Sora is a writer for a magazine and decides Valentine's Day is a joke and writes a story declaring #gosolo for the whole month of February. She collects a huge following to everyone's surprise. The meet-cute between Sora and Jack was very cute and gave me high hopes for this book. Sora is over men, over her mom constantly telling her to lose weight and diet with her, and over her sister, Nami, demanding Sora have a date for her upcoming wedding. She looks terrible one night, buying a ton of bacon because who doesn't love bacon and tequila when she runs into a thin woman that she fights with via looks. Sora is basically fat shaming herself but wallowing in her feelings too. She moves to the bakery area where samples are being given out by a gorgeous man, Jack. Enter her ex-husband, awkward greetings turn painful when the thin woman walks up and Sora finds out she's her exe's fiancee. Jack, who recognizes Sora as his elementary school crush, swoops in and pretends they're dating, winning Sora's thanks. But meeting Jack is terrible timing. It all kind of goes not downhill so much as hills and valleys. There are some cute, fun, and sweet moments, but there are a number of parts to this book that are not. I like bacon, but how many times was the word mentioned in this book, fifteen, twenty? Maybe more. Then there's the fat shaming constantly, not just of Sora, but by her as well, also, she's judgmental as heck. The aerial acrobat exercise scene was too overdone. It could have been funny, but the author explained it in too much detail, losing me in the process. It also seemed stupid for a novice to enter a clearly advanced class. I felt like it was just a contrived vehicle to get her to the hospital with Jack. The rest was cute, but the way there, not so much. Of course one thing leads to another, and they end up in the sack, it's just once, but Sora feels guilty. Jack feels like he's Sora's dirty secret. Now, the idea that two people who haven't seen each other since elementary school can't wait two weeks to go out, keeping her #gosolo promise, seemed ridiculous to me. Overall, there's a good amount of the book I liked, but a number of irritating parts, too.

Thank you to St Martin's Press, St Martin's Griffin and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

2.5/5 🌟

This book was a miss for me. I usually love all things cheesy rom-com but this one just didn’t hit the mark. I feel like the author had a great opportunity to shed light on midsize women in a positive way but it felt like the main character, Sora lacked REAL self confidence and she not only was body shamed by her own family but Sora also body shamed other women. As an Asian American woman myself, I get that sometimes our families comment on our bodies, eating habits and overall life choices without ever realizing their toxic behavior. I felt the author had the opportunity here to discuss this and possibly bring real healing between Sora and her family but it was revealed itself as a misunderstanding instead of growth/lessons learned. The author also mentions bacon way too many times. I am a lover of bacon but even I have to say it was over mentioned . It was funny the first few times but then the joke was killed by the over use. I wished this book was better because I do feel that it had great potential. The ending was cute but not enough to save the overall story.

Thank you to St. Martin’ Press Griffin and Netgalley for this digital ARC to honestly review.

I really loved this light hearted book. The first couple pages had me thinking the main character was a size 2 glitter-loving diva. I was prepared to hate her. But the story cleverly shifted and the two characters were revealed to be flawed, kind and amazing. I raced thru the book and was genuinely sad when it ended. I have been telling everyone to grab this book and be prepared to spend a wonderful day living with Sora and Jack as they fall in love. Huge thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I just enjoyed everything about this story. It was just so new and interesting to me. The characters come to life and the romance is just lovely. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys good books and:or romance’s best ideas.

See trigger warnings below

I received this ebook from @Netgalley as an ARC, but life got in the way, and I just finished this one. It was published on 1/31/2023, which means there is no reason to not immediately stop what you are doing and grab this one.

I seriously have never laughed so hard at a rom-com. I highlighted so many things because they were simply hilarious. I loved so many things about this story:

-Larry the one-eyed rescue pit (I, too, have 2 rescue pits)
-Sora's love of bacon (same!) and dislike for the commercialized love machine.
-The meet (re-meet? Is that a word) cute
-The Banter alone was amazing.

This one also has #solofebruary quotes as chapter headings. I feel like this book hit so many marks:

- Self-care, which now I have a new outlook on
- Taking care of your mental health
- Healing generational trauma
- Making room in our lives for what we want
- Real body types
- Being kind

Bottom line: Go.read.this.book.and.laugh.alot.and.swoon.alot.

***Trigger warnings***
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Childhood cancer and miscarriage

While I really wanted to like this one, I struggled to really get into the story and with the likeability of the characters.

Sora Reid is tired of being in relationships where she gets her heart bruised. She decides to do away with men for the whole month of February and uses her experiences in her freelance writing job to inspire other readers. When she runs into Jack Mann whom she has known since elementary school there is an instant attraction, but how does that fit in with her go solo initiative?

I love childhood friends to lovers stories so much so I had high expectations for this one coming in, but it kind of fell flat for me. I had a really hard time liking Sora for some reason. I feel like that was compounded by the audiobook narrator who read Sora who seemed to read older than I pictured her being. I liked Jack but he wasn't enough to carry the story for me.

Thank you to Recorded Books and the publisher for providing me advanced copies in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I really wanted to love this book because the premise was so cute, but unfortunately it just didn't work for me. There was a ton of strange focus on body image that didn't seem in line with the heroine's personality, and the whole solo February didn't make sense as the book went on. It seemed like an arbitrary deadline that didn't mean much, that the heroine didn't stick to anyway. And while the writing wasn't terrible, the style didn't work for me. I know this is debut, so I would be willing to give this author another try in the future.

Sora has a history of making bad decisions when it comes to the men in her life which are only made worse by the lack of support and understanding she receives from her family. With the demise of her last relationship which should never have started she has decided to embrace being single for the month of February however fate has other ideas when Jack resurfaces into her life.

Jack too has made questionable choices when it comes to his romantic past which has affected his career as a chef. He remembers Sora from high school, and he soon realizes that the teenage feels he has for her are still there but will bad timing destroy what they could have together?

This story will have you feeling for Sora and Jack but at the same time despising a lot of the secondary characters who are intent to derail their success both when it comes to them as a couple and their careers.

The Second You're Single by Cara Tanamachi. Pub Date: January 31, 2023. Rating: 3 stars. In this dual POV rom-com, Sora finds herself practicing being single for the entire month of January but Jack comes in to test the waters and sparks fly. Sora is a struggling female that I related a lot to as a single female myself. I loved the portrayal of how the world is made for couples and not really for single people. Even though this ultimately was a romance in the making, I really identified with Sora's struggles as a single, successful female. If you like blast from the past romances with a sweet side of baking, then pick this one up! Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review. #netgalley #thesecondyouresingle

I loved the BIPOC representation, specifically having an Asian protagonist! I think this book had all the things I normally love in a romance : a great meet-cute, a second chance romance and a heroine who doesn't let society's unrealistic expectations dictate her life.

That being said, for some reason this book didn't stick the landing all the way for me. I can't quite say what it was exactly. I liked both Sora and Jack as characters and loved the premise of their love story. I think maybe Sora's constant negative talk about her body felt like too much and steered close to the line of being fat-phobic. I also didn't care for the knock against pole dancing -- as an amateur pole dance competitor.

But again, I didn't hate the book, but I have complicated feelings about it. It also didn't pull at my heart strings and the characters didn't stay with me after reading. If you're into second chance/childhood friends-to-lovers and looking for a fast-read, this book might be up your alley.

I’m giving this book a rating of 2.75. While I enjoyed the overall premise of the love story and loved Jack’s character, there were some problematic aspects of the story. Sora is a midsize character and as someone who is midsize themselves, there were just a lot of unnecessary, offhanded comments about body size, weight loss and eating habits in general. Sora not only has her size discussed by other characters but she is also very quick to judge characters who are skinnier than her, almost as a way to make herself feel better about herself. And then you have Jack, who used to be a little chubbier in school, is now tall and muscular and surprise, now attractive. This story just put too much of a focus on body size and I wish it had focused more on Sora & Jack’s relationship and Sora’s self care journey.

I received ane-galley of The Second You're SIngle by Cara Tanamachi from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Second You're Single was such a timely read as I was reading it in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. I liked the premise of it - Sora Reid is a freelance writer who has decided to #GoSolo for the month of February, in part because of her personal life and also for work. She is writing a daily piece on this #GoSolo journey and it ends up gaining a lot of tractions and attention from others who decide that perhaps #GoSolo could also benefit their personal growth. And of course, this is when Sora meets Jack, someone she knew from her past who could very well be someone she can see herself developing a relationship with. Sora gets caught between wanting to stay true to her goals and to her commitment to her fans of #GoSolo and also the way things are developing with Jack. I thought that it was an interesting dilemma that Sora found herself in as she has to decide how to best navigate between personal growth, personal relationships, and being a source of inspiration for other women.

The Second You're Single had everything going for it for me to like it. The main character, Sora, is a midsize woman living darn near my own Chicago neighborhood that has struggled with her love life in her adulthood after divorcing her husband. As she's walking down the grocery store aisles, she runs into a childhood friend, Jack, who is working as a baker while he saves us for his own bakery. There seems to be a spark, except Sora has sworn off men during the month of February.

