Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5

👉🏼 Publishes 1/10/23!

Genre: RomCom
Tropes: Forced proximity, friends to lovers, opposites attract, sprinkle of second chance romance, and a dash of grumpy sunshine
⚠️ TW: mentioning of loss of a parent (mother), sick niece (hospitalized + awaiting heart transplant), gaslighting by ex

📖 Read If You Like 📖
👻 Ghost of Girlfriends Past (but reverse)
📱 Bookstagram/Influencers
💕 Cheesy, feel good romance
👵🏼 Cute grandmas
🚒 Firefighter roommate
🏠 Forced proximity
👑 Disney characters/references

💭 Thoughts:
This book was okay, but it didn’t knock my socks 🧦 off. What I liked: the FMC was a bookstagrammer, the idea of going through all of her exes, the sweet relationship with her grandma, and the banter between Tara and Trevor (especially at the beginning when he was grumpy). What didn’t work for me: the love connection between Trevor and Tara wasn’t believable to me, miscommunication, and the pace/length of the story. I wanted to love it because I loved Set on You by this author, but sadly, it didn’t vibe for me!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Tara and Trevor are roommates who barely co-exist. Tara is a die-heart romantic who has failed at relationships more times than she cares to admit. She has been struggling to find the right one. She decides to go back through her list of Exes to see if she can get a second chance at love after hearing her grandmother’s story at finding love again. She enlists Trevor to help her this time around. What is better than having a male perspective?

Trevor is a womanizer and is not interested in finding love. He is contemptuous of helping Tara, but he soon realizes the other guys don’t really understand Tara as he does. The more time he spends analyzing Tara in this new light, the more he likes her over-the-top behavior.

This is a slow burner. I normally don’t like the womanizer kind of guy. Very few authors can pull that off for the hero. I’m not a prude by any means, but I don’t want any explicit details of the guy with other women. In this case, it works. Tara is just a roomie who kind of works his nerves with all her books and ideas of love, and they have no romantic connection at first. However, Trevor becomes a good guy once he put on his friend’s hat for Tara. I really like that he slowly started to appreciate all that was her.

Tara is this likable girl who just wants the guy for once. You can’t help but root for her and want her to end up with Trevor. The dreams and fantasies about Trevor were steamy. She is scared and vulnerable at the same time. She is supposed to find her second chance romance, and yet she is finding herself falling in love with her roommate, who has commitment issues. It is not an easy situation, but the author manages to strip Trevor down to show that he does care.

There is a bit of miscommunication to give the mild angst needed in the story. I wish that readers got more of a chance to see Tara and Trevor in a relationship once they got together. However, the sexual tension held my interest.

Overall, I highly recommend this for fans of rom-com.

~ Samantha

After reading and loving Set On You, I knew I needed to read Exes and O’s – and I am so glad I did! This book was a warm hug to every bookstagrammer or bookish influencer. It took the challenges of being an influencer and mixed it with the world perception of reading romance – and also how hard it can be to hope for love like we read about in books but struggle to find in real life.

This was for sure a slow burn though – and it worked beautifully! Tara and Trevor end up as roommates with a super awkward (and naked) first encounter, but quickly develop a friendship that everyone will wish they had. I loved their relationship and how close they became. It felt as though their friendship was built on a solid foundation.

But of course, there were feelings. And potentially feelings on both sides. But they had friendzoned each other early on. Trevor wasn’t one for relationships, and Tara had her heart set on a second chance romance and was in the process of revisiting all of her exes. But none of them really compared to the relationship she had formed with Trevor.

What I truly loved about Lea’s story was the fact that no matter how much your heart might be set on one idea of love, your heart will show you what truly matters when you least expect it.

Part of me wishes we had had Trevor’s perspective as well as Tara’s throughout the book, but not having it definitely made the ending even stronger – and Amy Lea may have mastered the grand gesture at the end, too.

