I received a free advanced reading copy of this title via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a cute, fun rom-com-type novel with a love story between good friends. I needed a mindless, easy read and this did the trick.

This is all about second chances. Aly, who wants nothing more than to become a brand manager, has thrown herself into her work at the expense of her personal life but now she's finding some joy in fixing the personal lives of others. Rather than using her skills to sell products, she's using them to persuade boyfriends to do, well, what their partners would like them to do- help more with the kids, propose, and so on. And then her pal is approached by a truly oblivious social influencer who wants change in her boyfriend who turns out to be....Dylan, the boy Aly loved in high school. In true rom-com fashion, he broke her heart back then in a way that still echos but there was a misunderstanding. Can they find their way back to each other? Can Aly fix him? Does he need fixing? I liked this as much for Aly's friends Eric and Tola as for Aly, who at times is unable to see the forest. And what about her career? Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. There are some very funny scenes here, making it a good read for a hot (or rainy) day.

This was a fun idea for a book! I liked the characters, but as soon as the first love came into the picture, I changed my mind. I found myself losing interest because of him. Still a fun read! Thank you, NetGalley.

This book follows Aly, someone who is always making the people around her better, especially the men in her life, while ignoring her own needs and growth. When she runs into an ex who has turned his life around due to her help, she and her friends realize that other women could benefit from their help. What starts as a fun side business quickly takes a turn when Aly is asked to help "fix" the boyfriend of a famous influencer who also happens to be her first love.

An interesting second chance romance premise, this book definitely had some cute moments but wasn't really that romantic overall. I found the male love interest to be kind of bland even though he has some good banter with Aly. I also wished Aly realized sooner that her business was harmful. Like I know that was part of her journey, but it hurt to watch them ignore the harm they were doing for so long.

With some fun side characters and some inspiring moments of women standing up for themselves, this story was enjoyable with some bumps in the road.

Alyssa Aresti has spent her life trying to fix things and help other her whole life. From her mother's tumultuous relationship with her father to helping slacker co-workers at the marketing firm and helping her boyfriends reach their potential - she is helpful to a fault. When a chance meeting with an ex reveals he is now married and in a prosperous job - her friends Tola and Eric convince her to put her skills toward helping other women gently nudge their boyfriends toward their potential.

All seems well until they are contacted by a famous social media influencer who wants help getting her boyfriend to the altar and getting his tech startup off the ground. Except the boyfriend is Dylan James - Aly's former best friend and first love. Through a comedy of errors and a touch of miscommunication - Aly discovers that maybe her minor manipulations have bigger consequences than she thought.

I found this to be a pleasant and amusing romance. I found the characters to be enjoyable - specifically Aly and her friends, Tola and Eric. I find Aly to be a sympathetic character - you see from her family to her job that she clearly has a pattern and its very hard for her to break out. The culmination of all of her fixer upper work really cements her as a character who is interested in growing and breaking out of her shell.

Unfortunately, the story does have questionable/unbelievable plot details when you think about it too much. I generally find the miscommunication trope to be annoying - but between teenagers I find it less frustrating. However, I find it hard to believe that if they were in love at 17/18 and had been friends since the age of 11, he would have just left it at a disconnected phone number for 15 years when he clearly knows her mother. It's more believable from her since she has a clear history of avoiding conflict.

Overall, I found the story to be an enjoyable story of a woman learning how to ask for what she wants and deserves.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: August 2, 2022

Emotionally supportive of your partner until they dump you and thrive? That’s the deal for our MC Aly until she and a few coworkers decide to market her skills to other women to help fix issues in their relationships. Everything is rosy until the boyfriend to “fix” for one client happens to be Aly’s childhood best friend and first love. Can she go through with the “fix” of changing him to fit her clients desires or will old flames interfere?

Unfortunately Aly is…hard to cheer for. She’s quite naive and a complete pushover about things—from work to family to personal. So many times I just wanted her to help herself instead of everyone else. This is an easy enough British romcom read that was just a bit repetitive and could’ve used more romance.

"The Fixer Upper" by Lauren Forsythe
Release Date: 8.2.2022

Aly has been constantly cleaning up other people's messes. She is the supportive best friend, the dutiful daughter, the helpful coworker. Aly finally realizes she's even been trying to fix her boyfriends!

Aly and her two work friends begin "The Fixer Upper," a service for women who trick men into doing the hard work themselves, like attending a seminar, quitting the job they despise, and helping with parenting. They are hired to help a high-profile Instagram star's boyfriend! Aly is shocked to learn that the guy is her childhood best friend and first love.
Aly will need to decide how to help the man who she already thought was pretty perfect.

