This was a did-not-finish for me, but I can see the appeal and would still recommend it to readers who are looking for LGBTQIA+ novels.

Summary: For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her--but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that's-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.
When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she's found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut--and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy's help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life--impress Valeria's DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.
But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble--straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she's destined to end up on the cutting room floor.
Pros: multiple sexual orientations represented in the plot; Luna’s first girl crush, Valeria, was very Florence Pugh in my mental movie as I read along; I really liked that Luna and Valeria remained connected after their sexual relationship ended.
Cons: Luna’s boss was aggressively tropey in my opinion; MC is obsessed with losing her virginity in a very American Pie movie sort of way; kind of saw the ending coming from a thousand miles away.
ARC provided by @netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb was really compelling, but the actual execution leaves a lot of desire. I really struggled to like the main character, Luna, even reading it as a bisexual person who sometimes struggles with my identity.
Even as a journey of self-discovery, this book fell a little flat for me. There were several instances of Luna dropping her (often offensive) internal monologue on her best friend. The actual romance was sort of well-done, but I found most of this book very difficult to read. I struggle and vehemently disagree with the idea that having sex in any way defines your sexual orientation. I also really mentally struggled with the public outing scene. It was cruel and unexpected and I had to walk away from the book a bit before I could read it further. I think this was a great idea of a story and I can see the bones of a fantastic work, but I did really have to work to finish it.

Sizzle Reel was such an interesting book because the protagonist, Luna, has just figured out she's bisexual and is trying to figure out how the impacts her relationships with her friends and family, as well as her career. While Luna makes a lot of mistakes in the book as a baby-bi trying to figure things out, I did find many of the scenes funny and even relatable at times.

I do think it was pretty obvious that Romy had a crush on Luna throughout the book, which made her shock of figuring it out feel a bit underwhelming. But since she was a baby-bi, and very naive to a lot of queer culture, I'll let it pass.

As for Luna's relationship to Valeria, I didn't love it especially because it felt like Luna was using Valeria to push forward her career. I'm all for making friends and networking, especially in Hollywood which is not really friendly to women or femmes, but it felt a little gross at times. Like she had high expectations for Valeria and their relationship, but then would get upset when it wasn't benefiting her career. This aspect of the book just felt messy and made me like more Luna and Valeria less.

I think the book wrapped up on a good note, but there were definitely some areas I wish had more polishing.

I found the tone/voice lacking throughout the book and did not enjoy the writing style; I felt it missed something.
This should have been a fun read as someone who is bisexual but I could not get into it. The writing of the characters and how they acted and responded felt irritating, and I wouldn't like them.

I really wanted to like this book. The cover is adorable and the synopsis sounded interesting. However, there are so many issues with this book, how it handles sex and sexuality that I don’t even know how to rate it. Aside from that, the characters and plot itself struggled to keep my attention.

I do want to keep a look out for the author’s future works as I think there was a lot of potential here, but unfortunately, this one wasn’t it for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the complimentary e-arc. All opinions are my own.

2 / 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read in advance. This book didn't really stick the mark for me; it felt bland and underdeveloped, and if it weren't for getting an ARC, I probably would have DNF'ed it. The plot was rushed, and I found it a chore to read. The main character aggravated me to no end, and sometimes her decisions made no sense to me whatsoever.

The main thing that really grinds my gears about this book is the view on sex in general, and how much of an emphasis it put on virginity. I understand that the point the book was trying to make is that virginity is a social construct and to illustrate the harmful effects that places on people as a result, but honestly? It placed so much emphasis on it that it got it backwards and ended up coming across as "virginity is something to be embarrassed about". Realistically, I know that isn't what the author intended, and that might just be my own opinion, but that's how it came across to me and it made me all kinds of uncomfortable.

I think this might be something some people might enjoy, and I'm definitely not here to tell people they're wrong for liking it, but it was simply not for me.

1.5 maximum.......... i'll be really nice and round up to a 2, though, just so i don't seem heartless. this book took me so long to read and it, unfortunately, sucked. the romance was so bad, the pacing was bad, it was just all bad.

the love interest (who wasn't a real love interest until the last 30% of the book, because our main character was as dense as a brick) was a nonbinary lesbian (she/her) which was great!!!! except for the fact that she just keeps like info-dumping about her gender at points. like would literally just give paragraph after paragraph of her gender identity.

the main character had sex with someone at one point (literally, they fucked on page) but because they were both girls, the mc kept referring to it as "feeling each other up" which was so weirdly lesbophobic and uncomfortable??

also. the book just sucked. the writing was bad. the plot was rushed, the fact that luna (the mc) came out like 5 days prior and then was already in bed with a girl and then like 5 days after that outted their relationship......... god.

will not recommend to a friend nor will i be reading any of this author's future work.

I very rarely stop a book I’ve already read more than a third of, but I couldn’t finish this one. I loved the idea of this book and the representation, but I didn’t feel like the characters were realistic and I couldn’t connect with any of them. I kept having to remind myself how old the characters were because they seemed so young and immature. At 54% in basically nothing had happened and I was very bored.

boring, bland, tedious. i’ll admit, the first hundred or so pages were not bad, i was actually semi-enjoying myself, but??? it was a complete shit show around the halfway mark. i get that it was a love triangle, but if you’re gonna have a love triangle, at least have the main character actually consider both love interests as potential lovers as opposed to having her spend the ENTIRE book pining for one woman only to change her mind in the last 5~ chapters. like there wasn’t much romantic connection between luna and romy other than the occasional “omg we touched and i think my stomach fluttered maybe?” at least give them some depth :/ romy was also just an overall boring love interest. i didn’t even consider her at all until i noticed the change in direction between luna and valeria.

one thing i didn’t know fully before going into this was how much EMPHASIS was going to be put on virginity. i get that she was supposed to have deconstructed that concept for herself by the end of it but it didn’t work and wasn’t well written at all. luna just sounded so annoying and obsessed. her obsession made her act like a high school girl and was so childlike.

ALSO speaking of childlike! i get that luna and valeria had an age difference (24 and 28) but having people say “did you even check if she’s underage?” and “can she even drink?” is so crazy in a book. that shit was so infantilizing. i would understand if throughout the book people assumed she was super young or looked down on her because of her age, but to just throw that in there for essentially homophobia? boring. i’ve read better and i think everyone else should too.

If I wasn't trying to up my NetGalley ratio, I would have DNF-ed this book. There was a lot about this book that bothered me so I'm going to break it down into categories to organize my thoughts.

1) Misunderstanding and erasure of asexuality. There's a point where Luna says "I just want to have sex like every allosexual human on Earth" and an offhand comment about how Valeria should come out as asexual because she isn't dating anyone. Luna's comment totally ignores the fact not every allosexual person is comfortable with sex and not every asexual person hates sex. Demisexual people exist. But not according to this book. Being on the asexual spectrum, I found the way this book handled asexuality to be careless and hurtful. If you don't have anything nice to say about a sexuality you don't understand, don't write about it.

2) Harmful views on sex and sexuality. Wow there's a lot to unpack here. Luna's attitude about virginity, being weird for being 24 and a virgin, and her acting like sex can only be penetration were a lot. It was like an angry twitter discourse was a person. And it was not challenged nearly enough. When it was it was in a super preachy way from Romy about how sex isn't just penetration, which is fair. But this book never interacts with the idea that it's okay to be virgin at any age and to not be ready at any age. Also, virginity is a social construct and that doesn't get looked into enough

3) The love triangle. I can't get into this much without spoilers but I didn't realize the that there was going to be a love triangle. The romance with Val blatantly ignores the power imbalance between a huge celebrity helping Luna with her career and Luna as an assistant trying to make it in Hollywood. It made the whole relationship feel uncomfortable. And then the other love interest felt like something that came out of left field with no good build up or solid understanding of why the characters get together. The romance wasn't developed at all

4) The Jewish rep. Luna mentions a few times that she's Jewish but the only times it really comes up are when she talks about her family being jewish and wanting her to marry a nice Jewish boy. It came off as Luna viewing Judaism in a very negative light. Also just very unnecessary for her to be Jewish if it literally only comes up negatively and has no meaningful role in her life. It felt like a failed attempt to make her look anything other than two dimensional. Like with the discussions of asexuality, this felt like it shouldn't have been included because all it does is harm and ignores how accepting of queerness many sects of Judaism are

Just skip this one

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to the Netgalley and the publisher, for the opportunity to read this advanced reader copy. This honest review was based off my experience reading this eARC, which in no way biased me. All opinions are my own.

Going off of the cover and the synopsis, I was fully convinced that this book was going to be right up my alley and be a hit for me. Unfortunately that was not the case.

I did not care for the majority characters, the writing, or the story. I didn’t find anything that held my interest. Luna’s internal monologue was just so frustrating. As a later in life queer, it feels like she is doing all of these things, ex. coming out, dating a woman, etc., not only before she is actually ready, but she is forcing herself to do this to, honestly it feels like shes trying to ‘prove’ that she is queer? IDK that was the vibe I got. Like she has this list of things she “has” to do, in a specific order, before she can ‘accept’ herself being bisexual?

Again the vibes were just not there here, and this book unfortunately missed the mark for me.

Sizzle Reel is the story of a newly out bisexual woman, Luna, who is trying to navigate her sexuality and her attempt to break into the film world to become a cinematographer. Her main romantic relationship in the book is with movie star Valeria, and their romance and flirting is really fun to read. That's a big part of what kept me going. Valeria is just wonderful. But there were sideplots I started noticing early on that had me wishing books had AO3 style tags - a moment of "wait, is this what I signed up for?" Even if it worked, it was still jarring.

Whiole I found the book a lot of fun and I teneded to read in long runs, I also could have put it down and forgot it exists. The story is fun, but it tries to be deeper than it pulls off, which makes it harder to keep into it. It did do a really good job at showing the questioning and nervousness in being a baby gay, but epecially in being bi.

Would recommend for a fun read, but don't expect it to change your life.

Shout out to NetGalley for an advanced copy, which I waited way too long to review.

Loved the the premise of this book, but was left unsatisfied by the end of the book. I felt like this book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be about so we were left lacking depth from the characters and their relationships.

I received this book for free from netgalley for an honest review.

One of my favorite queer and Sapphic ya books. Cute and summery. With all the feels!

3.5. For one, I feel like this is an important novel to be in the world for baby gays. Lunas crew of supporting characters are top notch and I love how they constantly challenged her skewed definitions of what it means to be bi and archaic concepts such as virginity. But JFC luna was unbearable as a character at times and that’s most of my stars knock off.

Sadly, this one isn't for me. I thought the writing wasn't great and didn't like the characters. The protagonist is so focused on losing her virginity that I just didn't get it. I wanted to love it since it has LGBTQ+ Jewish rep, but maybe I need to read it at a different time.

Very cute rom-com vibes, love that it’s about some one realizing there sexuality later in life that kid of rep is really important and I'm glad we’re staring to see more of it in media

this book was okay and all but throughout i just felt too much like i was reading a twitter thread and it was just not it for me. also the center conflict being about the way luna considers virginity felt so out of place with luna's entire character like she's so incredibly progressive why would she hold on to the idea of virginity being about JUST penetration or whatever. i did love the messiness and the queer love triangle where it felt realistic and not contrived or unnecessarily made. instead these were just 3 adults navigating their love lives and appreciated the one page sapphic sex scenes but some things stopped me from adoring this book.

Very cute rom com vibes. I was rooting for the main characters, and the plot wasn’t too predictable - which can happen in the over saturated genre of romance. Would read again! Very solid queer read.