📗 The Influencers Book #2 - Exes and O’s (4 ⭐️)
Continuing with the story of Crystal’s sister, Tara a hopeless romantic obsessed with ‘meet cutes’ and second-chance romances. Tara is determined to revisit every boyfriend to see what went wrong and whether she already missed her chance at love and happily ever after. Trevor is Scott’s best friend and Tara’s flatmate and a committed player. Another slow burn but friends to lovers / forced proximity romcom as Trevor agrees to help Tara find her one true love, despite the obvious being right in front of them. Ordinarily, friends to lovers trope is not my bag (not enough angst or tension for my liking!) but this book is genuinely better than book #1. Better character development and chemistry, funnier and overall more relatable main characters. Some spice 🌶️

This was such a good book! I hadn't read Set On You but felt like I could read this as a standalone anyways. I love Tara and Trevor!

This book is a cute friends-to-lovers rom-com. It's definitely much more of a slow-burn than Lea’s debut novel ‘Set on You’. So you really felt you were getting to know Trevor and Tara as they got to know each other which made the tension great!

a super adorable read !! the Taylor Swift references were a huge plus for me and always something I enjoy seeing in books. it was also relatable in some aspects which I really liked. I wasn’t 100% invested in the romance which is why I don’t think this will be as memorable for me but overall a pretty solid read.

⭐️ 4/5
📚 44
📍 🇺🇸
🗂️ Rom- Com
📖 Tara is Crystal’s older sister from Set On You (book1). Tara is a 30 year old nurse and bookstagrammer. She has been sleeping on Crystal’s floor for the last 8 months since her ex-fiancé broke her heart. Crystal’s boyfriend, Trevor, has offered her to live at his place. His roommate/best friend/workmate is hardly there anyways. A fresh start. Will she ever find her person?
👥 ~66
❤️ Bookstagrammer MC
✅ Good humour
✅ Can be read as a stand-alone
💬 “Who knows what you’ve done to my toothbrush”
💬 “Come at me eligible bachelors”

I knew that this series was popular on TikTok but I didn't realise it would be so awfully cringy to read. It just wasn't realistic at all in how the main character narrated, and spoke to everyone, and it got on my nerves pretty quickly.

I really enjoyed Amy Lea’s first book Set on You, featuring Chrystal, so I knew I wanted to read her next book Exes & O’s.
This book follows Chrystal’s sister, Tara, who is an Instagram influencer.
She moves in with friend, Trevor, who is also a firefighter. Trevor has a few ‘lady friends’ that he ‘entertains’ at the apartment and Tara is on a mission to find her perfect man… from her list of exes! Despite this the two get on really well and start to share each other’s interests, enjoying movie nights.
Will Tara find her perfect man or has she already found him…?

A fab, fun rom-com with some great characters 🌟🌟🌟🌟

This was such a great read! I think I enjoyed this more than the first in the series, Set On You.

The story was a lot of fun, very sexy and I loved the development of the friendship and relationship between the characters. There were times where I was questioning how this story would actually end and I love that in a romance that can be very formulaic.

Big tick to some great steam, some funny moments, some big romantic gestures & the inclusion of a bookstagrammer main character!

3.5 stars

This book has one of the best friends-to-lovers dynamics I've ever read. I'm slowly turning into a friends-to-lovers reader, who would have thought? I loved following Trevor and Tara as they got to know each other, became the closest of friends and then helplessly fell in love. There's depth here between these two characters and you can personally feel it growing bit by bit. It's definitely because this is much more of a slow-burn in comparison to Set on You, but I was really there for these two. The tension was great! They were perfect for each other and honestly, I think this book was much more well-written.

I laughed and swooned and was really really into this book from 20% in. I had kind of a rocky start, but after that point I just couldn't stop. The ex search central to this book was a little silly, but FUN, especially because it was the set up for the funniest scenes in here. I can forgive the cringy stuff (Tara making the search public on her social media....hello are you okay??) as it was such a delight to see Trevor get fully on board and react to Tara's stupidity during the dates lol. But even when Trevor and Tara were just together at home, doing nothing special, that just warmed my heart and kept me glued to the pages.

Unfortunately there were some things I didn't really enjoy too (some of them repeats from this author's debut novel), mainly:
- continuous mentions of romance tropes in a particularly annoying way (in a way that maybe makes booktokers happy? Me thinks)—like, could you even be more in the face than this? I don't think so. Subtlety, we don't know her. Same thing for book character stereotypes. I know Tara is a bookstagrammer but there was no reason to go there so heavy-handedly.
- I'm sorry but I just can't make myself like the social media parts. It sound so staged and fake. Also, this time I include the grandma in this point because she was ridiculous with the followers obsession. I KNOW this series is called The Influencer... I didn't really know what I was getting into when I started the series okay? My bad. Leave me alone, I can't go back now lmao.
- the third act conflict, though, was the worst thing that could have happened to this book. It was so bad it ruined the book for me and that makes me sad. It was unnecessary and frankly stupid. I'm not one that hates miscommunication regardless of the book or the situation, sometimes it works and I like it, but only when it makes sense.

Overall this one started as a dud, proceeded to steal my heart in the middle, then faded a little toward the end. I'm sad about the ending because this could have been not a favorite of mine but something close. I see Amy Lea has not stopped including sex in the most unhygienic places or some of the cringiest dirty talk ever lol, but her writing has definitely gotten better.

Oh well isn’t this just a warm hug in a book?!

Exes and O’s is taking top spot of my favourite book of 2023 so far. It’s a bookstagrammer / romance lovers dream come true in a book.

As a romance obsessed queen, Tara goes on a journey of hunting down all her exes in the hopes for her own “second chance romance” - one of her favourite tropes (me too, girl). Of course, Tara has been looking at these exes through rose-tinted glasses, so the dates don’t exactly end up where she plans. Tara instead, without realising it at first, enters a very slow burn romance which her new roommate.

As a protagonist, Tara is painfully relatable at times, with her hopeless romantic endless optimism. She’s a clingy “crazy ex girlfriend” in a pretty cringe way, but I totally got it. I loved the banter and friendship between the two MCs, and could clearly see how their relationship developed through their chemistry and mutual respect for each other.

It’s adorable, hilarious and completely heartwarming ❤️ Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Technically this is book 2 in the “influencer” series. I haven’t had the chance to read book 1 (Set On You) yet but absolutely will be soon after loving this one.

Read it if you love:
❤️ Friends to lovers
💙 Forced proximity/room-ances
❤️ Slow Burn
💙 Men in uniform (firefighter) 🔥
❤️ Hopeless romantic heroines
💙 Grumpy/sunshine
❤️ Grand gestures
💙 He falls first
❤️ Swiftie references

It took me too long to get around to reading this… which is regret so much! This was perfect. I loved all of it. Tara and Trevor were the most perfect characters and definitely my favourite ’trope’. This is the first book I’ve read from this author but it won’t be the last.

I kid you not, this book did not sweep me of my feet - IT SENT ME ZOOMING ACROSS THE ROAD MATEEE

I loved this, it was so good. Genuinely, EVERYTHING was written perfectly, in fact, I'm going old school and writing a list. Also since Tara writes lists, I'll do it too x
- Trevor, 11/10. Like what do you meannnn he liked her from day 1? And wow the things he did for Tara, CHEFS. KISS. He literally went to a restaurant when her date didnt show up, he remembered the fact that she wanted Mcdonalds specifically. He had her back - ALWAYS. And this man was head over damn heels for her.
- the link between her grandma's love story. One word; seamless. SEAM LESS.
- the way Tara's story didnt seem random and actually flowed from the previous book. The Seeds were pretty much planted in the previous book.
- bookish themes: she wrote this for the booktok girlies, we know it, and we appreciate it
- giving a lil epilouge situation from Crystal and Scott's story 🤌🏻
- the plot itself? SO UNIQUE, genuinely, who can say they have read a book like this before? A girl who makes a list of her ex's in hopes to achieve a second chance romance??
- Forced proximity and friends to lovers and boy obsessed

Do you notice how there isn't a list of bad things? Yeah, you have your answer about how I feel about this book x

A book about books, about a reader, about tropes in romance novels and about Bookstagram. I loved all these aspects of this book.

After Tara’s break up with her fiancé she moves in with a friend of a friend, the handsome firefighter Trevor. She believes in romance, he likes one night stands.
When Tara decides to look up her ex- boyfriends to see if she could have a ‘second chance’ romance, she asks Trevor to help her find them.

A wonderful premise for a romance book and I very much liked all the references to books and Bookstagram. It took me a little longer to like the main character. To me Tara was not very interesting. I am happy I finished the book though as the final part of the book was absolutely worth it!

Sweet, cute and fun! I am a sucker for a slow burn and friends to lovers, and this book had it all. Having loved Tara in Set On You, I was thrilled when we learnt she was getting her own book.
It was an easy fun read, but at times I wanted a little more from the characters, as sometimes I wasn't sure if Trevor felt the exact same and with slow burns, I have to feel that piping tension.
Did enjoy though, fun read and would recommend it to others I know who loved Set On You.

This was cute, but oh so very slow and sadly the romance was not very believable. Tara, the main character, was desperate and childish when it came to relationships. Trevor, the love interest, was a stereotypical dude who wasn't interested in anything long-term until he met Tara. They both have baggage they have to deal with, but I feel like it was never actually properly dealt with. I'm not looking for characters who miraculously deal with everything from their past in the span of three chapters, but a little bit more than what this book gave us would be nice.

The final conflict between Tara and Trevor was so unnecessary and tbh sort of ruined the book a little bit. Add to that the fact the forced quest for a second-chance romance just keeps going on for much longer than needed. It felt like T&T were fighting their attraction for so long, they then got together for a nanosecond and then had a silly conflict that would have derailed the entire happy ending if this had been real life.

The pop culture references also became kind of annoying after a short while. When TikTok goes the way of the dodo, this book will be a historical artefact...

Amy Lea is quickly becoming one of my favourite new authors - Exes and O's was a cutesy read that I absolutely flew through. Being a fan of romance books, reading a book essentially about romance books and falling in love AROUND the books themselves was inception-y for me! Will be throwing myself at the rest of Amy's books now!

This book honestly really was not for me. I felt that this book was written to relate to BookTok and what is "trending" on there.
I thought I was going to love this book honestly and was quite surprised when I did not because of all the good reviews it had.
I mean it is not a surprise her relationships are not working out...she is annoying.
Both the characters had no chemistry and I just did not feel they were meant to be.

1.5 stars

I absolutely loved this book and the style of writing. Witty, humorous and so relatable, I couldn’t help but fall in love with both the main characters just a little bit. This really is a ‘stand-apart from the others’ type of chick-lit, and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

This was my first Amy Lea book, and it definitely won’t be my last! Though I typically prefer dual POV books, Tara’s single POV was so fun! Tara is hilarious and relatable and not in an overdone “quirky fmc” way. The banter, the deadpan back and forth were the perfect foil for the very, very slow burn to the romance. Plus forced proximity trope is always top tier!

This is a very well written book with a smoothly developed plotline. At first I thought it was gonna be a slow read, but once I got through the initial background of the first few chapters it was an enjoyably quick and easy read. Although the book feels quite short nothing is rushed or dragged out. It has a perfect timeline for every new detail.

Although this book is part of the "Set on you" series there isn't really a need to read Set on you before diving into this book. Of course, if you plan to read all the books anyways definitely read Set on you first so you can enjoy Crystal and Scott's relationship and dynamics development. The author does a great job doing a mini recap of the relationships with side characters and backgrounds without you having to read her previous books.
I would recommend reading Set on you first as it does add to the enjoyment of this book and it in itself is a really good read.

I felt as though both the female lead, Tara, and the male lead, Trevor, are really relatable and loveable characters. Tara is us as the reader. She is quirky, reads romance novels, has a bookstagram and is a generally emotionally rounded character who I felt connected to from the very start. Trevor is the perfect broody male but his emotional development with Tara is extremely endearing and made me love him as a character and not just as the main love interest.

Overall the pace of this book paired with these characters made for a very seamless and enjoyable read. And I can't wait to read the next book to get a taste of Mel's character in more detail as this book sets a good lead into the next book, The Catch.

3/5🌶 on the spice scale !!