This was a cute read! A sweet childhood friends to lovers romantic comedy was just what I needed to read!

Thank you to @NetGalley for this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I think the Women's Fiction categorization is spot on for this, but I have quibbles with the Romance categorization. Yes, there are some classic romance tropes (second chance at unrequited adolescent love, miscommunications, friends to lovers), but it is super slow burn (with not a lot of burn when you get there). There was some rom-com energy with the banter and situational set up, but there were some heavy topics to deal with (codependency, cheating, parental death, toxic workplaces). In my opinion, not romance, not rom-com, just straight women's fiction. And British.

The meat and potatoes of this book is the MC Aly's journey. She starts the Fixer Upper business with encouragement from friends, but it turns out, she could use her own fixing. I did like seeing Aly come to realize her Type A habits and keeping folks at a safe distance were doing her a disservice and not actually getting her where she wanted to be. It was a good, easy summer read.

thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC, in exchange for this honest review.

This one was okay, but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It felt like the characterizations were a little too Perfect which made it super cheesy, and not in the way I typically enjoy. It was cute and well written, I just wasn't super fond of the characters

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for this ARC.

I flew through this novel in two days needing to know how it would resolve. The conflict for our main character, Aly, was so well written -- she was stuck in the middle of choosing between what was best for her mother, her former best friend and love interest (Dylan), her friends and their burgeoning fixer upper business, and what she really wanted. The tension was so high, and I kept wondering how the hell she would resolve everything. The chemistry between her and Dylan jumped off the page, along with all of the angst and regret from their past. This book was one of those that made me anxious how the hell everything could be resolved with only a couple chapters left. I wish there had been a little more at the end to finish the story, but overall, I loved it and highly recommended it!

Read/Listen If You Like:
❤️ Friends to Lovers
❤️ Second Chance Romance
❤️ Type A MC
❤️ British RomComs

Book Review:
Aly keeps finding herself the one that is fixing up guys and leaving them significantly better than she found them, but has not given herself that same level of time to achieve her goals over the last 10 years or so, this was really shown when she ran into a boyfriend from 5 years prior that seemingly now has it all together and she is roughly in the same place she was when she broke up with him.

This then leads to her and her friends becoming a team of fixer uppers for women to help them keep the men they want to be with, but to get them to the level they want them to be at, just as Aly has done so many times before with her exs.

So when this becomes their business and they are confronted with a new famous client that wants her to work her magic on her first heartbreak will she be able to toe the professional line or will she and her former friend rekindle their relationship?

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the ARC of this book! I am so grateful to obtain a copy to read in advance of its release in exchange for my honest feedback!

Aly has a knack for fixing things. When her best friends point out one of the duds she had dated has gone on to be successful, they decide to test out a theory. Every single ex of Aly’s has gone on to be successful. Alongside her friends, Tola and Eric, they form a new business— The Fixer Upper. Behind the scenes, women come to them to get the men in their life to finally put in the work. Aly and team are able to convince these men to finally do the work, without them realizing they’ve been set up.

After a few weeks, a high profile social media influencer asks them to meet. She wants her boyfriend to finally move forward with his tech start up and be ready for an engagement— in a month. Aly is about to turn this offer down when her ex-best friend (and first love) walks in the door...

This book does best friends to strangers to friends to lovers so well. Although I hate the whole being paid and lying to someone trope, Aly and Dylan were so fun to read about.

Aly struggles with opening up to people and feels like she has to be fixing everyone’s problems. Dylan feels like he’s never enough for anyone and hides behind his charm. It was great watching these two reconnect as they worked through these issues.
Read if you like:
• best friends to lovers
• the movie failure to launch
• strong and independent women
• second chance romance

Aly is constantly sacrificing her wants and needs to fix any situation in her life: her mom’s toxic relationship with her dad, her colleagues misguided attempts, and any partner’s lack of ambition for the last 15 years.

She gets herself in a real pickle when her new side biz, the Fixer Upper, is hired by the girlfriend of her ex-best friend from adolescence/unrequited love to try to “fix” him to fit in with her influencer lifestyle.

This was a super quick and fun read with a fun and somewhat diverse cast of characters. I liked it but I really needed some spice - just even a tiny bit - just a scootch.

CW/TW: toxic relationships, death of a parent, misogyny

I’m sure it’s just me, but I wasn’t really into this as much as I thought I would be. I expected this to be a fun and cute romcom, and instead the romance felt like more of a subplot than the main plot—which was weird given that Aly is in the business of romance 🤣

Overall The Fixer Upper was ok, just not what I expected

This book was utterly adorable. We have Aly our fixer. She is in her 30s, has spent her life trying to get the top branding job at her firm, and just figured out every guy she's dated has gone on to bigger, grander things. Enter edgy GenZ and gay male co-workers/best friends and we have a fixer on our hands.

