the next installment. I want to see what luck the dress can bring to the next friend. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. (3.5 stars)

Four Ways To Wear a Dress by Gillian Libby
3.5 stars

I’m so conflicted about this one because I absolutely loved the first half of this story. I was even writing my five star review in my head because it has so many tropes that I love! But around the halfway mark things started to get choppy and I don’t think it ever recovered.

When Millie gets laid off from her job in NYC, her college roommate invites her out to California to surf and figure out her next steps. It doesn’t hurt that Pete, her best friend’s brother who she’s had a huge crush on since college, lives in the same small town and she’ll be staying at the hotel where he works. While she’s packing to leave, she finds a black dress in the back of her closet. The dress is important to this group of friends because something good happened to each of the women when they wore it. Millie is hoping this good luck charm can help her with her career troubles and maybe with Pete, too.

Ok, so we have best friend’s hot older brother, a fake dating trope, a picturesque small beach town in California, found family and best friends supporting each other no matter what, positive ADHD rep, a slow burn and some really great spice. I also loved the fast paced writing style in the beginning and the lovely descriptions.

While Millie is in California, she decides to start a blog to document her journey, and she just happens to end up in a town full of influencers. The Instagram vs. Reality theme that runs throughout the story was really entertaining and important to showcase that being authentic is more important than being perfect on social media. This is the first book I’ve read this year that mentions the pandemic and the effect that it had on small businesses and I thought that added a nice touch to the story, as well.

So there are tons of positives! What I didn’t like was the slow, repetitive nature of the second half of the story and the miscommunication happening between Millie and Pete. They have such a great thing going, but Millie just keeps repeating to herself that she’s leaving eventually so they can’t get involved. One conversation would have fixed this entire issue! I actually started skimming chapters at the halfway point. Millie’s inner monologue starts to get irritating and I had a hard time connecting with Pete, maybe because we don’t get his POV here. There are some very unlikable characters in the story as well. Some of Millie’s friends come across as very controlling and difficult.

So aside from a few small issues with the pacing and the miscommunication trope, I really liked the story. I would recommend this to anyone who likes best friend’s older brother, fake dating, behind the scenes of an influencer and a gorgeous California backdrop. I would love to check out other works by this author and will still recommend this to family and friends. Thanks so much to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the advanced copy to read and review.

loved this book. Was a great read. finished it in one read. I will read more from them. Must read and get this book

I REALLY, really enjoyed this steamy summer romance set in a small beach town. Millie is a social media influencer whose lost her way (and her following). When a friend asks her to come home and help her out for a month she agrees easily, especially when she finds her lucky dress - the one that has brought luck to all her friends (think Sisterhood of the travelling pants!). Trying to help her friends, Millie ends up in a fake dating situation with her best friend's brother - the man she's happened to have a huge crush on since college.

Full of heart, humor and lots of relatable moments. I loved the mental health rep (Millie has ADHD and is constantly battling feelings of being a screw up) and also enjoyed that Millie was a bad-ass surfer chick (think Blue Crush). The exhaustion of being tied to a social media grid and constantly chasing followers is also very well done in this book.

Definitely add it to your summer #tbr if you like:
- women surfers
- neurodivergent MCs
- best friend's brother trope
- fake dating
- open door romance with TONS of chemistry
- small town setting
- great female friendships

This was honestly a surprise delight and I'm so grateful to have gotten an advance review copy thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks!! Highly recommended!!

If you liked the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series as a teenager, you will love this adult spin on the book! We do only follow one friend in a group of four women, but the story has the inspiration of a certain dress that has brought the group success in the past, though Millie hasn't experienced the same luck. She is let go from her job and moves to a small California surf town to be with one of her college friends, and romance and self-discovery ensue. I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it. I did appreciate the ADHD representation we see with Millie, and I enjoyed the focus on small-towns and friendship, and the romance was well done, but everything kind of fell flat to me. One thing that I didn't love was that Millie sets out to become an influencer and she initially states that she has no expectations, but also gets discouraged when she doesn't succeed right away? The whole book takes place over a month, and then by the end of the book she has 75,000 followers? The whole social media influencer thing was not realistic with this book/timeline, and Millie was back and forth with being surprised and disappointed...I just didn't love that element. I also thought the pacing was weird, because what I figured was a couple of weeks was later said to be only three days at the end of the book, which really threw me for a loop. This was an enjoyable book, don't get me wrong, but some parts were just hard for me to accept/believe. I would recommend it for a light summer read if it sounds like something you're interested in, but it wasn't one I'll be revisiting.