Tropes:
😍 Roommates (room-ance!)
😍 Forced proximity
😍 Influencer/Social media vibes
😍 Instalove
😍 grand gesture

Rating 3.75
Laughing 3
Crying 0
Steam 2

I’ll start off this review saying there are a lot of things that I liked about this book, and some things that I did not like. This book is getting great reviews on booksta, so I do genuinely think this is a ~me~ thing.

I had a hard time understanding Tara in this book. I don’t really remember her personality on Set on You, but I found her to be hard to empathetic for. While I understand loving fast and hard, I felt like most of the book was just her stream of consciousness and it was all about her insecurities. She’s an educated woman, with a great job, and although she’s brokenhearted, I just hated that she was seeking validation from Trevor about why boys don’t like her or why she’s unlucky in love. And then even in the end when he tells her how he feels, she’s the most extreme. While the main story line in the book was that he loved her for how she was, I think the book focused a lot on why the way that she is is problematic.

Aside from that, the story is good. Its a slowww burn, but there is good tension, and banter between Tara and Trevor. When Tara wasn’t being insecure, I did find her personality to be funny, sharp, and smart. I think her and Trevor were a great match and I loved how you could see it between the two before they were willing to admit it. There were a lot of cute moments here, and I really liked them together.

There isn’t much to hate about Trevor, he sounded hot, confident, thoughtful, and self aware enough to know he needed to work on himself. I’m glad he ended up being a good guy.

Overall, I liked this book a lot more than Set on You, I just wish we got to see more confidence from Tara as she was finding her self again.

The following review was posted on my blog yesterday, Sunday, January 8th, 2 days before publication. It will be shared on Twitter and Instagram between that day and the day of publication, and has already been posted on Goodreads. 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.




“A die-hard, emotional romantic and a guy who only believes in one kind of happy ending? That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one.”

Genre: Romance
Actual Rating: 5 stars
Spicy Meter: 3 fire emojis
Content Warnings (as given by the author): Emotionally abusive ex, on-page gaslighting, portrayal of child with illness, mentions of deaths of loved ones, and deliberate use of the word crazy throughout. —I’ll add that it contains sexual content.

“Exes and O’s” is a heartwarming story that follows Tara Chen, a NICU nurse and bookstagrammer, as she tries to find her own second chance romance by contacting her exes with the help of her forever-single-but-never-alone firefighter roommate, Trevor Metcalfe. Little did they know that looking for secondhand love, they’d find it in each other.

The duo Christina Lauren portrayed it just right in their cover art endorsement: you’ll be laughing out loud with this one. I rarely find rom-com books funny, but Amy Lea really did it with “Exes and O’s.”

The main characters were so likable yet realistically imperfect. Tara was just the right amount of annoying and clingy to get the point across, but she wasn’t obnoxiously undesirable to the point that you wanted to skip her dialogue. The contrary was true, actually, I loved Tara and Trevor’s banter and Tara’s inner monologue in general.

The chemistry between the main characters slowly builds and it literally killed me in the process—I’m not the biggest fan of slow burn romances, but Tara and Trevor were worth the wait. In my opinion, they both deserve the world, we must protect them at all costs.

Mark my words: “Exes and O’s” will be between the best romance books of 2023.

If you enjoy books with grumpy-sunshine character pairing, then you’ll love Tara and Trevor, and if you’re a fan of the close proximity trope, then “Exes and O’s” is the perfect romance book 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.

Review posted as part of a blog tour.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: January 10, 2023

“I don’t need another man who makes elaborate promises he can’t commit to, Trevor. I need someone who’s going to be open and honest with me. I want someone who is willing to try.”

(…) “If there’s anyone in this world I want to try for, it’s you.”

I loved Set on You and was so excited to see another romance from Amy Lea. I adored Tara and Trevor's friends to lovers slow burn roomance! I can't wait to read more books from this author; she's definitely an auto buy for me going forward.

