Didn’t love this one which was disappointing since I have enjoyed this author’s work in the past. I didn’t find any of these characters likable or relatable and the whole scenario was unrealistic and rather flimsy. I was unclear about what age these people were supposed to be, I didn’t buy some things and I flat out disliked MANY choices they made. I forced myself to finish in order to give a fair review, but had this been a purchased book and not a preview, I may have put it down without finishing.

One guy, several ex-girlfriends and a reality dating show that is supposed to be about love and definitely not at all about getting revenge on a cheating scum bag with a fake British accent.

Maya had a hard break-up with Jordy, he cheated on her with Skye then dumped her for being clingy when she called him out on it. Jordy has charisma for days so he paints her as the crazy one and moves on to the next girl and Maya is over it.
Or so she thinks until she gets a call to be on a reality tv show where the object is to be reunited with Jordy.
Where her mansion roommate is Skye.
Where the hottest of Jordy’s exes have gathered to show him their best side.
Maya returns to Jordy’s orbit for revenge and to save other girls from her fate. But not everything is as it seems and maybe someone in the mansion will find love after all.

If you’re looking for gritty juicy details of bodily exploration this book is more of a “they kiss and the scene fades to black and opens again on the following morning.” And since these characters are barely out of high school that’s definitely okay. The seven week timeline combined with the emotional intensity of what they are doing makes the relationship build feel believable - experience has taught me no one falls in love faster than 18 year old girls finding someone who treats them decent for the first time.

Sweet PG tale of finding love in the absolute last place you’d expect. Much like the reality tv it represents, a fun quick read, though you may not remember all the details in a few weeks.

A big old “Thank You” to Netgalley, the Publisher and of course the author for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review. Your efforts are in good hands and I appreciate the trust.

Title: Never Ever Getting Back Together
Author: Sophie Gonzales
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 384
Format: Kindle ePub (Will be sold in kindle, audiobook and hardcover)
Publication Date: November 29, 2022

Once I picked this up I could not put it down. I think I read the whole thing in about 36 hours.

Sophie Gonzales is such an amazing writer, her characters are the perfect blend of hilarious and relatable. I was rooting for Skye and Maya from the very beginning, even when they hated each other. I loved the development of their relationship. From outright hatred, to begrudging niceties, to true love for each other. It was all very realistic which is something I don't find often in books like this.

Hated Jordy, Like a lot. It was funny, he reminded me so much of a guy I used to know that I found myself physically cringing at some of the things he did. Gonzales really made him the easiest character to dislike.

Overall, this book was amazing. The dating show format is a ton of fun, the characters are well written and realistic, and it is a fast paced plot that has even more plot twists than I could have wished for.

This YA sapphic romcom was so fun and I genuinely did not want to put it down. This concept is honestly what I kept hoping would happen on this season of the Bachelor/Bachelorette - two women contestants on a reality dating show fall in love with each other and not the toxic male lead. This is enemies to friends to lovers! This is A+ commentary on how wine actually does not taste good! This is a john tucker must die revenge story! Thank you to Wednesday books and @netgalley for my e-ARC, I have got to get my hands on a physical copy when it comes out on November 29

Dating show Romances need to be a new genre because they are so much fun!!! This was a blast to read. Imagine bringing all your exes together to date again and hopefully rekindle a new live with one of them. Yeah, there's plenty of drama backstage, especially when Maya is face-to-face with the girl Jordy cheated on her with. But smart girls don't get mad, they get even! There were so many great twists and turns and emotions. I was entranced with the story from the very first page.

Thank you NetGalley, Sophie Gonzales, St. Martin's Press & Wednesday Books for my eARC in exchange for my honest review.

So I read this one and thought it was just cute. The premise is a bachelor/Bachelorette type show and those are a huge hit right now. I just felt the dialog was lacking something and the MCs weren't my favorite.

Thanks for the opportunity to read though!