The whole fixing thing was an interesting premise. Especially coupled with the cliche the only person she can't fix is herself situation, but it was interesting the different scenarios and how she tried to solve them.

However, I had several issues with our main conflict. Most of those probably would not have been issues for people with a legal background. There's no way dad has a legal claim to half the house, but I digress. This story is a SLOW burn. I was not expecting it to be that slow. I understand why as the author was trying to avoid a cheater's situation but still I wanted more of our main couple as a main couple.

Dylan and Aly refinding themselves is Uber cute and gives you all the warm and fuzzies. The miscommunication from their childhood was resolved well but the events immediately following were a bit stagnant. Again I understand the delicate line the author was trying to toe. Ultimately it is a cute story and I enjoyed it. Major points to the author for ending it where she did. We do not always need an epilogue.

I'll be honest, this was a hard book to get into and I was a bit confused by the premise - you don't even meet the romantic lead until pretty far in. It's also unclear how the Fixer Upper business got off the ground as it seems to grow overnight? I know these people work in marketing but that's impressive...I liked the secondary characters more than the leads. The overall message was empowering, but I think it tried to do too much and had too many subplots. As a random sidenote, it took me awhile to realize this was set in England.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I expected a romcom but this wasn’t much of that. The storyline was interesting and the writing was pretty good.

Rating 3.25 stars, rounded down to 3.

Alyssa "Aly" Aresti has always been a fixer - whether it be her parents, her job, her boyfriends, she's always trying to solve other people's problems. Aly, with her coworkers, Eric and Tola, decide to use Aly's powers to good use and start a service called Fixer Upper, which helps women who are tired of the emotional cost of motivating their partners to work on themselves. Whether it be working towards a dream career, leaving their dead-end job, or taking the next step in their relationship, Aly and team would use subtle suggestion and psychology to motivate these men to do the work themselves. After some success, a famous reality star/influencer hires Fixer Upper to help motivate her app developer boyfriend to get his start-up funded AND propose within a month. The added twist? Her boyfriend is Dylan James, Aly's childhood best friend and first love - the one that got away. It's Aly's first instinct to walk away from this, but when her Mom suddenly needs money to help save her home, Aly is left with no choice but to take the job and risk losing Dylan forever.

From the beginning, we learn that Aly is quite the flawed character. She's a workaholic who allows herself to be gaslit and disrespected by her boss and colleagues, all for the sake of a promotion that we as readers know she'll never get. Her mom is extremely emotionally dependent on her to referee a broken marriage that she can't seem to give-up on. And come to find out, every dead-beat, project boyfriend she's had since adulthood has gone on to be successful, thanks to her emotional labor. Meanwhile, Aly's life has stagnated. This book, although advertised as a romance, is largely about Aly coming to terms with her "fixing" and realizing that she's been putting herself on the back-burner for people who take advantage of her. Although this is extremely frustrating to see as a reader, I did enjoy seeing Aly grow and become a person who is willing to stand-up for herself and go after the things she wants.

As for the romance aspect, Aly and Dylan are former childhood friends that became strangers after an incident that could have easily been resolved by talking. I will say, since they were teenagers at the time, I can buy into the fact that Aly misunderstood the situation and ran away to protect herself. However, when they meet again many years later, it is again a lack of communication and trust that breaks them apart. Obviously, you can tell I am not a fan of the miscommunication trope. All in all, I found the romance between them to be a little weak. I wasn't all that invested in their relationship, as I believed that Aly still had a lot of self-discovery and self-healing to go through before she should be committing to someone.

I think the premise of this story is a little unrealistic, but if you can get past it, I think it's a fun read. To me, the highlight of this book, and the reason you should read it, is for Aly's personal development, rather than the relationship between her and Dylan. Overall, I found this book to be a quick and entertaining read, but it was not compelling enough for me to be engaged in the story or relationships. I can see this book being a five-star read for the right person, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Content warnings: Gaslighting, and misogyny; brief mentions of cheating, car accident, and parent death

(Note: I was provided an advanced copy of The Fixer Upper by the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This was a nice read, I like Forsythe’s writing and the character work is top notch. I very much loved Aly’s friends group (Tola is a queen!) But for me this was much more women’s fiction story than romcom, which wasn’t a bad thing just not what I was expecting. Overall, the book was enjoyable and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

I loved reading The Fixer Upper. Lots of funny moments. Great cast of characters. Well written - I felt like I was watching a movie while reading it.