From the mastermind of Lease on Love, Just My Type is exactly ✨my type✨ !!!

Lana is rarely single & always in a long-term relationship. Seth is rarely in a relationship for too long & dates around often. These exes are thrown into a work competition: Lana has to try being single & alone, Seth has to practice commitment & shedding his serial dater ways. In writing about their experiences for the love and dating column, they compete for readers and viral clicks to win a coveted position at the company

🌻 childhood friends, highschool sweethearts, to now enemies-ish competing at work
🔥 banter, chemistry, love/hate tension
🧠 healthy therapy rep + practicing boundaries in relationships
🏠 had us drooling over NYC brownstones in the last book and now again in LA
🙏 Lana loves Marvel & says “thank LOKI” instead and I love it - call the deity of your choice!!!
🎶 my mind always relates to tswift songs & I kept playing Dress, Paris, & Hits Different

🥹Ballard’s storytelling hits different because it sits right at the line of exactly what I look for in a fictional love story. Its contemporary romcom with the perfect mix of real-life emotions & relationship dynamics, from the warm fuzzies all the way to the uncomfortable ones we often hold. I teared up at shared experiences, squealed at the tropes we readers love love love, and laughed along with the loveable characters

Ballard is now an immediate auto-buy author for me. I can’t wait to re-read her books & RUN for her upcomings!

thank you NetGalley and Putnam Books for allowing me to read this e-ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review!

Falon Ballard is my new favorite author! Wow, Just My Type was exactly my type of novel!
Think How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but with a first love. I didn't want this one to end, a page turner indeed! Lana and Seth are a great example on how first loves can take a break to grow up and find themselves, but never lose sight of that love. They are both so much stronger because of it.
Thank you for this read, I throughly enjoyed!

2.5 stars

I was really looking forward to this one after enjoying Lease on Love. Unfortunately, the story didn’t quite work for me. I found the first part of the book difficult to get into and the set up far-fetched (what a gigantic HR nightmare!). Lana was pretty unlikeable and came across as immature and petty. I had to remind myself numerous times that these characters were 30. I was expecting some bombshell reason to explain her animosity towards Seth, but when the past was revealed, her anger felt unfounded. Also, the point of her list was to have her be independent and not so consumed/wrapped up in a romantic relationship. Though I appreciated the realization that she’d been standing on her own since a young age, it didn’t feel like she fully reached her goal. Things like turning down a hot guy, eating at a restaurant alone, and not being in a relationship for a few weeks don’t reassure me that Lana won’t fall back into familiar habits.

Seth was also pretty frustrating. He would do/say one thing and then walk away and do a complete 180. I got whiplash trying to keep up. He was a bit more forthcoming about his feelings though, so he gets points for that. Sadly, the lack of maturity and communication annoyed me and I found myself often frustrated by them both. I also didn't feel much chemistry between them, which made it difficult to believe in this second chance romance. I think more scenes in the past of them together would have been helpful as well as Seth's POV. I did enjoy the ATF coworkers/friend group a lot and would definitely be interested in a story for Rob and Tessa. I thought the epilogue was very sweet and I enjoyed the Los Angeles setting, but sadly I didn’t love this one.

CW: Financial strain/hardship (past), manipulative boss/work environment, parental abandonment (past), strained relationship with parent, profanity

OW/OM notes: FMC propositions MMC while she has a boyfriend (past), FMC kisses an OM in front of MMC, MMC goes on dates with an OW

Tropes: workplace romance, forced proximity, second chance, slow burn, childhood friends to lovers, rivals to lovers, found family

*I voluntarily read an advance review copy of this book*

I loved this book!

We meet our heroine, Lana, at an all-time low. She thinks she is being proposed to when her boyfriend of 4 years breaks up with her. Then her high school boyfriend/childhood best friend suddenly re-enters her life, and she finds herself competing against him for the job she wants. They have to give each other relationship tasks and write about their experiences. Because she is a serial monogamist, her tasks are supposed to help her learn to be on her own, and his are to help him settle down and be in a relationship. It's got How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days vibes, but they are writing for the same publication.Even with all the tropes, I felt like Falon Ballard created a really original story and I couldn't put it down!

A list of things I loved:
- Second Chance Romance without dual timelines! I am not a huge fan of dual timeline, so I was glad for this.
- The boss that makes them compete is terrible, but we can thank her for the forced proximity anyway! A top tier trope category in my book!
- Just like with Lease on Love, we have great friends for Lana and really funny group message threads (this time between co-workers!) I love the way these break up chapters and add some humor to the story.
- I love when we start to see the vulnerable side of each main character. Lana and Seth both start out so prickly and immture towards each other, both of them clearly guarding their hurt hearts. The book really shines for me when they start to forgive each other for what happened when they were teenagers.
-There is a scene having to do with sunflowers that actually took my breath away. IYKYK!

This book really hit me in my feels. The loss of their high school relationship is heavy! You really get the sense that they were meant to be together, so that original break up was a huge loss.

Second chance romance lovers will love this one.

Thank you so much Putnam and Netgalley for the chance to read an early copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own!

Thank you NetGalley and Putnam for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

I had a really hard time choosing between a 3 and a 4 for this book. I went in with really high expectations because I adored Lease on Love, but (like many, many second books) this just wasn’t as good. I wouldn’t call it a sophomore slump, but there was a spark missing from this book that made it harder to feel invested in the romance.

Things I loved: the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days-esque workplace competition, the charming friends, the slow burn/second chance romance of it all.

Things I didn’t really love: the LI, Seth, felt one dimensional to me. And since we got very little information about their shared past, it was hard for me to buy into their romance the second time around. Lana had a great character arc, but the beginning of the book made her character feel flat as well.

I absolutely adore Falon Ballard's writing. Lease on Love was one of my favorite reads from last year, and Just My Type has lived up to my hopes. I LOVED getting to know Lana and Seth. Both of their character arcs were well thought out and fully flushed. I really felt like I knew each of them, and that made it so much easier to root for them. The tension between the two of them was palpable, and it felt so authentic. I also really appreciated how part of Lana's arc was her doing her own work and healing, and how that was her primary focus; not her relationship with Seth. The entire book, plot and character development, were extremely nuanced which helped with it feeling more realistic. I also really appreciated the side focus on their articles, and I loved the quotes at the beginning of each chapter from their respective articles.

It’s so hard to express how good this story was. It’s definitely now one of my favorite romance novels. I read it almost entirely in one sitting cause I just had to know how it ended. Usually books in this genre follow the same model but I was honestly on the edge of my seat the whole time.
It was such a great take on the big tropes by having both friends-to-lovers and enemies-to-lovers. There was also a lot of comedic relief throughout the novel, which solidified it as an amazing romcom like all the nostalgic movies it referenced. It mentioned How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days a few times and it really reminded me of it — not in the plot but in vibe and the joy it brought me.
I’m just absolutely in love with the story between Lana and Seth. There was just so much intensity and longing throughout the novel — it felt like I was living it! There’s a major quote in the story that just took my breath away and it hits you like a ton of bricks when it happens.
There was also so much beyond this story besides romance. It was hugely about finding yourself and really highlighted the importance of therapy and communication. Lana’s story is really touching and she’s one of the best leading ladies I’ve seen.
Highly, highly recommend this one!!

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review. And thanks to Falon Ballard for sharing this story with the world.

"If you can't love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love someone else?"

I read Falon's debut novel, Lease On Love earlier this year and absolutely loved it. When I found out she was writing her second novel, I thought, I'd do anything for an ARC. And thanks to NetGalley, I was lucky enough to snag one!

This book had everything I love and then some! It was absolutely perfect in my mind. Just My Type feels like you're reading what is an early 2000s romantic comedy movie. It's giving me major How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days vibes - as that is one of my favorite rom coms of all time, I am HERE for it.

Our main characters are Lana and Seth. Lana is in her early 30s, she's a writer, a serial monogamist, loves nerdy things, has a strained relationship with her mother. She's a book lover and secret blogger. Seth is Lana's ex-boyfriend, high school sweetheart, the one that got away. He's a writer, world traveler, serial dater, but ready to settle down.

In comes the rom com twist - Seth moves to LA and gets a job working for the same website as Lana. Her boss pits them against one another in a way to get clicks - he has to focus on settling down and she has to learn to be on her own, while they write articles each week about their experiences and their readers get to vote for the winner.

What struck me the most is how I found Lana's character so incredibly relatable. Not only does her character feel like a best friend to me (love for books, dream job is to write about books/entertainment, huge Marvel fan), but her journey of finding herself through the book really struck me. I think every woman goes through this at some point in their lives; you stop and question - who am I as a person, on my own, as an individual? Am I living the life I want to live? Am I truly happy? We can easily become consumed by pleasing other people, or doing life the "right way" or what's expected of you, that sometime we lose ourselves along the way. Lana's arc is a joy to read, and it just felt real, raw and incredibly personal.

The love story is a slow burn. You get small flashbacks to the past to learn about Lana and Seth's history, and it really helps to build the foundation of their relationship and help you understand why each of them are the way they are in the present. Don't worry - the slow burn pays off by the end.

Another thing I love about Falon Ballard's writing is, she is not afraid to integrate important topics into her books. Her characters explore therapy, finding themselves, dealing with childhood experiences that can impact your adulthood, and setting boundaries. These things bring an element of reality and rawness which only makes her writing that much more relatable.

By the end, I cried tears of happiness. Any book that makes me cry and feel so many emotions is *chef's kiss* 10/10 recommend, 5 stars from me.

Thank you Falon Ballard for writing a such a fun, romantic, quirky and poignant novel, and thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review in advance.

Tags: second chance romance, enemies to lovers, workplace romance, slow burn
Spice: 3 peppers

To start, this book was so cute. I love the shared past and then second chance tropes in this book and I felt that they were well thought out and described. I did think the “I’ve never loved anyone but you” type thing that was going on was a little overwhelming but I get where Falon Ballard was coming from.

I loved the whole process of the readers getting to see Seth and Lana fall back in love. Not that they ever really left it. But just to see how they had both grown over the time they had spent apart. I was continuously rooting for them, hoping they would get together sooner rather than later.

Overall, I thought the plot was great and I loved every bit of it. I thought it was a little cheesy but that’s what comes with romances so it wasn’t a deal-breaker. I would highly recommend pre-ordering this book or if that’s not your thing, buying it once it comes out,

Love, love, love the writing from this author. Its fresh and witty, poignant yet fun. This second chance romance was absolutely lovely! I loved the authentic, realistic characters and their story. By the end of it, I was ready for the author to land the plane because it was obvious where it was going. However, that didn't detract from my love for this book and the author. I can't wait to read more from her.

Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam for the advanced copy!
When I read Falon's first book, I instantly knew that I loved her and would read absolutely anything she published. And God, am I glad I did. This book is the second chance romance, enemies to lovers, workplace, forced proximity, slow burn DREAM. All of the characters felt so real and complex, and we get to know Lana for exactly who she is. I couldn't keep myself from BEGGING Seth and Lana to get back together. Even still, I enjoyed every second of Lana discovering herself and being ready for true love. It is now confirmed that I would read absolutely everything Fallon writes. I'll be reading this one again.

This book really checked all my the boxes and was hard to put down! If you love second chance romance, lovers-to-enemies-to lovers tropes and lists/challenges that force characters to dive in to self-exploration, then you are in for a real treat!

I loved this book! I really enjoyed Falon Ballard’s Lease on Love, so I was pretty excited about her second novel, Just My Type. It lived up to the hype in my head. I liked this novel even more than the debut! Lana is a fun and quirky MC but she has some serious depth, and the journey through her tasks to find what life awaits her on the other side is so fun to read! The chemistry between Seth and Lana is there from the beginning and gets stronger as the story progresses! I loved reading about all the tasks/challenges they had to go through. I was also a big fan of Lana’s friends and coworkers, they were a fun group and their slack convos made me LOL.

This book is a rivals to lovers/second chance romance story that is both heartwarming and steamy! I highly recommend for all fans of romance!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the eArc.

Thank you @netgalley and @putnambooks for my copy of this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Lana Parker has been writing a romance column for her publication since graduating college, but her real dream is to have her own column reviewing the entertainment she loves. Turns out she’s about to get her shot, just at a steep price. When her first love turns out to be a new employee at her work, her boss seizes the opportunity to pit them against one another writing opposing relationship columns in hopes of generating more clicks. This means Lana - who has turned into a serial monogamist after her heartbreak from Seth - has to remain single and write about her experiences. In turn, Seth - who handled their break up by never committing again - has to work towards finding a long lasting relationship. Not only that, but they’re continuously thrust together in the process. Will all this time together remind them of the love they once had for one another?

Loved this book! Which is rare, as second chance romance isn’t usually my favorite. But it was so witty and so well written. This is definitely one to pick up as soon as it publishes!

This one gets 4.5⭐️‘s from me!

3.5 rounded up to 4.

This was one of my most anticipated releases for 2023 so I was very excited to get an early copy of this one! I did not like this book as much as Lease on Love but I think that's typical of a author's sophomore novel! It didn't blow me out of the water but it was very cute, very heartwarming, and very fun.

I would have liked a dual POV in this story, as I felt like I didn't get a lot of what was going through Seth's head which I would have liked to know. I really liked the texting, instant messaging threads, as I felt like they contributed to the media world that they lived in.

Also I love May and she's such a great bff!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book!

5 stars!

Love and dating columnist and serial monogamist Lana is fresh off of the worst type of Legally Blonde moment when she learns that her high school ex-boyfriend (and first love) has not only moved to LA, but has accepted a job at her company. When the two end up pitted against each other in a competition with a career-altering grand prize, Lana and Seth instantly become rivals. But what happens when fate (and a boss who oversteps for the sake of more clicks) intervenes and forces them to work together? Can they work through their complicated past to even be friends?

I often see books billed as slow burns, but when I read them the pacing tells a different story. That is not the case with Just My Type. A second chance romance, this book takes its time building up the love story between Lana and Seth. It's worth it.

I really enjoyed the banter and build up between the two main characters, the supporting characters, and that Ballard included some themes I don't see as often in romance books. Stressing the importance of therapy and taking time for yourself! Setting healthy boundaries both in your personal life and at work! Yes, there were quite a few pop culture references, but they didn't bother me and they made sense, given Lana's affinity for pop culture.

If you're in the market for a slow burn exes and rivals to lovers second chance romance, I definitely recommend!

I loved Falon's debut novel Lease on Love.
When I seen her newest upcoming title I knew it would be a sweet read.
A fun rom-com that absolutely stole my heart.

Just My Type by Falon Ballard is a terrific read, filled with people who are enjoyable company.
This was the perfect rom-com. Funny, brilliant, and full of swoon.
Falon is a great storyteller. This well written book is pure delight. Both insightful and hilariously funny, she tackles the second chance romance that I think we can all relate to and does it so beautifully, that I personally found both satisfying and practical.
What I love most is how relatable the characters are, especially Lana.
For me it was a page turner that ended all too soon as I had totally fallen in love with the characters.

A job well done Falon! And I look forward to the next wonderful story you create next time!

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

G.P. Putnam's Sons,
Thank You for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this eARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Words can’t even describe how amazing this book was, and how it made me feel 🥹

We follow Lana and Seth, who are ex-high school sweethearts now in their thirties, on their beautiful second chance romance journey.

Seth has just moved to L.A. and has gotten a job at the website Lana currently writes for. The two are pitted against each other in a competition to essentially “find themselves”, through a series of challenges. The winner gets a job promotion and a chance to write their own column.

Lana is the most relatable character I’ve read about to date. It’s almost as if Falon plucked different personalities from every creator on book tok and created Lana ❤️

Tropes include second chance romance, slow burn, and workplace romance.

Thank you to NetGalley and Falon Ballard for allowing me to review this amazing book. I can’t wait for the rest of the world to get their hands on this sweet read.

This was a great read. The story was very engaging & a quick study. I ended up finishing this in one sitting and loved it. Just My Type is an exes to lovers romance where the exes also happen to be rivals, so I was sold on it the moment I found out about it's existence, because who doesn't love these two tropes? I'm just so happy that this book did live up to my expectations.

Seth & Lana dated all through high school & broke up after graduation. Now twelve years later they're working together & feelings are being felt. What I loved most about the story was how Lana's feelings towards Seth were portrayed. It was obvious right from the start that she never got over him, but the way the author gave Lana room to come to terms with her romantic feelings for him while also allowing her to feel anger and rage towards him for their past without overdoing it, and spacing that anger with moments of nostalgia and those of camaraderie between the two was just so brilliantly executed. I loved Lana's friends too. They were such a good ensemble and so fun to read.

The banter between Seth and Lana is top tier as is the angst. I absolutely loved how the light hearted and the heavy moments were balanced through out the story. The slow burn was absolutely sensational and I loved it!

My only complain is that this was not a dual POV. I really wanted to see the story from Seth's perspective too. It would have made the entire experience so much more rewarding to have that glimpse into his mind as well.

Nevertheless, Just My Type is a lovely romance and I'd highly recommend!

4.5 stars
I gotta be honest, I was so nervous to read this book. I really did not enjoy Lease on Love and didn't know what to expect going into this.
I LOVED this book. The characters were so relatable and so so likeable. I loved the entire premise of this novel, reminds me of all of my favorite romcom movies.
if you're looking for enemies to lovers, this will be your jam. I FLEW through this book. And I'm so happy gave this book a chance. l'll definitely be reading future novels by Falon. "
Thank you to Net Galley, Putnam, and Falon Ballard for an advanced e-copy in exchange for an honest review.