To my mind, a good rom-com is one that breaks the rules just a little, catching the reader off-guard with unusual characters and original plot twists, and this story of revenge and self-redemption is a good example. It’s apparently the author’s fifth novel, so she’s not a beginner and the narrative moves along very smoothly, seen through the eyes of two of the three main characters. The first Good Guy is Maya Bailey of Connecticut, who has just graduated high school and is headed (somewhat reluctantly) for college in the fall. Two years before, she had dated Jordy Miller for ninth months, who was a major catch from a wealthy family, two years older than her, dangerously handsome, but also a major player. Then his family moved to Canada and they attempted a long-distance relationship, but he cheated on her and lied to both girls about it. When Maya found out, she walked away and swore she would get even.

Since then, though, Jordy’s older sister, Samantha, has married the Crown Prince of a small European nation called Chalonne and Jordy has now upped his game to become an international heartthrob with connections and sponsorships, and he can get any girl he wants, so he does exactly that. As far as he’s concerned, he’s the “next-best thing to nobility.” Moreover, a Hollywood outfit that produces reality shows is planning a series called Second-Chance Romance, in which Jordy will get back together with six of his previous girlfriends to see if anything can be rekindled. And Maya is going to be one of the six. This is her big chance, she thinks, to out the bastard and make him pay for humiliating her.

When she gets to the lakeside mansion in Chalonne where the show will be filmed, Maya discovers she’s sharing a room with Skye Kaplan, the girl Jordy had cheated on her with. And Skye thinks (because Jordy told her so) that Maya is unhinged with jealousy and up to no good where Skye is concerned. But Skye is also one of the Good Guys and it won’t take long for the two of them to figure out what’s going on. And they combine their talents to plan a way that one of them will win the various competitions the producers are setting up. There’s a good deal of plotting and counter-plotting, some of it involving the other four girls on the show, who have their own goals and ambitions, and you won’t know until the end how it will all turn out. Because Gonzales know how not to telegraph the resolution. And the romance part of the story isn’t what you might expect, but it’s very nicely handled.The last couple of chapters crank the mounting tension up to ten, and are very satisfying in a somewhat bloodyminded way.

My only real gripe about the book is the whole fictional royal family thing. This seems to have become a popular gimmick in recent years, and I just don’t get it. In this case, it’s completely non-credible, unless you’re writing an alternative-history fantasy. I think it would have worked much better in terms of believability if Jordy had been the entitled son of a major Hollywood celebrity. We actually have those, and it wouldn’t require inventing a country

3,75 stars

This book was a cute, lighthearted read that left me smiling. The concept was super fun, felt like a fresh take on a pretty common premise. If anything, I just wish that we got to spend a little more time with some of the other girls. I appreciate that the story was focused on Maya, Skye, and their relationships with each other and Jordy, but I think seeing them bond a little more with the other girls on the show would have pushed this one over the top. Overall though this was a fun time!! Thanks to Wednesday Books for the ARC :)

Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam and Netgalley for an ARC of this book! I’ve willingly read and reviewed it. All opinions are my own.
This was a fun twist on bachelor-type reality shows, a very fun read!

The premise and concept of this reality show was awesome, but I found the tone of the dialogue to be too similar between the two Mcs. Thanks for the opportunity to read!

Now famous, Jordy Miller, is the protagonist of a new show called Second Chance Romance, where all his exes compete for a second chance at love with him. If you love the Bachelor, this book is definitely for you! Maya and Skye are two of the many exes invited on to the show. Determined to show the world who he really is behind cameras, both women team up at a chance to expose him, but end up surprising themselves.
This book is is funny and I never once got bored. I have never read a book written literally EXACTLY like the show, The Bachelor, which was something fun and different. This was my first Sophie Gonzales book and I will definitely be reading more of her books!

I LOVE A REVENGE FUELLED STORY and this book scratched that ITCH! Mix that in with the Bachelor premise and I ATE THIS BOOK UP!

This book was funny. And it was charming. And the way I was rooting for Skye and Maya was a little ridiculous. As in, yelping out loud, needing them to smush faces. I felt like Gonzales was really true to teen hearts here, portraying how young people can make mistakes. And the SNARK. So well done.

Although a majority of time reading is spent between the pages of adult romance novels, I can't help but notice how satisfying and FUN and ENTERTAINING it is to get lost in a YA novel.

At this point, I will devour anything Sophie writes.

Maya’s ex-boyfriend, Jordy, is impossible to escape as the brother of a crown princess. It’s been two years, and she’s still struggling to move on after he cheated on her. When he calls to invite her on a new reality TV show called Second Chance Romance, where Jordy revisits all his old flames in the hopes of sparking a new one, Maya is appalled. Then, she realizes it’s her chance to show the world what a manipulative liar Jordy really is. The only problem is that Skye, the girl he cheated with, is going to be on the show too. I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books. Trigger warnings: cheating, gaslighting/manipulation, alcohol use, public humiliation.

Sophie Gonzales is one of my go-to authors for queer YA rom-coms, but I didn’t quite click with this one. I don’t enjoy reality TV, so the setting quickly got old for me. The challenges just seemed silly, and since we have both Maya and Skye’s perspectives, all the drama is pretty contrived. We know right away that their hatred for each other is based on a misunderstanding, even if they don’t, so it lacks any punch for a proper enemies-to-lovers arc. Maya’s character development on letting go of vengeance in order to seek love is also a little over-dramatic (but I’m also an adult reader and well outside the target audience). It’s often funny though, and most of my underlined quotes are Maya roasting Jordy.

Maya is hard to pin down as a main character. She just seems all over the place, with no real plan about how she’s going to sabotage the show. Skye is the grounding presence and voice of reason, and I enjoyed her chapters more. The rest of the girls are fairly forgettable, and while I appreciate Gonzales mostly avoiding a bunch of catty girl drama, it lacks realism that there isn’t one truly mean girl among them. (Sorry, but I am a girl, and some of us are just mean.) Jordy is a bit of an over-the-top villain, all schmooze and schemes and no substance, and I have no trouble believing he learned absolutely nothing from the experience. Not one of my favorites overall, but I’m sure readers interested in the reality show as a plot device will find more to like about it.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

It's no secret that I loved Sophie Gonzales' previous books, Only mostly devastated, and Perfect on paper. With that in mind, I had high expectations for her latest YA romance novel, coming out in November this year! So when I saw it on Netgalley earlier this summer, I automatically requested it. (Before even reading the synopsis on the presentation page, which tends to happen with authors I know I'll enjoy reading from!)
And, as always with this author, I was not disappointed.

I loved this plot. A good revenge, lots of drama, quid pro quo in the beginning, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers... what's not to love?

Sophie Gonzales has a talent for tactfully and emotionally writing the experiences of bisexual youth. That's something many authors struggle to do, and that I deeply appreciate in her work.
The animosity between the main characters in the beginning was very entertaining, and I especially appreciated the development of the romance, which felt very natural (and appropriately awkward at times!). The alternating points of view helped to get to know both main characters in all their complexity (even in the “enemies” phase of enemies-to-lovers).

The main antagonist, Jordy, is probably the character I’ve hated the most all year so far. However, with the dual POV, I got attached pretty quickly to the two protagonists! Skye is an easy character to love, and her anger and heartbreak when she discovers Jordy's duplicity were very touching. Maya's cold determination, on the other hand, was refreshing to see and moved the plot forward at a steady rhythm. There was never a dull moment!
I do feel like it would have fit the story better to have them be one or two years older than they are here, if only because it would seem more believable for Jordy to have so many exes a couple of years later. (But that might simply be me being a bit disconnected from teenagers' experiences!) Overall, that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the story.

This book is scheduled to come out on November 29, 2022, and it is definitely for you if you enjoy :
- contemporary romances
- enemies-to-lovers
- Wlw stories
- dating show settings

In conclusion : I strongly recommend this book - and will definitely get a paper copy for myself when I see it hit the shelves in my city!

This book has solidified me as a Sophie Gonzalez fan. Her voice as a writer is at once comforting and engaging, funny and sincere. As someone who often struggles to “settle” into reading, I found myself swept up within the first few pages. Once I picked it up I truly couldn’t put it down.

“Never Ever Getting Back Together” shares its narrative between two girls invited onto a reality dating show to compete to win back their ex boyfriend, the adjacently-famous brother of an almost-princess. Skye is open to rekindling the romance; Maya is determined to take him down, vowing revenge for her ex’s despicable behavior—that only she seems to see. The girls are roomed together, and that’s a big problem because Maya thinks her ex cheated on her with Skye, while their ex has warned Skye that Maya is not to be trusted.

The danger of a book centered around a reality TV show is that it will fall into the same pitfalls as such shows tend to do: drama for the sake of the drama without any heart behind it. “Never Ever Getting Back Together” has plenty of both. Tension builds from the very first chapter as we follow first Maya and then Skye through their first interactions with their ex and a story that had two sides that aren’t adding up. The drama between the contestants feels high stakes yet also dramatic enough to capture that feeling that, yes, an audience would absolutely eat this up and tune in weekly. Even so the women that make up Maya and Skye’s competitors—the other exes—never come off tiresomely catty, their competitiveness softened by their empathy and humanity.

The characters felt believable, and, more importantly, were enjoyable. Their actions made sense, their motivations were understandable. I wanted Maya to get her revenge. I wanted Skye to feel safe opening up. I wanted Isaac to get his vacation. The main romance, though perhaps a bit sudden, was sweet. The leads share a palpable chemistry fed by forced proximity (only one bunk-bed trope?), mutual scheming, and a delightful touch of enemies-to-conspirators-to-lovers.

If anything the background faded away, the elements of the reality TV show taking a third-row backseat, with some of the background characters feeling sparse (the TV film crew) or non-existent (the tangentially-relevant royals and the contestants’ families). The latter makes sense: the filming takes place in an isolated bubble of sorts, and it certainly feels that way. (Not to mention their absence highlights the ex, Jordy’s, overinflated sense of self-importance). The missing crew felt a little odd for the same reason, since I’d imagine it’d be hard for the main characters to escape them—or their cameras. But ultimately it is the main characters and their immediate supporting cast who shine brightest, and the background fading to a pleasant hum beneath that is acceptable and honestly even appreciated.

My only other qualm was a subplot with Maya’s mother that resolved in a satisfying way but entirely off-screen: we never get to see the “confrontation,” doubly disappointing since it was brought up by other characters that she should have this conversation with her mom. It wasn’t over something small, either, and I Felt like attending a picnic with a chocolate fountain and never getting to sample it. You’ll be fine without it, but you’ll always wonder if it could’ve been great.

Above everything, “Never Ever Getting Back Together” was fun. I giggled, I swooned, I considered my position on wine vs. Jell-O shots. There are more than a few moments that made me stop and think in that way only a good line in a book can, but mostly I had a fantastically fun romp that I’d happily recommend.

This lovely, heartfelt rom-com featured a great cast of diverse characters. I rooted for both POV characters right from the start, and the romance was very sweet.
The reality show setting gave this book a fresh setting that set up wonderful tension without it ever feeling forced. A great read for any romance lovers out there!

I thought I had my favorite book by Sophie all picked out and nothing could top that. But, she proved me wrong.

This book was FANTASTIC. It was brilliant and so good. Every moment was leading up to something else and you could SEE Maya and Skye falling for each other. It didn’t happen inn one moment, but over time and it built up. I also LOVED that, in the end, Maya chose what was better for her. She did what she felt was right for her, going forward and I was so proud of her for that.

Jordy was a piece of work. I’m being nice here, but he really, truly was. When Maya confronts Skye, even though Jordy had tried to manipulate her ahead of time, it starts off as a mess and ends as a mess, but in the best possible way. That is the moment their relationship started and I am SO glad for it because that is when everything came together.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but everything Maya had done, the entire reason she came here led up to one big moment. It was supposed to be this big reveal of the truth butte used it insntead for the better and did what she knew would be best for her and Skye. Jordy…well, justice was served, is all I’m going to say.

Overall, this entire book was wonderful and so well written. It is one of my favorites from Sophie, topped only by Only Mostly Devastated!!

A rom-com with a cheating ex whose ex-girlfriends come together in a dating show like the bachelor? Count me in!

Maya is still angry at Jordy for cheating on her and lying about their breakup, but Skye thinks, Maya is the crazy one, because Jordy told her so. They hate each other, but when they finally are on the same side - against Jordy - Maya and Skye are a great team with silly plans to expose Jordy's true nature. This is a really entertaining enemies-to-lovers-romance and I really enjoyed both the lovestory and the ridiculous dating show.

GERMAN REVIEW
Der fremdgehende Ex mit einer Schwester, die einen Prinz geheiratet hat, und dessen Ex-Freundinnen sich bei einer Bachelor-ähnlichen Datingshow zusammenfinden? Der Klappentext klang schon nach romantischer Komödie und da konnte ich einfach nicht widerstehen.

Maya ist noch richtig wütend auf ihren Ex Jordy, weil er sie erst betrogen und dann Lügen über die Trennung verbreitet hat, aber sie stimmt dann doch zu, an der Show teilzunehmen. Ihr heimlicher Plan ist jedoch, ihn öffentlich mit seinen Taten zu konfrontieren. Bei der Show läuft aber nichts wie geplant, weil die Produzenten viele der Geschehnisse kontrollieren und Maya sich auch nicht von ihrer besten Seite zeigen kann.

Dann ist da noch Skye, mit der Jordy Maya damals betrogen hat und das kann Maya dem kanadischen Mädchen auch nicht verzeihen. Skye hingegen wusste gar nicht, dass Jordy da noch in einer Beziehung war und zu Beginn der Show wird ihr dann gesagt, es sei Maya, die Jordy nicht in Ruhe ließe und die Trennung nicht akzeptieren könne. Also gibt es schon jede Menge Drama, bevor die Show überhaupt richtig beginnt.

Jordy ist schon ein Mistkerl, was aber nicht allen so klar ist. Er ist zu allen Teilnehmerinnen freundlich, aber durch die Erzählperspektiven von Maya und Skye wissen wir schon von Anfang an, wie viel er lügt und wie er immer versucht, sich selbst besser aussehen zu lassen, während er alle anderen ständig herabwürdigt.

Für Skye und einige andere Teilnehmerinnen ist Jordy tatsächlich ein Ex, dem sie noch eine Chance geben würden; Maya scheint die einzige zu sein, die seine Fassade wirklich durchschaut und nun versucht, auch die anderen zu bekehren. Gerade bei ihrer "Feindin" Skye ist das gar nicht so einfach, weil man die beiden für eine spannende Show gerne miteinander streiten sieht.

Aber ihre Konfrontationen bringen sie einander auch näher und als sie auf einer Seite stehen, werden sie zu einem unschlagbaren Team mit witzigen Plänen, um sich an Jordy zu rächen. Ich mochte die beiden zusammen wirklich gerne und finde, sie sind ein sehr ungleiches Paar, das gut unterhalten kann.

Fazit
"Never Ever Getting Back Together" ist eine romantische Komödie mit einer albernen Datingshow, einem miesen Ex und einer unterhaltsamen Enemies-To-Lovers-Romance.

I'm torn on this one. The concept? Fully four stars. Gonzales manages to construct a plot which mostly conforms with the genre, but also has a few twists to keep you on your toes. Likewise, there are times throughout that it's not entirely clear who is going to end up with who. But I kept bumping up against two things:
1) The characters' ages-- why were they so young? It would've been so much more believable if all of the women had been 26-30, and I think it would've appealed more to fans of dating shows (who are more likely to be in the 18-30 range). As it stands, it's sort of straddling YA and Women's Fiction/Rom Com.
2) The chapters are told in alternating POV's, between Maya and Skye. I'm a fan of this kind of storytelling, but their voices were nearly identical. I kept getting confused as to whose POV I was in and had to search for context clues nearly every chapter.

Loved this one!

The characters were all interesting, the conflict was realistic/believable, the writing was funny, and it was a joy to read.