I enjoyed the premise of this story but I was frustrated by Lucy’s wishy-washy personality. One moment she was this super direct and strong person and then she just completely changes and lets a creepy, controlling, borderline abusive ex take control. Perhaps there are cultural differences at play and certainly her family left her with baggage. But all of that wasn’t really explored and given the opportunity to show growth, instead she just flip-flopped. She felt like a weak lead character and that left the ending feeling flat for me.

I feel like I should preface this review by stating that Fated to Love You is one of my favorite kdramas ever and I sort of went expecting that, but boy was I surprised, in a good way. Having said that, I love the whole we decided to become a family and fell in love in the process of that trope. Is that even a trope? Well, if it is, I love it. Which is exactly why I was so excited to read this book.

I loved Collin from the moment he appeared on the page, but I had a harder time warming up to Lucie. As a matter of fact, I probably didn’t really Iike her until 60% in, but after that I was all in. Sure, I wanted to shake her and tell her to wake up and get real with herself, but I got where she was coming from and her struggle felt real. A lot of my wanting to shake her had to do with how perfect she and Collin would be if she just gave him a chance! So, granted they had great chemistry.

I also liked the fact that this book didn’t shrink away from noting that sometimes the hardest relationship you’ll ever have is oftentimes with your parents. The complexity of what it means to be a family was explored in a tasteful and realistic way.

I wish there had been more dialogue, but that’s only because I’m such a dialogue fan myself and that some of the side characters had had a bit more page time, but I overall enjoyed all the side characters.

I read Lauren Ho’s previous work and enjoyed it, so I was really looking forward to this one. While I think the book was okay, I didn’t love it like I was hoping for. I generally go into books blind, and if I knew what tropes were included I may have not picked it up. I do love the way it was written and Lucies inner monologue, however I didn’t really connect with her or the other characters. Also, there’s a character named Justine in the book which I always love seeing (as someone named Justine ).

TWs: Miscarriage, cheating, love triangle, grief, family dysfunction

Thank you Penguin Group Putnam and NetGalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review!

REVIEW: Lucie Yi is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho 💫

Thank you @putnambooks and @netgalley for the gifted eARC in exchange for an honest review 💓

I really enjoyed this one! I was so captivated by it - I couldn’t put it down! To the point where I stayed up to 2am to finish it.

I would say this one is a little bit more of a niche genre fit - I think I’m one of the few fans of a love triangle and pregnancy trope - so this was defs up my alley 🫣

I loved Lauren Ho’s other book, Last Tang Standing, so I automatically requested the book for that reason alone. I love her writing and the balance of humor, wit, strong FMC career woman, and depicting all of the nuanced Asian societal cultural views of women.

I would definitely recommend this one to fans of the tropes and anyone who wants to explore either of the love triangle or pregnancy tropes more! This one would be in my starter pack for both 🫶

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book. I really enjoyed the premise, but I found it hard to connect with the characters and the pacing of the story.

3.5

Read this if you like: Pregnancy trope, Asian representation, love triangle, friends to lovers, slow burn

Lucie Yi is a management consultant. She came to NYC from Singapore to work for a few months. She just got dumped by her fiance. All this messes up her plans for kids. She's 37 so she feels she needs to get on it asap. After she has a meltdown in a baby store she decides she’s ready to take matters into her own hands. She signs up for an elective co-parenting website to find a suitable partner with whom to procreate, as platonic as family planning can be.
 
Collin Read checks all of Lucie’s boxes; he shares a similar cultural background. He’s honest, sweet, and ready to become a father. When they match, it doesn’t take long for Lucie to take a leap of faith for her future. When Lucie becomes pregnant, the pair return to Singapore and, sure enough, her conservative parents refuse to look on the bright side.

Lucie Yi definitely is a romantic. She just thinks she can't have the perfect love story. This book is unconventional and different. I liked it. The characters are likeable and well developed. They are so awkward, so cute together. I wish it had more focused on them but there is a strong love triangle story line. I hated that. I don't think the story needed it at all. I still enjoyed it. I just needed more romance from the two. It was funny, charming, and I do recommend this book! It came out yesterday. Go get it!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Penguin Group Putnam for the gifted copy! ❤️

Happy pub day to Lauren Ho and her new book Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic. Thanks to @netgalley and @putnambooks for the eArc in exchange for my honest review.

✔️ Love Triangle
✔️ Having a Baby
✔️ Family Drama
✔️ Women's Fiction

I loved the premise of this book: Lucie is getting older and has no relationship prospects but she decides she wants to have a baby. From a friend's suggestion, she signs up with a Coparenting matchmaking service to find a partner to have a baby with.

The first half of the book, with Lucie's meltdown, decision to coparent, and meeting her potential coparenting match - these were my favorite parts of the book. It was funny, the situation and setup and how the FMC was feeling about it all.

I liked Lucie's friend group and I liked Collin and Lucie.

The back half of the book was not for me. I'm not into reading about love triangles in general and the second love interest was a hell-no for me so I found this part very frustrating and unnecessarily angsty. This is where YMMV - I think this could hit the spot for some folks (I had this same feeling reading Mhiri McFarlane's Don't You Forget About Me). Note that the author of this book mentions that this book is categorized as a romcom but there are a lot of themes that place it more as a women's fiction book. I agree with that - it's not a romance or romcom.

That said, it was well-written and plotted and I can see how this could be a 4 or 5 star book for someone.

Steam 🔥
Banter 🗣🗣
Swoon 💕

I truly loved the flow of the book. I defiantly look forward to reading more from this author. I was not too sure at first but I am so glad that I pushed through and enjoyed it 100%

🖤BOOK REVIEW🖤

Lucie Yi is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho
Release Date: June 21, 2022

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

After breaking up with her fiancé and having a panic attack in the middle of a bougie baby story in New York, Lucie Yi is finished waiting for “the one.” After deciding that she wants to have kids, she signs up for a co-parenting website and dives in to an unconventional way of having children. After a few duds, she meets Collin Read and he seems to be the most compatible for creating life together.

Even though she is aware of the stigmas that come with conceiving a child this way, she and Collin move back to her home country of Singapore, back to her conservative family and the place where her ex-fiancé still lives. How will all of this work out? Will her family ultimately disown her? Will her complicated feelings toward her ex interfere? Or will she give in to her feelings and jump in to something a little scary but that could be truly amazing?

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

I LOVED LOVED LOVED LOVED THIS BOOK!! Were there times I absolutely wanted to throttle Lucie? Yes, but only because she feels like an old friend. I loved every inch of this book. It is so incredibly written and it is a really unique concept for a romcom novel (even if co-parenting is becoming a cultural norm). All of these characters are incredibly well rounded and developed and you fall in love (or completely hate) all of them. They all serve their purposes. This book is just *chefs kiss* IT RELEASES TODAY SO PLEASE GO BUY IT AND READ IT AND ENJOY IT AS MUCH AS I DID!

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

✨Thank you to @netgalley for the opportunity to read this before it is published!✨

#bookstagram #bookmom #bookstagrammer #bookclub #whatimreading #bookies #bookish #readwithme #ilovebooks #booksbookandmorebooks #bookishlife
#bookishthings #currentlyreading #netgalley #arc #bookrecs #bookreview #icanteven #romance #contemporaryromance

Just like Last Tang Standing, I loved this one too! Lauren Ho does such a good job with the writing comedy into her romances that I found myself smiling through large chunks of the book. With an uncommon trope of platonic co-parents turned lovers, this book is sweet, funny and endearing while showcasing character growth and tackling tough topics like grief, miscarriage and the strong desire to become a parent. I saw the potential for Lucie and Collin right away and was rooting for them - I enjoyed seeing their story together unfold.

A great summer read. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

Like Last Tang Standing, I loved this one too!! First time to read a book with platonic co-parents to lovers trope and I enjoyed it. There was so much tension and angst between Collin and Lucie. It’s probably from my too much consumption of cdramas, but in my head, I read this book like a romcom movie. Though the book is also a comedy, it tackled heavy topics like miscarriage and grief.

Lucie Yi is actually a romantic. But is also too logical and practical for her own good. So when she has a crisis while buying gifts in a baby shop, she takes it as a sign that she needs to put aside her hope for a great romantic love and marriage if she’s ever going to become the mother she desperately wants to be. Being the practical person she is, she signs up for a co-parenting website and matches with Collin, who isn’t interested in getting married but also wants to become a parent. After talking for weeks and becoming quite close, they agree to finally meet in person. They each feel the chemistry but are adamant that their arrangement needs to be platonic, and they are free to date other people. After getting pregnant on the first try, they move back to Singapore, to the scrutiny of Lucie’s conservative and judgmental parents. She also has a run-in with her ex-fiancé Mark. After her parents make it clear that they are displeased by her current predicament - pregnant and unmarried - she begins to question her plan and becomes vulnerable to Mark’s persuasion to get back together, which her parents wholeheartedly support, as he would make her and her child legitimate to society. This is where Lucie gets herself into a bind - does she take the safe path and get back together with Mark, whose desperately trying to win back her affections, or follow her heart with Collin, even though they agreed that it must be platonic between them.

Overall, an excellent book. It was a refreshing change to the usual romance or women’s fiction, and I really enjoyed reading a story outside of my own cultural comfort zone. On one hand, it was a little frustrating to see Lucie waver so much and be so indecisive about what she wanted, but in the other hand it was satisfying to see her growth around making these decisions - which would be tough when it’s possibly bucking all the values that you’ve been raised with.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for an early release of Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic in exchange of an honest review.

I thought this was a cute story driven by likable main characters. Lucie was a funny leading lady and I enjoyed the story.

Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic started off great! Two people, who hadn't met the right person at the right time, wanted to have a baby - who says they have to be in love to do so? I liked the premise of it, as it isn't a super common trope, and I immediately saw the potential for Lucie and Collin. However, as the story went on, there were aspects that just didn't sit quite right with me. I would have loved to see a little more exploration of the dynamic with Lucie's family. Overall, it was a decent read - definitely give it a go if you want to read a nontraditional romance!

As a married woman in her 30s who doesn't want kids, I thought the premise of this was interesting -- using a website to find a platonic father, but as we all know that's never what happens.

I really liked Collin, but found Lucie to be too headstrong and found it hard to root for her. I hated the weird little triangle with her ex-fiancee and don't know why I actually finished reading this book.

I just keep finding myself in the sophomore slump for some of the most anticipated second novels from authors whose first books I really enjoyed. As someone who really liked Ho’s first book, “Last Tang Standing”, I couldn’t request to read this follow up quickly enough. While entertaining, “Lucie Yie” just seems to have so many improbable scenarios that I’m having a hard time suspending belief enough to enjoy the story. There is just so much conflict against the backdrop of an unconventional romance that I find myself a bit exhausted with the development. This is not a bad book by any means, but I just didn’t love it. 3 stars 🌟. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy for review.

Lucie Yi is 37 who wants to have a child but isn’t in a relationship so she joins an app that matches her with someone so she can co-parent.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC ! I absolutely loved this book I loved the humor Lauren Ho does such a good job with the writing. Check TW

I liked the idea of this story and had really high hopes for this story, but it didn't live up to my expectations. I was not able to get attached to the characters and therefore, I .wasn't invested in the story. The writing style felt kind of choppy and it wasn't very easy to read.

This was a really interesting read, with an incredibly original take on women's fiction/romance.

Lucie came to New York from Singapore fresh after a break-up to work in her firm's New York office. While in new York she has decided she wants to have a child, but doesn't want the whole falling in love, and getting married thing. Enter a website that helps you to find a person to co-parent a child with without all the other stuff. Lucie finds Collin through the site, and everything goes from there.

Honestly, what an amazing idea for a love story: two folks decide to become parents while in a platonic relationship that then spins into something different. There is so much to this book. Lucie and Collin are funny and sweet, and it's almost impossible not to root for them together. The differences between the US and Singapore were eye opening, and the entire book made me really think about the new ways that families are being made and all the emotions that come about with that.

Thank you to Penguin for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for an early release of Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic in exchange of an honest review.

I think that this is a super interesting premise, and unlike anything I have read before! I feel like the beginning is super slow, but somehow we get so much information at once which felt odd. I do think the plot definitely picks up around the 40% mark though and I got very invested at this point!

I enjoyed Lucie as a main character, I found her funny and exciting and you can see how much having a child truly means to her throughout the pages. Something I also really enjoyed about the book was learning about life in Singapore and the culture there, specifically in regards to love, relationships, marriage, and children. Additionally I really enjoyed Collin and loved how much the reader got to experience with him and got to learn about his past.