(3/5) I tried desperately to like this book. A second chance/academic rivals combo? Sign me up NOW. 😩 Unfortunately I couldn’t make it through to the end because I found neither of the main characters were likable. At all. I found them both immature and didn’t see any character growth in the parts that I got through. If I had known either of them in grad school, I don’t think I would have wanted to be friends with them. 🥲 The writing itself was fine, I liked the representation of a fat MC, and I could certainly sympathize with the struggle of a first time teacher not having your students want to be engaged. But the general immaturity and unlikability (is that a word?) of these characters was just not doing it for me.

2.75
Thank you to SMP Romance for sending me a copy of this book to read and review. I love the idea of second chance/ academic rivals romance, however I think this one missed the mark. Allison is a plus size main character and I loved seeing that, but she was competitive to a fault rather than driven. She often got in her own way and didn't give others a fair chance. Almost all of her relationships whether friend, family, or love interests felt toxic to me. It was hard to read at points because I felt like it took up too much of the plot. While this was said to be a romance, I didn't really feel the chemistry or love between the characters and I think the love story fell short. I enjoyed the medieval literature focus and the struggle it takes to be a grad student. I really wanted to like this one because it has a lot of tropes I love seeing, but overall this book was not a favorite of mine.

This is a second-chance and academic rivals-to-lovers romance. Allison and Colin dated and broke up during undergrad are are surprised to be in the same Ph.D. program. Now, these exes are competing for one open spot on a research trip and trying to one-up each other in the classroom. I enjoyed this book for the most part, but had a hard time rooting for Allison and Colin in the end and didn't really like Colin all that much.

The Make-Up Test
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Romance
Format: Kindle eBook
Date Published: 9/13/22
Author: Jenny L. Howe
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 336
GR: 3.46

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: Allison Avery has finally been accepted into her dream Ph.D. program at Claymore University, studying medieval literature under a professor she’s admired for years. Until she discovers her ex-boyfriend, Colin Benjamin, has also been accepted. They're both assigned to TA for the same professor, the game is on. When a family emergency and a late night road trip—plus a very sexy game of Scrabble—throw them together for a weekend, she starts to wonder if they could be stronger on the same team. And if they fall for each other all over again, Allison will have to choose between a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and what could be a twice-in-a-lifetime love.

My Thoughts: I love the fat positive spin this book gives. The trope of enemies to rivals to lovers is a spine of my favorite trope, enemies to lovers. It also features the trope of second chance love. The story is narrated by Allison, in her perspective. Set in an academic setting of grad school, it reflects on the pressures of grad school and TA positions. While I am not a medieval literature fan, I really enjoyed this book. Allison is competitive, strong, and independent, you cannot help but fall in love with her. At first, Colin is not very likable until you learn why he did what he did, learning from mistakes, truly tugs at my heart. The characters were well developed with depth, witty banter, a little sacrifice, chemistry, and just very well done. The author’s writing style is complex, humorous, swoony, intriguing, and kept me engaged throughout the story. This is the first time I have read Howe’s work, but will not be my last. I love how Howe spun relationships are about supporting one another, putting work into them to make them flourish and never is about competition. I highly recommend picking up this book next week!!

Unfortunately, The Make-Up Test didn't work for me.

I didn't like Allison, I didn't like Colin. I didn't think they had chemistry. I didn't think they should be together, so I wasn't rooting for their HEA. I found the book mainly made me feel stressed and angry. All of the relationships - whether romantic, platonic or familial were either toxic, estranged or going through a rough phase and it was just not a story I wanted to read. I actually did enjoy the references to medieval literature and I loved the academic setting.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC.

This book was easy and fun to follow I loved the enemies to lovers, lovers to rivals and second chance romance. It is sweet, funny and adorable book with characters that made me love and hate them at times lol. After being dumped by Colin 2 years before Avery tries her best to avoid him but when their professor announces the opportunity for great research project both can’t let it go. Through the book they begin to spend more time together and Avery realizes that Collin has changed from who he was two years ago. Overall I really enjoyed this book and I think it’s a beautiful second chance romance read!! Congratulations to Jenny for creating such a great book and thank you NetGalley and St.Martins Press for allowing me to read this book and give it an honest review.

We really hesitated on the rating for this one. Why is that? Well, there are a ton of things that we liked:

1. Allison is a great heroine. She's intelligent and she knows it, but she's also afraid of failure. She's fat and confident about her looks, but she also experience moments of self-doubt the way all of us do.

2. The academic setting felt authentic and vibrant. Allison and Colin are thrown together as co-advisees, make up most of their social circle with the other first-year PhD students, and generally just roam a (post-pandemic) campus.

3. The writing is clear and fun. Although nearly all of the characters interact in an academic milieu (see point 2 above), the prose doesn't get bogged down with too many technical terms. That said, it doesn't feel like it's been dumbed down for a reader who's not familiar with them, either.