I really enjoyed this book a lot! It kinda gave the vibe of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I really liked. The characters in the book were interesting and the main characters development throughout the book was very inspiring.

I loved that the plot revolved around influencers and social media, which is a big deal in our time. I also really liked that there were so much focus about how everything is supposed to be perfect on social media, even though it is not even close to perfect in real life.

The love interest was adorable and he was such an amazing fit to our main character. He really went out of his way to show her how much she actually meant to him after their fake relationship blew up. The fact that they were both totally oblivious to each others feelings was really annoying at times, but at the same time it made the love confession in the end so much cuter.

All around this book is an amazing summer romance that I would definitely recommend. I wouldn’t mind reading it again some time.

Love a protagonist with ADHD and I did genuinely identify with her at times throughout the book. The influencer angle here is interesting and this is an example of the fake-dating trope done correctly. A fun read! Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Four Ways to Wear a Dress follows Millie, a woman who loses her job at a PR firm in New York. Her friend Quincy casually mentions that she should come visit her in a small surf town called Peacock Bay. The timing is perfect, the lease on Millie's apartment is up, so packs up her belongings, including a black dress her friend group called magic. They say whenever you wear it great things will happen.

Quincy is an Instagram influencer, so Millie decides to do the same and together they are trying to bring tourists back to Peacock Bay. Quincy has a brother, Peter. Millie has always had a crush on him. This was an excellent romantic comedy and you will definitely be rooting for Millie.

Millie and her friends are always there for each other, no matter what. I really loved the friendship they had and how their belief in the dress was so much more meaningful than the dress just being "magic". The dress was a symbol of their friendship and how support and positivity make for the best traits in a group of friends. Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Four Ways to Wear a Dress is such a fun summer read! This has a great fake-dating and I'm-in-love-with-my-best-friend's-brother romance with Millie and Pete. I really enjoyed the small beach town of Peacock Bay, CA and how social media and influencing are vital to tourism and the the town's success. I'm glad that the author did not shy away from the harsher realities of social media and influencing and their effects on our mental health. I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to reading more from Gillian Libby in the future!

After losing her job, Millie decides she needs a change and takes up her friends’ long standing offer to join them in Peacock Bay, CA. With a town full of laid back surfers and social media influencers, she finds herself setting up an instagram account to document her time there. Millie has to decide whether she wants to try again with her long term crush Pete or move on to a new job.

Four Ways To Wear a Dress is a summery, second-chance romance. With the title I was expecting a “ya ya sisterhood” type of plot but the dress doesn’t play that large a part in the book. Other than the couple of spicy scenes, the storyline could be mistaken for a YA book. The characters are all portrayed with such immature attitudes, especially Millie’s influencer friends. Maybe the author is making some sort of social commentary about those in social media? The author does give an accurate representation of the ugly, time-consuming side of “influencing”.

The plot was just too slow for me. There wasn’t enough character development for the main character and the side characters aren’t given enough background to decide either way. The author tries to bring diversity to the story with Millie’s ADHD and her friend’s son’s possible diagnosis but this is not fully flushed out.

I wanted to like this book and the premise sounded so fun but it was a miss for me.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca!

Here’a a rom com to add to your beach read list! If you loved Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants, you will enjoy this one!

🏄‍♀️ Millie Ward has been fired. Again. She's tired of feeling like a failure, and she refuses to blame her ADHD the way her parents do every time she hits one of life's speed bumps. This time, she's going to let that speed bump actually slow her down, and jumps at the chance to visit her best friend―and Instagram influencer―Quincy in California. And she wouldn't mind if that invitation also involved getting closer with Quincy's brother, Pete.

