Cute romcom, I really like the main character and all in all it was really lovable to read.
Would recommend

I enjoyed Nobody Puts Romcoms in The Corner by Kathryn Freeman. The characters and story are wonderful. Enjoy! **I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**

After another stressful but successful school year, all I wanted to do was shut off my brain and get back to enjoying reading. This book achieved that for me by getting me out of my slump. A really quick read with a cute concept and loveable characters... except Kitty and Harry's parents, I hated them. Going back a bit, the concept? I absolutely loved it. I am a rom-com junkie whose favorite movie of all time is Dirty Dancing. So yeah, after reading the title and seeing the cover, I was pretty easily sold. The grumpy x sunshine was so well done in this that I was pretty much kicking my feet the entire time. I definitely recommend this, especially to hopeless romantics.

I really enjoyed this one, it was a quick and easy read - a good solid chick lit novel perfect for holiday reading. A little predictable but that didn’t spoil the read.
Many thanks for the ARC

Sally is a romcom fanatic that believes in true love and in finding "the one." Harry is not interested in love. He doesn't believe in it. He just wants great sex. When Harry's ex won't move out of his house, he decides to rent a room from Sally. Somehow, they start re-enacting classic romcom scenes for tiktok and they amass a huge following. They continue to post videos and sometimes make some money and get sponsorships.. Harry starts to like the doing the videos because he starts to like Sally. Will he fall in love?

I was truly riding the struggle bus all through this book. Great idea that just ran too long and I didn't really believe the two characters. There was no chemistry. I didn't really care if they got together or not. It just wasn't for me.

‘Nobody Puts Romcoms In The Córner’ was a cute, light, and fun read with really lovely characters. Highly recommend!

"Nobody Puts Romcoms in the Corner" by Kathryn Freeman is a lighthearted read that takes you on a journey through the world of romantic comedies. With endearing characters and humorous situations, the book captures the essence of a real-life romcom. The chemistry between Sally and Harry is charming, and their progression from faking it to making is swoon-worthy. While the plot is a little predictable, the book still provides a fun and nostalgic escape for any rom-com fan! With engaging writing, witty banter, and nods to classic romcom moments, the book is a fun read.

Since Dirty Dancing is one of my all time favourite movies, I was so excited for this book. And it definitely did not disappoint, What a cute story! If you love classic romcoms, you'll have a great time with this one. Because it's absolutely filled to the brim with references! It's almost like a fun easter hunt to track them all down. I loved the FMC and MMC, their chemistry was amazing! They had the most hilarious banter. Don't read this book in public unless you want to get weird stares because you'll be laughing out loud so many times.

A charming and light read. Great to take to the beach.
Many thanks to HarperCollins UK and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was just the light romance my heart was craving and it was so cute! It was both heartwarming and fun to read, and perfect for the season of love.

*many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my gifted copy for review

This one was definitely a let down for me. I was so excited about it specifically because I love the 80s and 90s romcoms. They bring my heart happiness. And when I read the MCs names were Harry and Sally, I fell in love. But alas, my heart was broken. Everything felt so forced and off throughout the whole book. The pacing of it all lacked, and just the whole romantic aspect was not there. It just all felt completely fake.

This was cute and enjoyable for the most part but I didn't like some of the very causal fatphobia that I came across while reading. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

I wanted to love this but I honestly feel like I read it before. The UK setting was refreshing and I enjoyed the friend group but it felt very similar to the Kerry Winfrey books and so for me it was a pass..

Wow! I didn’t expect to love this as much as I did, but it so surprised me! The premise of this was so good! Fake dating, but only on Tiktok! Harry moves in with Sally when both run into a financial issue, skip ahead two months and they start recreating famous romcom scenes and posting them to Tiktok! Slowly we see them fall in love and get their happy ever after, but the whole journey was fun and just good vibes.

I would so recommend this as a lighthearted romcom with a dash of life lessons in the mix!

One criticism I did have was that, at the start in particular, there were scenes or bits of dialogue that felt underdeveloped and skipped over. Somethings felt a bit lacking and like they didn’t make sense because of this, but very easy to get over and an enjoyable read regardless!

I found this one a little difficult to get into and something about the pacing felt off. Maybe it's because the obstacle between Sally and Harry didn't feel big or realistic enough. I get that the whole point of the book is embracing and referencing romance tropes, but it was hard to read without rolling my eyes at each cliché (Harry and Sally being the MC names for one).

Trigger Warnings
This book contains:
- Reference to cheating
- Suggested familial financial extortion/violence.
Characters
Sally is the romance loving, café owner with a room to let after her younger sister has moved into her boyfriend’s place. Her life is all about romance. Romance movies of all kinds, a café themed on love and creating early love experiences for other couples and wanting to find her own perfect match.
Harry on the other hand is a total love cynic. He’s a builder by trade whose parent’s marriage has been falling apart more and more since his dad retired. While he never had a loving home growing up, what he’s experiencing as their marriage deteriorates solidifies his belief that love doesn’t exist.
Storyline
Thanks to Sally’s sister moving out and the debt she needs to repay, she’s forcing to let her sister’s old room out. A friend of a friend puts Harry in touch with Sally because he’s in desperate need of renting a room on a short-term basis.
As they live together, they learn more about each other, most prominently, their difference of opinion about love. One night after a few drinks, they re-create the famous lift scene from Dirty Dancing, and overnight become a Tik Tok sensation.
Overall Thoughts
As the name suggests, this fun love story is basically a rom com the whole way through. While I don’t think I’ve seen EVERY movie they recreated or referenced, I’ve seen most and I loved reading about their adaptations.
I had such a fun time reading this. I think pretty much every time I picked this up, I found myself giggling and laughing at what they were up to.
And in amongst all those funny moments, Harry is beating the gender stereotypes in his industry as a builder. I won’t say how, because that might spoil the surprise, but it was so nice for this to be popped into the story in such a natural way.
Overall, a hugely fun book that is quite inclusive in such a natural way that I kinda wish more authors could do.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

A fun, flirty, and fast-paced romcom. Sally and Harry (notably not from When Harry Met Sally) are two unwitting flatmates with vastly different opinions on love, and sudden TikTok fame leads to them reenacting many iconic romcom scenes for their audience.

I liked the characters and their chemistry, and the tension and conflict between them made sense. Both characters have their own lives and problems to deal with, even if some of them were a little ridiculous.

The 3rd act conflict is entirely predictable, and I did not like how quickly it was brushed aside, as it was actual sexual harassment committed by the ex-girlfriend towards Sally and Harry. The novel also contains some casual internalized fatphobia and offhanded diet culture comments that I felt were unneeded. I was also put off by the pro-"pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and focus on work as a sign of worth, especially in relation to how Sally's sister is depicted.

Overall, a fun premise and a typical contemporary romance novel that hits the right notes for a quick read!

This was fantastic and such a fun read. I loved it so much and kept turning the pages. Can’t wait to be able to share this with friends.

Who of us, at least those with a love for watching films about people falling in love, hasn’t wished they could step into the frames of their favourite romantic comedy?

They are usually so perfectly put together, so wonderfully alive with romantic possibility and eventually, after many twists and turns, meet-cutes and pulling aparts and love realised, we simply want to dive right in and live the fairytale right alongside the characters we love.

But alas, rom-coms are rom-coms and real life is … NOT.

Well, usually; in the giddily confected delights of Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner by Kathryn Freeman, not only are rom-coms loved and adored with considerable affection by one of the lead characters, Sally, but they become the vehicle that she uses to power herself to social media viral fame courtesy of the reenactments (#EpicRomcomReenactmentFailure) she undertakes with her newly-installed roommate Harry (yes, Harry with the names of these two unexpected cohabitants just the first of a buzzy list of rom-com favourite references that pepper this charmingly fun novel).

At first, recreating the lift scene from Sally’s epically favourite rom-com Dirty Dancing is just a bit of harmless fun, making use of the fact that gruff, romance-averse Harry, fresh from a recent break-up courtesy of his girlfriend’s infidelity, has the build and strength, courtesy of running his own building company, to make the moments come alive.

But then the recreations strike a chord with Sally’s fellow TikTok users and one impromptu homage becomes a slew of them, all of them building in views and sponsorship, not the kind that will make them mega rich by any stretch, but which may allow coffee shop-owner Sally, who has money issues courtesy of debt accrued by her wayward sister Amy, and Harry with some pressing financial issues of his own, the chance to make a little extra money.

That’s all it is at first – business; Harry is adamantly clear about that, and Sally, convinced that Harry, burnt by a loveless childhood and some bad relationship experiences, not least with his ex Isabelle, is incapable of going any further than fun flirtation, assuming he’s in the mood, doesn’t even begin to believe it could go any further than a viral partnership.

But then, a blizzard of recreations follow courtesy of films like When Harry Met Sally (naturally, and yes, it is that scene which makes the cut), The Notebook, Never Been Kissed and An Officer and a Gentleman to name just four of the many rom-coms referenced in what amounts as an effervescently vivacious love letter to the genre, and while they will not admit it, both Harry and Sally find themselves getting more emotionally involved than either intended.

Their fans notice it too, and the digital cry goes out for them to take it further with every recreation, not hard when they are rather enjoying their proximity and the legitimate excuse they have to express, by proxy, the feelings building up for both of them.

Ah, but that’s where Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner starts to invest some weighty emotionalism into its story.

Sally isn’t prepared to settle for anything short of her lifelong PERFECT romantic dream, and Harry, who’s decent, kind and lovely but who is also convinced by his parents’ coldly indifferent union that real love simply isn’t a thing, and certainly not something he will ever attain so why bother.

And so, while the emotions and the chemistry are there and obvious to Harry’s loved-up friend Mike, and Sally childhood besties, artist Kitty, who’s fiercely protective of her friend, and gay band member Vince (he’s gay not so much the band) that love is very much in the air, if not in short, punchy TikTok reenactments, neither Sally nor Harry can bring themselves to give themselves over to what they’re feeling.

It’s a classic rom-com dilemma, and while it’s par for the course for the genre, Freeman, who infuses Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner with sparkling, witty dialogue (the kind that would be very much at home in a Nora Ephron classic of the genre) and vibrantly three-dimensional characters, does her own compellingly meaningful things with it, using Harry and Sally’s emotional blockage to explore how trauma can render otherwise wonderfully loving people incapable of doing anything more than skirting around the edges of attraction.

Thanks to this focus on the fact that real people, even ones falling in love, can be so broken they can make do anything with the best thing to ever happen to them, Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner feels like it occupies a rarefied place where all the headily frothy trappings of rom-coms are gorgeously, humorously and touchingly in place, but a lot of real life emotion too.

Far from weighing down Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner with a tad too much emotional reality, being honest about how the brokenness of the past can come close to derailing the romantic possibility of the present and future – we say “close” because we all know that love cannot be denied in a rom-com and most definitely won’t be stymied here – adds some unique substance to this delightfully heartwarming and funny tale.

The novel is also an evocation of why rom-coms are so beloved.

It touches with heart and real passion on why we’re happy to lose ourselves in confected tales of love, why it’s so important to us to imagine how perfect life and love can be, even if we have the real thing ourselves, because even the best of realities can feel tarnished and a little less than fit for purpose.

Rom-coms, of course, are eminently ready to deliver on all our fantasies and dreams, and the joy of Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner is that it both explores why we love them with happiness-inducing verve and thoughtful empathy, and serves up a perfectly, wonderfully wrought story of love against the odds and with all the fairytale touches that we crave.

Love is a wondrously good and lovely thing and it comes deliciously alive in Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner, a novel full of vivaciously fun, viral moments that come romping into real life with vigorous reluctance (that’ll make sense when you read it, and you should) and convinces us by sheer dint of its enthusiasm for romantic possibility and actuality that maybe, against all the traumatic odds, that we can find and embrace love, in all its heart-holding splendour, after all.

I love RomCom movies, Dirty Dancing is one of my favourite movies. I loved the movie references in this book and it definitely made me feel nostalgic.
I'm not a huge fan of TikTok or Viral influencers, so this part of the book didn't appeal to me as much.
However this is a fun and lighthearted read.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC.