Thank Netgalley and Kensington books for providing a free copy of this book to me in exchange for an honest review.

Throughout the book I genuinely enjoyed the side characters, they all had entertaining personalities and made me laugh. I liked there was a lot of character diversity in the book. As for Nina, she irritated me so much with how she thought she was a ticking time bomb to destroy all relationships around her. This happened at multiple instances, and I found it ruined a lot of the story since it kept getting brought up. At every minor inconvenience, Nina runs from her problems in the most toxic and overreacting way. Nina decided to abandon her friends for 3 years when her girlfriend —who hadn’t been friends with them beforehand— broke up with her. Her friends were also too welcoming toward her. Ari deserved better. I really would have liked to go more in-depth about her life.

The writing wasn't the most descriptive but the way that the story was told was from Nina’s point of view, therefore it felt like I was let into her brain and her thoughts and the way she thinks. This book is very character-driven, and at some times I found it boring.

Many queer stereotypes were pushed and acknowledged in the book, but some of them seemed to be unusually out of nowhere and some that I have never heard about. This book adds to the many other books that have sapphic couples and are centred around Hollywood.

Nina Rice is one of the unsung heroes of Hollywood, working for a talent agent answering emails on behalf of clients--all while wishing she were a television screenwriter. But after a devastating breakup with the woman she thought she was going to marry, Nina has put her draft script in a drawer, distanced herself from her friends, and holed herself up in the suburbs. But when one of the agency's clients, indie darling and up-and-coming queer icon-actress Ari Fox requests a meeting, Nina can't help but be starstruck. And is even more startled by the possibility of a friendship, or even something more. And this new path may even be enough for her to get back her old self, too.

Nina and Ari are two incredibly fun and fascinating characters. I love a good celebrity romance, and this one is a bit different--it features a star-on-the-rise, rather than a bona fide super star. It means we get to live in the world of Hollywood, but without the press invasions of privacy and outside influence. I liked this different take on a classic trope. This book is also a great representation of found family, and shows some amazing relationships in a supportive LGBTQ community. Nina's friend group is A+ squad goals, for sure.

Thanks to Kensington for my ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 9/10

4.5/5⭐️

If I could describe this book in one word, it would be queer because GODDAMN was this book ever queer as hell. And I was there for every page of it.

When aspiring screenwriter Nina Rice is left traumatized and alone after a devastating breakup, she finds herself risking her heart and post-breakup recluse lifestyle when she falls for her famous client, Hollywood star Ari Fox. For Her Consideration by Amy Spalding is a story of love, heartbreak, trust, insecurities, friendship, family, and true-to-life experiences of what it means to live as a queer person.

What I loved most about this book was its queer representation. There is undoubtedly more than one way to be queer (as can be seen in CJ who is non-binary and not necessarily monogamous as well as Phoebe and Biance who chose a more traditional lifestyle of marriage and the nuclear family). But this book somehow managed to put what it means to be queer onto paper. Most sapphic romance books, of which I am an avid reader of, either make being queer the entire storyline or refuse to acknowledge it at all. Spalding conveys what it means to live every day as a queer person (coming out as a never ending process, finding a chosen family within the community, yearning to see yourself and others like you represented in the media) while not making it the whole plot of the novel. This is the queer representation we have been waiting for and I hope it’s only the beginning.

Moving on to book specifics, I loved so many things about this book I can’t possibly name them all. The relationship between Ari and Nina? Adorable, everything I want in a relationship and more. The spice? Hot as hell when present but I can always use more. Nina’s (and now Ari’s) chosen family? Hilarious, unique and so so REAL. This book covered so many topics, from moving on from bad breakups to finding your chosen family to moving past insecurities and accepting love. It was a rollercoaster of a novel and I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t ride it again and again.

The only thing holding me back from giving 5 stars is Nina. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Nina and see myself in her as a queer, plus size, sometimes socially awkward woman who is still figuring out what to do with her life. BUT, by the end of the book, her lack of communication skills and insecurities were driving me NUTS. Anyone who knows me knows that the miscommunication trope is the bane of my existence. If Nina simply talked to her friends, to Ari, about her insecurities and worries from her past relationship then there would’ve been no conflict in this book. I know a book needs conflict and that she has trauma and needs therapy and book characters aren’t supposed to be perfect. I can acknowledge all that and still not like it because f- the miscommunication trope. Like girl, JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER FOR THE LOVE OF HAYLEY KIYOKO.

Anyways, this book placed queer people in the leading roles instead of relegating them as token side characters, and I hope other story tellers (authors, screenwriters, directors, producers, etc.) take note.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an open and honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Ghostwriting email correspondence for celebrities? Is that really a job cause that sounds awesome. Nina has a new client and has been asked to spend more time with her to be able to write her responses better. And they go on a series of outings (dates). Would have liked dual povs to have more than Ninas pov she may not have been the most reliable narrator. Her ex did a number on her self-esteem and view of herself and after 3 years she has not recovered. Going so far as to tell her that if people don't know they will find out, making her doubt every interaction. Toxic relationships can disguise themselves as being helpful. Not all personality types can coexist let alone have romantic relationships but to tell the person they need to be more like them basically is so unfair. She finds someone and they hit it off but she immediately thinks back to the laundry list of faults and sabotages herself. Luckily she has a huge group of friends that keep texting and knocking on her door since she is a retreat inside herself type, doesn't want to burden or thinks her friends can see all the faults. Loved her found family with her Great Aunt and all her friends. When you are in a slump you don't always think clearly and to have a group of friends to pump you up and tell you to go get the girl is great!
And cheers to all the Karls out there!

Read if you:
💚 Curvy mc
💙 Boss/employee
💜 Celebrity/normie romance

Thank you netgalley and kensingtonbooks for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Such a delightful and fun read!
Set in Hollywood, it explores a celebrity romance, found family, growth and has great fat representation. I loved the chemistry between Nina and Ari, they’re so likable I found myself smiling every time they interacted. Nina’s relationship with her aunt Lorna and friends was also warm and enjoyable.
However, although I was invested in their happiness, the pace and repetition had me disengaged at times. I also really wish we could have gotten to know Ari more overall, I was left wanting more. The third act breakup was weird, silly and unnecessary in my opinion, but it’s an overall solid sapphic read!

This was such a sweet read. As someone who feels invisible sometimes it’s great to read a love story about someone like me. Nina’s love story is sweet. At times the story feels absurd but it all comes full circle at the end.

I'm here for the curvy rep, the lgbtq rep, and the therapy rep! Nina had a lot of issues and I appreciate that finding a girlfriend wasn't what solved them. I did find it odd that when she ghosted all of her friends... they just let her? There was just an overall inconsistency to this book- in its pacing, in its characterizations, in its humor. This book was okay.

I thought For Her Consideration is a lovely rom-com to enjoy on a slow Sunday afternoon. The narration isn't very fast paced and sometimes I was a little confused by the way some things are explained, but overall I really enjoyed this quirky love story.

I’ve been a fan of Amy Spauldings book and her adult debut is spectacular. It’s the sapphic romance I’ve been wanting to read. It s about taking risks both in love and career wise and it’s a perfect LA love story.

3.5 stars.

For Her Consideration had a tiny bit of the boss/employee vibe (Nina works for a company contracted by Ari) and I could get into the secretiveness/taboo of their relationship.

Ari is an up and coming actress and Nina essentially writes emails for her. When Ari has questions about the emails, they meet up and their relationship blossoms from there. Nina is getting over a bad break-up and seems a bit like the “useless lesbian” meme in that she can’t see how into her Ari is, but I still enjoyed the buildup.

I loved Ari. Everything is told from Nina’s perspective, but Ari seemed like an amazing, giving, caring partner. Nina…had a few flaws. I could never understand why she had ghosted her “best friends/nearly like a sister” for THREE years! For Her Consideration promotes the “found family” trope and yet, with one incident, Nina drops them all. And after the third act break-up, she does it again. Long story short, I enjoyed the side characters and Ari much more than Nina.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy For Her Consideration, because I definitely did. I just wish it had been executed better. I’ll be keeping my eye for more from Amy Spaulding.

Thank you to Kensington Books for the review copy.

For the first part of the book I felt very impartial and I literally wrote in my notes "It's okay… but I am a little bored. But I don't think I'll rate it low because it’s not like I'm hating it or like there is anything in it that annoys me. I’m just a little disappointed and underwhelmed." I really thought the rest of the book was going to be the same so my mind was already made. Well, I was wrong...

It had started becoming a little more interesting towards the beginning of the second half (which made me hope that it was going to become a great read) and then BOOM, the drama hit and it became even more disappointing than it was in the beginning.
Ari’s insistence has always been present but it got more and more annoying with time, and obviously it ended up with her ignoring Nina’s boundaries AGAIN and telling her connections about Nina’s script. I get wanting the person you love to follow their dreams but they need to do it on their terms, when they are ready. Ari literally said “If we waited for you to get comfortable with things, we’d be waiting forever.” How hard can it be to just respect someone’s boundaries???
When Nina lets her know she already replied to the email to explain that the scrip isn’t ready Ari says “you don’t get to make those kind of choice for me”. Be fucking for real now… how hypocritical.
And then Ari makes her feel bad because she told Nina in the beginning that she always needed to be in control?? And Nina folds and feels bad for her?? Ari is a control freak and apparently that means that she’s allowed to do whatever she wants with other people’s lives but God forbid Nina enforced her boundaries. Nina isn’t a model of healthy partner either, but come on…
This turned so toxic so quickly wtf.

Plus, this drama happens 75% in, and then the two of them literally do not speak to each other again until the last chapter. The whole break up was just stupid and made no sense, and the story could have simply ended in the following chapter if they just talked to each other again after their argument instead of both ignoring the other for no reason.

The book got a little better in that one last chapter, because they meet and actually apologize. But I can't say I'm satisfied, either. Toxic relationships get to me even more when they're sapphic (it's my trauma, sorry) and I'm not going to root for them even after they got back together because we are given no proof that Ari will suddenly stop being like that (or that Nina will also get a character development out of nowhere).

This was a fun read of two people figuring themselves out and growing together as well. I really enjoyed the friendships in this story as well. Overall, I really liked this story and the glimpse of Hollywood life.

Thank you NetGalley and Kensington books for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Final rating 3.5 stars

I had a lot of fun reading Ari and Nina's story! For Her Consideration follows Nina, an aspiring writer who has a job in publicity for celebrities in Hollywood. As an up-and-rising actor, Ari reaches out to get more clarity about the email account that Nina is curating. After they begin to spend more time together, their friendship blossoms into something more.

I absolutely loved that Nina is surrounded by a queer found family (except for her hilarious and supportive Aunt). My absolute favorite part of the story is that Nina is an unapologetically fat character and constantly affirms her body. I would've loved to have gotten Ari's perspective, but I am looking forward to what Amy Spalding writes in the future! I recommend this for anyone looking for a cute celebrity/non-celebrity sapphic romance.

Thanks to Kensington Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I will start this review by saying I am a cis-het women, so not the target audience. However my issues with this books are that the pacing is boring and predictable (I am so tired of the finale breakup and reconnect in the last chapter) as well as the unlikable main character.

The pacing is typical of a romance and I am ready for a change.

The character is so frustrating in her choices, it does not make since for her to abandoned her friends because a toxic girlfriend said that no one liked her. There was no character building and she still defended that girlfriend in the end. Like girl, she sucks it is okay to say it.

Thank you to the author, Kensington Books and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a sweet romance between an aspiring screen writer working for a talent agency, and the talent. This is obviously against the rules, and things do not run smoothly - our heroine had her confidence shattered by a breakup a few years ago, which caused her to retreat into her shell, and the "talent" is a diva control freak. There were certainly times when I wanted to shake the heroine awake, thinking no one on earth could be so obtuse, but the interactions both romantically, in the friend group and with the heroine's aunt and her friends in the senior living center rang true. I did find the friend dynamic a bit puzzling - not one person reached out when our heroine dropped off the map? But I loved the fact that our heroine grew in the course of the story, taking advantage of therapy and slowly opening up. Overall, an entertaining, fun and romantic read!