💭 A cute friends to lovers story, however, oh the CONTENT! There is a lot of social media chat. I started to get annoyed with it, but…. No spoilers. Definitely a great reminder to not let social media take over your life and your family. Don’t put on a show to impress the internet. Post what you love, talk about your struggles, share your successes.

There was one character that really bothered me, but she was necessary for the story. Again, hard to review and not include spoilers for this one. But I love how Millie stuck up for herself and supported her friends. A “magic” dress, fake dating, friends to lovers romance. Overall a cute feel good story with its steamy moments!

This will be a great beach read. Millie loses her job in New York and then decides to visit her friends in Peacock Bay. Her best friend Quincy is an Instagram influencer. Millie starts to grow a following and convinces Quincy’s brother Pete to be her Instagram husband and that it would benefit both of them. Like nothing could go wrong with an agreement like that.

I did enjoy this book and look forward to reading more from this author in the future. It took awhile for the story to pick up but once it did I couldn’t stop reading.

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

“If This is the real world, you can take it and shove it right up your ass “
This was an adorable chick lit with specks of rom-com. Millie feels like a failure and after losing her job plans to take a break and start a blog in a cute small California town-where her BFF is a famous influencer and her BFF’s hot brother just happens to work.
There was a lot of flirting but not a lot of romance-or much about Millie’s and Pete’s relationship even though he was basically all she thought about.
I loved that this was a book about how social media is taking over our lives and being an influencer isn’t as grand as it seems. Seemingly perfect lives on Instagram have their own issues in the shadows.
What was missing? A little more romance, a little more spice and Millie standing up to Alana who seemed to bully everyone around. I wasn’t OK that the author just let that go.
Overall, an adorable and fun easy read.

She lives and works in New York and have two of the three best friends there . She suddenly gets fired and she decide to go to California to her best friend and her brother which she has a huge crash . While packing for her trip she finds a black dress which all four of them wore and good things happened to them . She starts an Instagram account were she talks about her new life . For her account she fake date Pete but are his feelings real ?
I received this book from net galley and the publisher as an ARC. Thank you! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this new novel.

I'm apparently on a streak of putting books down and that sucks. I so wanted to love this but it felt like I've read this book before. I think I need to stop reading romance for a while 😱

I truly want to love this book. Most of the book I did love. The romance, the beach setting, the save the small town story, brothers best friend. All things I love in a book.

BUT. There is a side plot where Quincy's son Monrow is potentially going down the path to get an autism spectrum diagnosis. Which I love the representation. I have been Quincy, I could feel her thoughts and concerns through the page. I however could not stand Alana's treatment of Monrow and Quincy. She is disregarding to this diagnosis and getting "testing for special ed" and then tells Quincy to not bring him to a party. Despite all this, everyone remains friends with her. I could not tolerate a person like that in my son's life and even a fictional character like Monrow I want to wrap up in a bear hug that he would probably hate. For a family such as with Quincy and Peter, they are all about family, yet they seem to prioritize Claire because she is small, quiet, cute, and easy to deal with. Peter even has crib in his house for her. Favoritism just seeps off these characters. Honestly if I wasn't a mom to a young autistic boy and recently felt how Quincy was feeling I probably wouldn't catch onto all this subtext/plot, but I do and it bothers me so much that I after finishing the story I can't even fully enjoy the good parts of it anymore.

Having just been fired from her job in New York, Millie decides this is the perfect time to get away and visit Quincy, her best friend from college who lives in Peacock Bay, California. Quincy's life seems perfect (at least on Instagram) and it's just an added bonus that her older brother Pete, who Millie might've have a tiiiiny crush on, will be there, too. Once she gets to Peacock Bay and tries her own hand at becoming an Instagram influencer like Quincy and everyone in her circle, Millie realizes that reality may not always be as picture-perfect as it looks on social media. I liked this book, it was a cute little beach read once I got into it but it did take a bit. I also kind of found the dress somewhat unnecessary and I did tire slightly of all the Instagram talk. Overall I found it to be a decently good read albeit nothing too exciting or new.