I can’t put into words how much I loved this book. Think of Taylor Swift’s album “Lover” and the tv show New Girl with a sprinkle of the Disney movie tangled and you have this beautiful friends to lovers rom com.

Tara is a hopeless romantic who is desperate for a romance book worthy love story. Except she has 10 exes who’ve all dumped her due to her “stage-five” clinger tendencies. In her quest to find love, she decides to revisit each of her exes in hopes of having a second chance love story. With the help of her new roommate Trevor (who strays away from committed relationships), Tara embarks on this journey, only to realize that her roommate and partner in crime might be the only one who truly sees her for who she is.

Trevor is a player and for the first 15% of the book the author found any moment to tell us that. I mean Tara walks in on Trevor with another girl in the beginning of the book? While I was super frustrated and almost thought about dnfing this book due to that, I’m glad I continued. Tara and Trevor had such a sweet friends to lovers story with so much tension, angst and a few good jealousy moments.

Trevor turned from reformed playboy to a love sick puppy and I was here for every minute of it. He loved Tara for who she was and I’m obsessed. Tara was also a super relatable FMC who is obsessed with reading and has her own booktok and bookstagram. Needles to say this book should be on everyone’s tbr and must read.

This book was such a surprise. It’s no secret k wasn’t the biggest fan of Amy’s debut Novel set on you but this book was GREAT!!

this book was undeniably written for all romance readers <3

Quotes I loved:

“I want to alphabetize your books, I want to read to you at night”

“And I don’t want to go slow, Because I can barely breathe
when I think about living my life without you.”

“I’d follow him straight into a pyramid scheme in this getup”

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley publishing for an ARC in exchange for a honest review <33

Amy Lea has done it again!

Tara Ali Chen is like any other hopeless romantic book worm- trying to find the kind of book-worthy love she keeps reading about. After a string of bad luck and bad relationships, she enlists the help of her new roommate, a sexy firefighter that has no time or patience for relationships., to try and reconnect with her ex-boyfriends for an epic second-chance romance. Things obviously get a little complicated when feelings grown between the two and Tara needs to figure out which trope is the best - second chance or forced proximity?

This book is full of swoon-worthy tension and cute moments as well as a lot of sweet moments of self-discovery. There are a lot of moments that will resonate to any person who has been in a relationship and has been called “crazy” or “too much” and it shows the audience that caring too much isn’t a bad thing.

I’d recommend this to any reader wanting something fun and giggly to read.

Tara is a Bookstagrammer and lover of romance books trying to create her second chance romance. She moves in with cute firefighter Trevor who decides to help her on this journey. I saw another reviewer say this was the adult version of To All the Boys I Loved Before and I would agree (there’s even a hot tub scene). Trevor is the sweet Peter K playboy and Tara is the sweet, romantic Lara Jean. This book is a celebration of all things rom coms and I adored it. This is out Tuesday but it might be on the shelves in some stores 👀

😍loved || 💋 some steam
🤟many tropes, funny, a love letter to rom coms
📚 Talk Bookish to Me by Kate Bromley
🎶Lover (album) by Taylor Swift

Thank you Netgalley and Berkeley for the advanced copy!

3.5 rounding up to 4.

This book started out really strong for me. The FMC, Tara, was spunky and adorkable and witty. I enjoyed her humor from the get go and liked the idea of her being on bookstagram and booktok. It was cute at first but then the more and more everything was related to a book or trope the more it started to bug me a bit. We all love books but I wanted to see more for her identity than being romance obsessed. The only parts of her nursing we saw were centered around her ex, nothing really about nursing as a job other than how it related to her doctor ex. There was potential for some depth there and instead it kept her character surface level. I wish we had gotten more from Tara as a person rather than just as a book fanatic. Her humor and eccentricities started to annoy me a bit by the middle also. What started as funny humor ended up just missing the mark for me. If the nonstop jokes were edited down a bit, this book could’ve been so much shorter. In general this story could’ve been 100 pages shorter and would’ve been more successful me.

Trevor was great, I loved him from the start. Anyone who has read romance before could see that he was falling hard for her despite her being oblivious or insecure about the idea. One thing that didn’t lineup for me with him was his big profession of love was saying he had feelings for her from the first day he met her but back in the beginning of the book, he was still bringing several women home to sleep with while she had to listen through the walls. The actions and words don’t lineup there for me.

The third act conflict drove me crazy because miscommunication is my least favorite thing ever. Tara knew miscommunication was happening but still refused to do anything about it in the moment. There didn’t really even need to be a third act conflict/breakup because they took so long to get together that it would’ve been fine without.

Overall it was a cute story, I just wish there was some editing done to make this a little more efficient and that we went deeper with our FMC’s identity. There was a lot of potential here and it was mostly good, just a few things that could’ve changed to make this more successful of a read to me.

I loved this book! It was a great book to start 2023 off with and I think it would be great for around Valentine's Day! I could relate to Tara in a lot of ways, although her personality seemed a little amplified. and I'm in love with Trevor. He is definitely my new book boyfriend.

Tara has recently gotten over a break up with her fiance. She moves in with her sister's fiance's coworker that she had never met and her first introduction to him is when she walks into her new apartment and he is naked having sex with someone! She is totally shocked and not at all what she was needing to make a fresh start.

This was a slow burn romance/friends to lovers and I LOVED it. I really felt the connection build with these two and the banter was great. I also loved all the fun pop culture references throughout - especially the Bachelor Nation ones! I am still smiling when I think about this book and it might be one of my top romances this year!

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

Thank you @berkleypub for the #gifted eARC of EXES & O’S!

I adored SET ON YOU last spring and was so thrilled when I saw that Amy Lea was turning the book into a series. EXES & O’S starts shortly after the events of SET ON YOU. Tara is moving out of Crystal’s apartment and moving into Scotty’s old place. After a revealing ;) encounter with her new roommate Trevor, Tara and Trevor become BFFs. Tara decides to revisit ex-boyfriends and see if with a little distance and some growing up, there might be a second-chance romance to be had.
While I loved the second-chance romance trope, I could not imagine revisiting old boyfriends as an adult! So more power to Tara. Tara and Trevor’s banter and inside jokes were so sweet, but my favorite scenes were when they’d cuddle up on the couch to “platonically” watch The Bachelor together.

I really enjoyed the forced proximity and tension as Tara and Trevor attempted to deny their feelings for each other. There was a big miscommunication issue in Act III (which you all know I hate) and I think the book could have been at least 50 pages shorter, but overall I enjoyed this one and am looking forward to reading book 3 which will hopefully be Mel’s story!

EXES & O’S is out tomorrow, January 10!

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5197258498
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnM3-MopHp_/

Amy Lea captured my heart with her romance Set On You, the first offering in her Influencer series that features Crystal, a curvy fitness influencer who bravely tackles fat phobia and body positivity in her quest for love. The second novel in the series, Exes and O's features Tara, Crystal's sister, who is contending with her own issues after dealing with the fall-out of a broken engagement.

Tara has always been a hopeless romantic. As a bookstagrammer with a YouTube channel, she focuses primarily on romance novels and hopes to live out her own happily ever after someday. Despite her cancelled wedding, Tara still believes in love but decides to revisit her exes in the hopes of achieving her own "second-chance romance" trope.

Her new roommate, Trevor, a friend and fellow firefighter of Crystal's boyfriend, Scott seems to be an unlikely candidate to help her on her quest. After all, he is the antithesis of Tara's idea of a romantic hero with his frequent one-night stands and aversion to relationships.

As Trevor evolves into a friend, confidante and trusted wingman on her romantic journey, Tara has to contend with the feelings that she is catching for Trevor and the dawning realization that what she is searching for might just be right in front of her.

I absolutely loved this realistic romance! It has all the heart and definitely all the steam. I enthusiastically recommend and already am looking forward to. the third installment in the Influencer series focusing on Tara and Crystal's friend, Mel.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reading copy! I really loved this book, which is the second in Amy Lea’s Influencer series, making it super super close to a 5 star read from me, so possibly a 4.5 star read? Tara is a bookstagramer/book social media influencer and a nurse, coming off a bad broken engagement when she needs to move in with Trevor, a closed off, playboy firefighter. Tara's love of romance books makes her decide to pursue ex-boyfriends for a second chance romance when she starts to notice her roommate. I thought the chemistry between the main characters was great, and I loved the playing with and challenging romance tropes that the author achieved. I actually usually do not like second chance romance, so I thought the play on this trope was great for the story of really the main trope being roommates, forced proximity, and friends to lovers. I also loved how this book portrayed the importance of this idea of women with emotions and feelings as being “crazy” and a “clingy ex-girlfriend". I love when a romance not only nails the chemistry, attraction, and relationship building, but has a message, and I think the author really nailed the balance between these two things, all while fighting the patriarchal notion that women need to “get it together” when they’re feeling things. The only reason I am not giving this book 5 stars is that it felt a little long at times, with the ex search going on a little long for me. But overall I loved this book. I thought it was funny, sweet, steamy, and had a great message of loving someone for who they are, no matter what. I highly recommend this book for fans of Amy Lea, contemporary romance, comedy, forced proximity, and friends to lovers.

(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)

Having loved Lea's past books like Set on You, I had high hopes for Exes and O's. But this has to be my absolute favorite! Tara was an instant favorite. I discovered romance books relatively late in life - except for a string of paranormal romance books in high school - and so there's definitely degree of wish fulfillment here. While I'm not sure I could be as hopeful as Tara, I'm more of an outside cynic inside hopeful romantic, I fell in love with her. How there is this sweeping tide of emotions and hope all with swoons.

But real life romance is much more complicated. People can often fail to find the right thing to say forever. And finding a sense of closure and work to sustain a true love are more difficult off the pages. However, you know I was instantly rooting for Trevor and Tara. Not only do they have the most awkward and charming meeting, but I love a cluttered book nerd and another character who hates clutter.

Exes & O’s is the second book in Amy Lea’s The Influencer series. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, which featured a fitness influencer, but as soon as I saw the Exes & O’s features a romance book reviewer as its protagonist, I knew I was going to love it!

Tara Chen is all about romance. She loves to read romance novels, and she has her own Bookstagram account where she reviews books and goes live to talk about her favorite romance tropes. Tara is practically a living, breathing heart eye emoji, but although she loves everything about love and romance, has had little to no luck in her own personal life. She has had her heart broken ten times and each time, she was the one getting dumped, and was often told it was because she was too clingy.

Even with all her bad luck in the romance department, Tara remains convinced her one true love is out there. She just has to find him. Tara is a bit gun shy about putting herself out there with total strangers, however, and decides a second chance romance with one of her exes is the way to go. She begins to seek out each of her exes, documenting her progress on her Bookstagram account. As she embarks on this new adventure, Tara is also in the process of moving in with a new roommate, thanks to her last breakup leaving her homeless. Unlike Tara, her new roommate Trevor, a sexy firefighter from Boston, has no interest in love and romance. Even with his dislike of romance, Trevor can’t resist Tara’s charms and soon finds himself enlisted to help Tara find her second chance romance.

Oh my goodness, guys, this story was freaking adorable! I truly adored Tara. She wears her heart on her sleeve and is just so precious. I loved both her passion for romance and her passion for all things junk food, both of which led to some pretty hilarious moments between herself and Trevor. My heart also broke for her because she was so unlucky in love and almost all of her exes sounded like complete jerks. I practically screamed at the book when she announced her plan to try to reconnect with one of them because OMG, they already broke her heart once. Why would she let them get close enough to do it again?

As much as I adored Tara, I think I loved Trevor even more. He may be the grump to Tara’s sunshine, but it becomes pretty obvious within a few days of them living together that he is actually a cinnamon roll who would do absolutely anything to put a smile on Tara’s face. The two of them were just so cute together and their scenes were filled with fun and sexy banter. I was rooting for Tara to ditch her exes plan and jump Trevor’s bones from almost the beginning and so were Tara’s Bookstagram followers when he accidentally appears in one of her livestreams, haha!

The journey to Tara’s true love is definitely a slow burn one, but the pay off is worth the wait and the ending was so sweet, it had me crying happy tears. Exes & O’s was the perfect sweet and swoony rom-com to kick off my 2023 reading year with, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the friends to lovers and grumpy/sunshine romances.

I am obsessed with this book! This book is laugh out loud funny! The MC Tara gives Jess from New Girl vibes because she is so uniquely herself and she doesn’t care what other people think. This book is grumpy/sunshine with a slow burn perfection.

Tara is a bookstagrammer so she is immediately so fun. And she moves into a new apartment with Trevor as her roommate. She’s on the hunt to find her exes to see who can be her own second chance love story like in the books. Along the way, Trevor becomes her side kick for helping win back her exes. But is getting a second chance romance really what she wants?

Tara is such a funny, unique main character and Trevor is the grumpy but so caring love interest we all need in our lives. The combination of grumpy/sunshine, forced proximity, and slow burn makes this book perfect.

This is an outstanding book! Tara is a bookstagrammer who likes to live stream to her followers. She wants love in her life, but after being dumped for being a stage 5 clinger, she’s wary.
Tara recently moved into a new apartment with a gorgeous firefighter roommate named Trevor. He’s got a parade of women that keep her up at night with their enthusiasm.
She makes a list of her exes, on the theory that they dated once so maybe it could work again, plus she loves the second chance romance trope.
Tara starts going on coffee dates etc. but it’s not working out like she thought. Trevor has “chaperoned” a few dates and they’re gotten closer, but he’s a playboy. Or is he?

Tara and Trevor have a nice character arc, they learn about themselves and what it takes to be in a relationship. This book is a funny friends to lovers story, one of the best. 5 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed as in this review are completely my won

I liked this book a lot. It was a cute romance, perfect for this time of year.

I not only read this book but I also did a bit of it in audio. I loved the audio this narrator is one of my favs making it easy to just fall into the story. I also truly enjoyed the authors writing as well. It was a cute quick romance book with relatable characters and understandable plot. The main character has a lot of growth to accomplish but the journey to get there was a good one. There were snickers here and there. As well as some words I had to say out loud for a few of the male characters we encounter in this book they made me a bit mad.

A message that was clear with in the pages of this book is you are who you are. Don’t change for anyone! The right person is out there sometimes you just have to take a another look and see things in a different light.

In short:
Did I like it ? Yup. Traditional rom com.
Would I recommend it? Sure.
Would I read more by this author? Yes. I didn’t know this was a series I read this out of order but it truly didn’t matter.

Wow I loved this! I read the first book in this series (SET ON YOU) and really enjoyed but i liked this one even more! I love the way Amy Lea writes about social media influencers. EXES AND O'S features our girl Tara who is... a BOOK INFLUENCER. More importantly, she is a romance novel connoisseur. OKAY YEP SO OBVIOUSLY I WAS HOOKED.

Anyways, this is such a great romcom. Its funny, has lots of forced proximity (they're roommates!) and has immaculate Taylor Swift references.

My fav quote - "He's not just the hero of my dreams. He's the hero of my wildest imagination. The best part? He's nonfiction." AHVSYEPMFFUHVEHAKXWCTAB

Thank you SO MUCH to Berkley for the advanced copy! EXES AND O'S is out on 1/10/22 so get your preorder in now!