But... it was just really hard to get into the romance between two people who didn't feel like fully-formed adults. Allison just finished undergrad and went straight to grad school, while Colin graduated two years earlier. And (did we forget to mention?) this is a second-chance romance. So the reader is supposed to believe that a forever love between two undergrads (that was interrupted by the absolutely heinous behavior of one of them) is right on track only two years later?

Howe doesn't gloss over Colin's terrible actions, but both Allison and the reader are expected to forgive him a little too easily. (SPOILER: Allison thinks Colin stole some of her academic theories for a career-making presentation; is somehow convinced not to report him because that would make her look petty or something; and it turns out that he only stole the title of her work, so it's a good thing she didn't tell anyone, right? UGH. There is a simple answer to this and it's that COLIN COULD HAVE SENT HER AN EMAIL IN ADVANCE we're still het up about it.)

We're settling on 3.25 stars because of the elements we mention above. Also because we were obviously emotionally invested even if maybe it was in the wrong way...

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

This was a good debut by Jenny Howe. It was a second-chance, enemies to lovers, grad school trope that had a lot of good elements. It did fall a little flat for me because I wasn't too fond of the characters. The male main character, Colin, wasn't very endearing and I didn't see much of an ARC with him despite the attempt. I liked the general idea of this - brought me Ali Hazelwood vibes. There was a complicated relationship with her dad that I didn't think was all too fleshed out but I will say that I appreciated how she set a boundary and stuck to it for her own mental health. Overall, I enjoyed reading it but I was wanting to feel more out of it. Still, a decent debut and I look forward to what Howe will right next!

*Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced copy. Opinions are my own.

The following review was posted on my blog today, Sunday, September 11th, 2 days before publication. It will be shared on Twitter and Instagram between today and the day of publication, as well. The blog post includes links to order the books and to its Goodreads page, so readers can add it to their to-be-read books.




“You don’t have to take care of me.”
“Yeah, I do. We have a mild truce now, remember?”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 4 stars
Spicy Meter: 3 fire emojis
Content Warnings: As given by the author—Fatphobia both in flashback and in present day, fatshaming from a family member, and deals with death and loss.

“The Make-Up Test” follows Allison Avery and Colin Benjamin, two grad students with the same advisor. Sounds simple enough, right? Except it isn’t. Allison and Colin dated while they were in undergrad and it did not end well, to say the least. Now, years later, and in a more competitive program, they’re left to work together to the best of their abilities. That is, until their advisor tells them she’ll only be able to keep one grad student moving forward. Now, with higher stakes, they end up in the exact same situation they were years ago. Will history rewrite itself? Or will old habits prevail?

You see that endorsement on the cover? Well, I agree wholeheartedly with Ali Hazelwood: I’ll read anything Jenny Howe writes. Her narrative is clever and her (most of her) characters complex and layered. This book had a second-chance romance and lovers-to-enemies-to-friends-to-lovers trope. It’s told partially through flashbacks, which were nice and helped us understand why the main characters act the way they do.

I loved Allison and how she was protrayed as more than just a student. I, myself, am currently in grad school and something I feel like my whole life revolves around that– but Allison’s doesn’t. We get to see her shifting relationships with old friends and how her family dynamics, all but ideal, affect her, but she pushes on.

And then there is Colin. Bland, one-dimentional Colin. Now, I really did feel like he was only there to fill up that romantic void in Allison’s life. Like he had no other purpose than that. We do get a sob story about his family background, but it doesn’t really seem to phase him or define him in any way. He’s just an insecure, white man hoping to thrive in academics. That’s it.

But the story was entretaining and relatively fast-paced. I think it was definitely worth the read. My only complaint is that it wasn’t as spicy as I thought it would be. The sexual tension was there, but the scenes didn’t deliver. I felt like it was missing something. I wasn’t ready to let go of these characters.

I would highly recommend this book, I can’t believe it’s a debut novel. If you like second-chance romance and enemies-to-lovers, “The Make-Up Test” is for you.

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

Or you could click here, and be redirected to Amazon, so you can order the book.

ARC provided by NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: September 13, 2022
“You don’t like happy endings?”
(…) “I think the problem is more that I like them too much. No one gets that in real life.”

Allison Avery has been dreaming about her career as a medieval literature professor for a long time. Now working toward her PhD, she is assigned as a TA to her favorite professor. Unfortunately so is her ex- boyfriend Colin Benjamin. They went to Brown together, treating every assignment as a competition... until Colin steals the Rising Star award out from under her and the unexpectedly breaks up with her. Now he's in line to steal her dreams again.
From the beginning, I liked Allison's fat-positive attitude about loving her body. But Colin is described so awkwardly with his knobby knees, bony shoulders, etc every time a romantic encounter happens it just killed the mood. And the ending had me seeing red, just so mad for her and disbelieving that she could ever trust or forgive him. Honestly this is the most awkward romance I've ever read.
I received an advance reader copy of this book. The views and opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and given voluntarily.

