Cute trope, cute story, we've seen it all before. It was nice seeing the characters become better versions of themselves, though the story was a bit slow.

This book was absolutely adorable. The author did such an amazing job writing it. Would recommend to anyone and everyone who likes a light hearted romance

Thank you so much to the author, Champagne Book Group, and NetGalley for the complimentary ARC!
This review contains my honest and unbiased thoughts and opinions. 🌸

I gave this book so many chances... I wanted to like it, I really did. It's a cute story but it seems like everything happened so quickly in the first.... three chapters?... and then the story just dragged itself out.

Everything starts out great, promising to be a fun, cute childhood friends/frenemies story that develops into a sweet romance. Samantha and Samuel have known each other since "bathing together" days and love to antagonize one another. Behind the sarcasm and rude comments lies a real friendship and care for each other, even a little more feelings than either will admit
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Samantha is failing and about to lose everything she's worked hard for. Samuel that hides his intelligence and gets in trouble quite often. Teachers force him to tutor someone after a cheating incident, Samantha swallows her pride and asks to be tutored. You can see where this is heading...

Of course, there's big brother Craig that gets in the way with overprotective big bro antics and "bro code". Honestly, the older brother becomes annoying pretty quick...

Samuel ends up agreeing to tutor Samantha, the flirting begins, Sam Squared is born.

A dance, a "WOW" kiss, a big brother threat and the shenanigans begin as Samantha's besties try to narrow down the "mystery kisser" and Samuel struggles to watch other guys with Samantha all while hiding his identity of the mystery kisser.

Really, if they would just tell big brother to mind his own business...

Sounds super cute right.... the problem for me is they went from bickering to flirting/kissing way too fast. Literally, it was within the first page or two we saw the bickering, "frenemies" annoying each other with the hidden "romantic feelings". A little more annoying each other, slowly letting the romance blossom... let us think they truly don't like each other for a few chapters or let one have a secret crush, something. I also feel that with things moving so quickly that it caused the story to hit a lull for me. It took me several days to move forward in the book. Things did pick back up slightly, the whole "who is the mystery kisser" games begin and a neighborhood danger comes into play but honestly, it just wasn't enough to keep me into the story. I walked away and tried again at least 6 times and I just never could force myself to finish.

Two stars because honestly it does have a lot of promise and others might truly enjoy the pace of the story. It just didn't work for me.

A quick read. This book is told by the two main characters, Samuel and Samantha, in alternating chapters n a basic childhood friends/enemies to lovers plot.

Samantha is a basketball star at her high school and she has her sights set on Auburn. But she needs a better GPA and her SAT score needs to improve. Okay, I've taught high school for years and I know that GPAs rarely matter for gifted athletes and the same goes for standardized test scores (all 11th grade students in my state take the ACT for free, and most do not take the SAT). Samantha ends up needing a tutor to pass trigonometry and enlists the help of her crush, who also happens to be the boy who she's had a rivalry with for years: Samuel (who she calls Mule). Apparently Mule has a perfect ACT score, a 142 IQ, and a photographic memory.....because of course he does. He also as a crush on Samantha (who he calls Sam-Man, which I really didn't understand).

After they kiss at the high school dance, Mule doesn't want anyone to know and so Samantha lies to her friends and says she doesn;t know who kissed her. And her friends start a quest to find the mystery kisser, which Samantha goes along with. Will Mule ever admit that he likes Samantha? You know how this one will end already.

Teens may enjoy this, but I didn't really understand the whole conflict of the story, which was a silly non-conflict.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for review.

Cindy's latest book did not disappoint. Sam Squared is a fun read and a great escape. Her characters are endearing, and I couldn't help but root for the romance! I will be purchasing a copy for my library.

I really tried but i had to DNF this. It kind of felt tiresome to go on, for one i really didn't like guy Sam. His character and attitude seems very off putting. And the writing was not my style. I'm sorry, i wished i had liked it more.

Let me start by saying I take notes while I read and I didn't have ONE bad note written by the end.. Not one I tell you! That is unheard of for me.

I absolutely adored this book. Such AMAZING writing! Well rounded characters and extremely likable. I even loved all of the side characters and the fact that they were all fleshed out as well. You could tell the author knew what story she wanted to write, who all of her characters were, and how to have it all come together perfectly. I was entertained the whole time. There wasn't one bad or boring page.

This is definitely one of my favorite books I've ever read and can very well see myself doing a reread in the future. I'm going to miss these characters so much. I loved them with my whole heart from page one.

Everyone can expect me to be recommending this book any chance from now on.

This was a DNF for me, unfortunately. I love a good childhood enemies-to-lovers trope and thought reading about two MCs with the same name would be cute, but the writing just wasn't very strong. I think this would've benefited from some more editing.

I skimmed this one after about 30% when the actual plot of trying to find the guy she kissed at Homecoming comes into play. The 1 star is because I essentially DNF'd this one, not because she's dying to go to auburn (barffffff).

I mean this in the nicest way, but this book reads like fanfiction. The characters were all teenagers but either seemed too mature (Samuel), too immature (Samantha), or like a caricature of a high school student (the brother) or parent (Samuel's parents particularly.) Some of the plot points were unrealistic in that fanfiction kind of way, where it's an author's first work that just needs more time/practice/editing. If Samantha was going to be going to any school, much less a D1 school, on a basketball scholarship, she only has to maintain something like a 2.5GPA and her SAT score would be almost irrelevant--points that can be easily googled. Also, the SAT is mostly used with east coast, west coast, and Ivy schools. The state of Tennessee (where the novel takes place) pays for every junior to take the ACT, which auburn also would've taken.

The back and forth between the Sams was a little silly, low stakes for me. The brother threatens to beat you up? Cool, guess you have a ~secret~ relationship now, which would've worked perfectly with their friendship. They were never really enemies and were barely even annoyed with each other. (He comes to all her games? Really? She falls in love/crushes on him as soon as they dance together and kiss? Really?)

This is dual, 1st person POV, with a fast pace, good dialogue, and interesting dynamics between the cast of characters.

Solid attempt for what I'm assuming is the author's first novel, but this one missed a lot of marks for me. I'm super sorry this is the first review for this book too.

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