To be frank, this book was a letdown. There was a LOT of fat phobic comments from so many different people throughout. It was written as if it was supposed to be empowering through the #SoloFebruary movement, but the way the characters talk about Sora was a huge turn off for me.

While the novel was a quick read, I won't be recommending it to my friends, sadly. It just fell flat and left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was gifted a free copy of this book by St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed above are my own.

Sora is no luck when it comes to relationships. In a moment of frustration because of this, she pitches a single February challenge for herself and writes about it in her segment the site she writes for. She provides updates with her progress until she reunites with her former classmate, Jack. Jack and Sora reconnect in the grocery store, where Jack has his bakery. In the brief trip, they both have encounters with each others exes and the messes that they were involved with were very visible. Eventually Sora and Jack work past all of these issues and end up together. The story was entertaining and noted that sometimes things just happen at the right time. It was a fun quirky Valentine's day read.

Well that was certainly…something.

The Second You're Single doesn't just read like a debut novel (which it is), it reads like the first draft of a debut novel that's about to be sent out to the first group of beta readers.

Don't get me wrong, the potential is there. It just needs to be unearthed through multiple rounds of editing and some major revisions.

I actually thought Cara Tanamachi's debut got off to a strong start. She gives her protagonist a great voice that immediately pulled me in, and after the first chapter, I was ready for Tanamachi to nail the whole "cheerfully irreverent, bitingly funny" romance thing. Unfortunately, she doesn't manage to sustain the momentum and the rest of the story ends up being kind of a train wreck.

The Synopsis (Veronica's Version):

The story follows Sora, a down-on-her-luck freelance writer who's stuck in a dead-end job and stuck in a cycle of dead-end relationships with a bunch of deadbeats (apparently she has a type). After her latest romantic fiasco, she decides to devote the entire month of February to "dating" herself and her one, true love, bacon. Her boss loves the idea and so do thousands of women across the internet. Swearing off love shouldn't be hard for a newly single homebody, but Sora's old elementary school friend makes a sudden reappearance in her life bearing raspberry tortes and a new set of muscles. Between his lumberjack good looks and his sweet baker's heart, Jack Mann suddenly made the #GoSolo challenge that much more…challenging.

So it's a decent premise, right? I mean, it's not necessarily the most original, but it's one that definitely speaks to my inner skeptic-slash-romantic. The problem with Tanamachi's story is all in the execution.

The Plot:

My biggest issue with The Second You're Single is the plot, which is a hot mess. The synopsis is pretty straightforward and you read it thinking what you see is what you're gonna get. In reality, what you get is a big jumbled mess.

I don't even know if Tanamachi knew exactly what kind of book she wanted to write. The overall tone is what you'd expect from your typical, albeit bitingly irreverent, rom-com: light, breezy and fun, but then, out of nowhere, she'll throw total tone shifts at us that make it seem like she wants to write a more Serious Story. And I don't mean "serious" like addressing toxic relationships and an unhealthy need for validation. I mean she tries to incorporate more serious issues like miscarriages and pediatric cancer but they're treated so superficially they feel more like plot devices or over-simplistic life lessons. It feels like she took pieces from two different puzzle sets, mixed them all together, and tries to sell it to us as a complete puzzle. It's full of inconsistencies and random subplots that are started, dropped and never really picked back up again (like the Jack's brother's maritial problems). Other side storylines are threaded throughout book but never fully fleshed out and just feel woefully incomplete. Like, there's this whole thing with Sora's dysfunctional family that's addressed but never fully resolved, and another thing with one of the Valentine's Day when Sora and Jack were in elementary school that feels like it's supposed to be a big part of their love story or at least the reason for some kind of tension, but it's just kind of…there. It's mentioned a few times but never really developed in a meaningful way. I honestly still don't know what Tanamachi was trying to accomplish with that particular storyline, but the whole thing falls flat.

Despite the many weaknesses, The Second You're Single does give us a glimpse into the kind of author Cara Tanamachi could be. When she isn't beating us over the heads with the same, tired jokes, she's actually funny, I do appreciate the fact that Tanamachi didn't make the Sora some kind of man-hating, bitter bastion of feminist power. #GoSolo is born because Sora likes men "a little too much" and has lost herself in the process of looking for love in all the wrong places. She's not swearing off men for good; she's just trying to work on herself before she jumps into her next relationship. You can all tell she's a strong writer. She has an economic sense of language, using diction to maximize each of her sentences, and, as evidenced by Sora's POV, can give us a narrator with a distinctive voice. She could be someone to look out for down the road, but she'll have to sharpen her storytelling skills if she wants to write a successful sophomore novel.

SYNOPSIS: Sora Reid is sick of love, and Valentine's Day. She's ready to live the single life and freaking LOVE IT. She decides to write an article for her freelance job, pledging to #GoSolo, and love herself more. She inspires countless women to do the same, but she's hiding a secret. While at the grocery store, she experiences the meet cute of meet cutes, and finds a hunky man who is very interested in her. Does she decide to stay solo, and continue her self-love journey, or disappoint her ever-growing readerbase?

This synopsis and concept was such a great theme for me, especially as I read the book around Valentine's Day. However, Sora is an extremeley difficult character to root for sometimes, and I found myself trying to push to get through. It was cute, and I liked it, but this wasn't a LOVE read for me.

This was a cute friends to lovers tale that made for a quick read. I enjoyed the sweet moments that happen between the lumberjack baker and free-lance health and beauty journalists. I also enjoyed the rescue pup cuteness and the solo February shenanigans.

I quite enjoyed this debut novel by this author. It’s about Sora, a freelance writer, who swears off men for February as she hates Valentine’s Day and everything that goes along with it #gosolo - a great idea for her column in a woman’s magazine and it takes off. Of course once February starts, she reconnects with her elementary school friend, Jack, who she hasn’t seen since Grade 5 is now absolutely gorgeous. How is she going to handle this? The novel has dual views from Sora and Jack, so it gives you good perspective on the man’s point of view. It was a fun, easy read romcom novel and I can’t wait to read her next one.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

2.5⭐

Sora is a freelance writer who takes a #GoSolo pledge for February, swearing off men after all of her past relationships crashed and burned. The only problem is Jack Mann, her childhood friend she runs into and immediately feels a connection with. Sora has to decide between #GoSolo and all her supporters and Jack, who might be the one.

Truthfully, I didn’t like this book.

Characterization wise, I found Sora to annoy me to no end. Though midsize representation was attempted, having one of her only personality traits to be about bacon didn’t work with me. She also regularly put other characters down simply for looking differently–skinnier–than her. I understand frustrations and insecurities, but there was no attempt at realizing the put-downs were simply reflections of her own insecurities so she just seemed bitter, honestly. She also was completely a pushover and I wanted her to finally set some boundaries, or at least begin to, earlier than 80% of the way through the book.

Jack was an enjoyable character. He seems genuine and even though he fell unrealistically quickly for Sora, it’s a romance book so I can’t complain. The only problem was that I wanted more from him, more from the story in general. My favorite part was when he didn’t respond and set a boundary with Sora, which for a romance book where I’m supposed to want the couple together, probably isn’t a good thing.

I did love Larry, the pitbull rescue Sora had and this book was an objectively quick read. The plot had a good premise, though the side plots thrown in didn’t always feel natural. Any book with characters I, personally, don’t like aren’t my favorite, but it was enjoyable enough to still be a 2.5/5⭐.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Second You’re Single
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Romance
Format: Kindle eBook and Audiobook
Date Published: 1/31/23
Author: Cara Tanamachi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press and RB Media
GR: 3.33

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

Synopsis: Freelance writer Sora Reid is the odd one out in a close-knit family of go-getters, including her Japanese-American mom, who hints about her need to lose weight, and her soon-to-be married, overachieving younger sister, who needs her to have a date for the wedding. Sora’s been betrayed and disappointed more than once and her heart is starting to feel like her Grandma Mitsuye’s antique Japanese ceramic bowl, with its many gold-filled cracks. When her pledge to stay single in February inspires readers to #gosolo, Sora has a responsibility to empower her readers. Right? Enter Jack Mann. A muscle-bound baker who looks like he lifts logs on the weekends, Sora hasn’t thought of Jack since they were in elementary school together. When they see each other at the local grocery store and the attraction hits hard. She can’t #gosolo AND get the guy. She can’t let down her readers. And relationships always end, so why should Jack be any different–even though he’s confounding all her long-held expectations of love?

My Thoughts: The premise of this book was fantastic but the execution fell a little short. I had the pleasure of having the ebook and audiobook on this one. The audiobook did keep my attention, where I feel the book may not. Sora’s obsession with bacon was eccentric to say the least. Now, I love bacon just as much but it doesn’t carry over into my daily life. There was body shaming going on with her mother, which I did not care for. I do love it when author’s talk about overweight characters, but I like when it spins into more of a body positivity than in the negative. I would love to have seen more chemistry between Sora and Jack. I appreciated their love story and thought it was cute, but wanted more. This was an enjoyable listen and I would recommend, I just wanted more.