DNF at 30%

Let's just get this outta the way right up front: I'm a stingy-star bitch who reads romance partly for the fantasy element....but I also like flawed characters. Now, as a plus size woman I freaking LOVE a plus size heroine. But in my infinite hypocrisy, I want my plus size heroine to get together with a freaking model. A bastion of male physical perfection. I'm an asshole like that.

Sadly, I don't have a lot of interest in reading a plus-size heroine get back together with a tall, gangly, Ichabod Crane who is described as being boney and having a "flat ass". The reader also learns early in the book that he puts on JUST A KNIT CARDIGAN immediately after sex because it makes him feel "protected". Can I switch this guy out for a cocky, ab-ridden fire-fighter, please?

So, based on my supreme hypocrisy, where I want to root for a plus-size female lead,—but I only want her to get together with a physically perfect male lead—THE MAKE-UP TEST just didn't work out for me.

If you are all about a more realistic love story with two physically atypical (for romance books, anyway) leads then you might really love this book and you should definitely add it to your tbr.

Me and my shallow male-beauty standards are just gunna find a different book.

The Make-Up Test by Jenny L Howe
.
Allison loves to win. And when she is up for getting her FAVORITE teacher as an advisor, she is going to take down the competition.
Especially after she learns the competition is her Ex, Colin Benjamin.
.
What I liked:
-Lovers to enemies to rivals to lovers again, I haven’t read anything like that before and it was great!
-I thought the storyline about Allison’s parents was done well and appreciated the reasonableness to it. Relationships are hard, but sometimes the relationships within your own family can be the hardest.
-I know nothing about college, let along Ph.D programs but Allison’s zeal and enthusiasm got me excited for her to fulfill her dreams.
.
4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was a fun book to read and I enjoyed how it ended.

We wanted to love this book but honestly we found it to be severely lacking. The two main characters were very unlikable. It was very confusing to us why Allison would take COLIN BENJAMIN back after he did what he did. Also, why did the author feel the need to use his first and last name when talking about him? The writing style and the story just really weren’t for us.

As you may have gathered from the title and cover, The Make-Up Test is an academic rivals to lovers romance for fans of books such as Beach Read. Although I never really fell in love with the author's writing style, the characters, premise and tropes were all very loveable, making this a truly enjoyable read. I highly recommend it to contemporary romance readers.

I wanted to like this book so much but I felt bored a lot. I don’t know if it was the writing style or the references to books I’ve never read, but I ended up skimming parts.

Sigh. Yet another book with a cute rom com cover that’s not a cute rom com. The writing is fine (which is why I gave it four stars), but this character angsts over everything. This feels more like women’s fiction than romance. Some readers may enjoy it, but it’s not for me. DNF.

The Make-Up Test is described as ONE TO WATCH meets BEACH READ in the synopsis, and I agree wholeheartedly. I empathize with the MC Allison as she is a more-to-love character navigating positive body image among others' opinions. This book is a second-chance, enemies-to-lovers, and rivals-to-lover romance novel. It made me relieve my graduate school days and the stress of being a teaching assistant while balancing school and work. The banter between Allison and Colin was so great, and I felt their chemistry. This book does cover sensitive issues such as body shaming, psychological and verbal abuse, parental neglect, and dementia which are all realistic. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a great job. I recommend checking out this book!

Thank you, St. Martin's Griffin and OrangeSky Audio, for my gifted copies.

I had such high hopes for this one. A second chance romance set in academia? Yes please.
What I got was not exactly that.

She spent so much time angry at him for doing totally normal things that fell into his job responsibilities. He took the classes he was TA-ing seriously, well he must be undermining her. He throws credit to her for ideas that came out of a private conversation in front of the students and their professor; well he must have forgotten that he was directing praise toward her.

Yes, they had a kind of ugly break up in undergrad but I would hope that people have grown since then. I just never really saw it from her and it started to tank my mood for the entire book. She has a complicated relationship with both of her parents and I found myself not really caring when what was clear was going to happen with her dad, did.

I feel awful giving this book a low rating because there was very important messaging here but unfortunately the story just didn't hold it up. The writing was solid and this was this author's debut but sadly I did not enjoy the majority of this one.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are my own.

I was drawn in by the plus-size representation, the glowing recommendation by Ali Hazelwood, and the prospect of reading a fun enemies to lovers/academic romance. Unfortunately, this just didn't live up to my expectations. I struggled to like either character (particularly the hero), and the writing style did not draw me in. I ended up doing some skimming and ultimately DNFed, as other readers indicated that the ending wouldn't make me like it any more.

I wanted to like this book but I just couldn’t get into it! I would like to try to pick it up again in the future but for right now it didn’t hook me in.