3 stars

Ugh, I wanted to love this because it has every trope I love but... it didn't work for me mostly because I desperately needed Ari's pov to understand why she liked Nina. And yes Nina has an interesting story but... someone told her she was "toxic" and instead of being like "oh then let me work on that", she just... embrace that? And became even more toxic???? It was so confusing because Ari was like a ray of sunshine and she wooed Nina with gifts and treated her right and Nina just... was there. And I don't buy the "I don't believe/ know if she is attracted to me" stuff because *points at the obvious* Ari blatantly flirt with her!!! It was just super confusing and that's why I need the other's pov to understand it.
Also Nina's friends?!?!?!? What the heck was that friendship?!?!
If that was friendship then I don't want it. The way they don't care about Nina was appalling.
Still, I liked some of this book, especially the ending where not everything in Nina's life was "fix by the power of love and having a girlfriend" which made the story realistic.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review

I had a ton of fun reading this book, which is my main takeaway. I read most of it in a day and it gave me an afternoon that passed in the blink of an eye.

Nina was a main character that I enjoyed spending time with, I felt like I knew her at the end of the book. Sadly, that wasn't the case with Ari – I would have liked to know a little more about her, her roles, her life and career in Hollywood.

This book had really great minor characters as well. Lorna was lovely and I wish I had a queer friend group like Nina does.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Featuring ~ single 1st person POV, LGBT ~ lesbian, celebrity, curvy girl, found family, friends to lovers, some steamage

Nina & Ari
Nina is helping Ari, as part of her job, when they start to develop feelings for each other.

What I liked:
~ how Nina was curvy and proud
~ how Ari was out and proud
~ Nina's fun job ~ writing emails for celebrities
~ Aunt Lorna ~ she was a great side character and her and Nina's relationship was lovely

What was meh:
~ I wish Nina would have gotten over her breakup a lot quicker than she did ~ 3 years is a bit of a long time IMO
~ 3rd act breakup was for the birds
~ I would have liked dual POV, or at least a couple of chapters from Ari

Overall, I liked this one. I'd give this author a whirl again for sure.

I was fortune enough to receive a kindle and an audio copy to review.
Narrated by Sophie Amoss for 10 hours and 45 minutes. I was happy with her performance.

dnf 10%
I am so bored. Every time I pick up this book I don't enjoy it and I am tired of struggling to want to read the book. I like the idea of the story, but the execution is gravely lacking. The writing style is single POV stream of consciousness and it does not work for me at all. Page after page after page of long paragraphs with very little dialog or things actually happening is just tedious and boring to read. I wish I could have gotten into the story. I wish it would have been dual POV to get me out of Nina's head, but alas.

Nina was on the receiving end of one of the coldest breakups I’ve read. Dumped - in public - by long term girlfriend Taylor for personal failures that had been compiled into a 12 point list that had been emailed to her earlier.

To make matters worse, that list *really* got into Nina’s head. Now time has passed and she’s cut herself off from all her friends, moved out of LA to her aunt’s old condo in the suburbs, and her main source of outside contact is the e-mails she writes on behalf of (and as) various celebs for the talent agency she works for.

When up and coming queer icon Ari Fox expresses concerns her emails don’t sound enough like she’s the author, Nina is tasked with spending some time with her to fix that. Not that it’s much of a hardship, as she’d been harboring a celeb crush for ages.

It took me a minute to warm up to this one - *maybe* I let Taylor’s judgment get in my head a little bit too, and worried Nina was going to be a little too flighty/flaky a MC for me to root for - but once I got into it I was All In. There is some steam, but this story is as much about Nina getting her life back on track as it is about her budding romance with Ari, and I love that for her.

This book is a testament to how much found family you can fit into a romcom. Between Nina’s own recently reclaimed crew, her Aunt Lorna’s at the retirement community, and even though you don’t see them as much Ari’s own. And I’m awarding the best bit part in an ensemble cast to both Ride Share Karl and Steve the invisible cat.

Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC!