This was my first experience with this series and this author. What a treat! I will definitely be checking out the first two.

I love a group of characters that you see pieces of your friends in. Love the main character and her strong will. This read will make you laugh, swoon, make you want to shake your reading device and feel all the things.

Great narrators!

Thank you for the opportunity to review.

A fun, easy, heartworming romance about two persons who REALLY don't want to fall in love. It is refeshing in its adults ways of communication, of friendship, of expressing feelings and caring for one's love one. 3,5 stars !

First off I haven’t read the others in the series, I didn't realize it was part of a serious and I find it difficult to rate because I didn’t love the story but that’s on me.

In general this is your average contemporary romance with a friends to lovers trope which I am now realizing isn’t my jam and I didn’t particularly love the main character. I did really like the male characters family and the other side characters and will be checking out the first two books in the series.

I do think this was well written, the dialogue was great, and anyone who loves friends to lovers, slow burn, and minimal spice will really enjoy this. Putting aside that this book isn’t for me I give it 4 stars because I think people into these tropes would really like this.

I enjoyed this novel by Sophie Sullivan. I have not read the first two in the Jansen Brothers series and honestly didn't even know there were others until I just came on here to do a review. So I think it goes without saying that this could also be a standalone book. I loved the character development of both Wes and Hailey. It also kind of makes me want a salad shop or salad food truck. I love the friends to lovers trope. I think Sophie Sullivan portrayed it really well and it was believable. I'm curious as to what the first two books in the Jansen Brothers series are about, obviously Chris and Noah getting with their gals. I think they may be next up! Thank you to NetGalley for the audio book version of this book.

This is an adorable story about two people who vow to be "just friends." You know how well that always works out! I loved that you got to see both characters points of view. You start off with Hailey's point of view, staring her new salad shop "By The Cup" off the ground, trying to make it a success. Then you met Wes who seems to be all business. I just loved both of them. The audiobook is just adorable. This is also book three in the series but you wouldn't know it because it is just a cute little love story all on its own. Planning to add the first two to my TBR list now!

I read this book as a NetGalley eARC last September and it turned out to be my favorite read of that month. So when the audio version popped up on NetGalley, I had to request it. This is by far one of my favorite interconnected stand-alone series! The representation of mental health issues and other issues adults face when moving to a new place, or starting a career they love. These books make me so so happy. Wes and Hailey are by far my favorite, although I have only read Chris and Everly’s story, and not Noah and Grace’s but it’s on my TBR and I will read it soon! Wes and Hailey have such a special place in my heart because I met my boyfriend in a similar way, and we were friends at first. I’m a sucker for friends who were interested the entire time. The audio of this is amazing, I wish I could permanently listen to it over and over. The narrators perfectly captured all the emotions and attitudes of each character. I also love a good Dual POV audiobook, so that added to my enjoyment! I’m so thankful I got to listen to this, and share my honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the audiobook of A Guide to Being Just Friends.

I love a good enemies to lovers trope, and I felt like this was a great one. My only complaint would have to be that I felt like the story was a little long winded. I felt like Hailey and Wes had great chemistry from the beginning. I don't know if I totally understood the guide part, but it was still a very cute book that I would recommend to my friends if they enjoy rom-coms!

Audiobook update:
Listening to this book was suuuuch a treat. I fell in love with Hailey and Wes when I read this book last year and was missing all the Jansen brother's so this was the perfect excuse to come back to this world.

Love the narrator for Hailey so much. She really capture's Hailey's tone well and brings so much life to her. Wes' narrator took a minute to grow on me. He started kind of meh for me, but definitely felt like he embodied Wes better as the story progressed.

This is a fantastic way to experience this book, and I really want to go back and listen to the audiobooks for the first two Jansen brother books.

5/5 stars again
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"I feel like I've found a secret code that unlocks a different world that only I'm allowed to be part of, that only I know how to navigate. Even the hurdles feel more manageable with her there. It feels like everything fits perfectly into place even when it doesn't all make sense... I feel happy."

After a less than pleasant meeting, Hailey Sharp and Wes Jensen really don't expect to run into each other again. When life keeps throwing them into each others paths, they realize they actually click really well and easily become close friends. These two are determined to only stay friends. Hailey is busy building up her new salad shop, and Wes has enough trauma to deter him from ever wanting to love. The closer they get, the harder it is to follow the guide they've made up for themselves, and can't deny the feelings that are there.

SOPHIE SULLIVAN DID IT AGAIN!! She captured everything I love in a friends to lovers book. The slow burn was done so well, and you barely felt it because the friendship developed was perfection. Sullivan also brought back our favorite characters from the first two books as big parts of Hailey and Wes' story. I highly recommend reading Sullivan's other two books first to get a full feel for how important these characters and their stories come together.

When it came to romance, Wes and Hailey had so much healing to do within themselves. My sweet sweet, protective, and scared Wes had to really go through it in this book. His heart is so big, and I fell in love with him right away. I loved Hailey and her headstrong attitude. Watching her not only thrive with her business, but find a family in a new city had me crying happy tears for her.

I love love love this book. I cannot recommend it enough, especially if you were a fan of the first two books. I cried like a baby at the end, because I was not ready to say goodbye to the stupid, big hearted Jensen brothers and the three women they fell in love with. All three books felt like a big found family trope.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Sophie Sullivan for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

↠5 stars!!!

*3 stars*

This was a pretty standard romcom. A solid friends to lovers story if not the most memorable.

While this was a pretty cookie cutter plot with the grumpy/sunshine trope, it did what it needed to do as a quick turn off your brain (not in a bad way) kind of romance. The conflict was a little overdrawn; I would have preferred more relationship development instead.

I haven’t read the other books in this series so I can confirm that this is a solid standalone. I enjoyed this enough to check the first two books.

Happy Release Day to Sophie Sullivan, and congratulations on this sweet gem of a story.
Hailey Sharp, determined owner of a salad shop (a girl after my own heart), meets and becomes friends with Wes Jansen, who, amongst other talents, builds apps and is distinctively anti-relationship. Fortunately, Hailey and Wes are on the same page about only wanting something platonic and even come up with a set of rules to make their friendship a success.
I ❤️ the friends-to-lovers trope. Listening to their friendship grow from a meet-not-cute into something warm and lovable made this book such a delight. The slow build of feelings was well-executed. The supporting cast of characters (in particular, Wes’s brothers, who embrace the joys of all-consuming love) added humour and sincerity.
And the audiobook narrators did a great job too. Thanks to #netgalley and #macmillanaudio for the ALC.

A Guide to Just Being Friends is the third book in the Jansen Brothers romance series. When a salad shop owner, Hailey Sharp, and a business prodigy, Wes Jansen meet there is an instant connection. Both have reservations about relationships, for different reasons, but they fall into a quick friendship. Being just friends is well and good until feelings form and their well laid plan goes up in smoke.

This is the first in the series that I have read, but it could easily be read as a stand alone, you just lose a little bit of the background info with other Jansen brothers. A Guide to Being Just Friends was the perfect romance for me. I love the just friends turned to lovers trope and this one was well done in my opinion. I couldn’t wait to see what was going to come next for Wes and Hailey and I didn’t want to put this book down. If you are a romance fan who loves the friends to lovers theme, this book is definitely worth a try! I can’t wait to go back and read the first two books in this series. I definitely recommend this if you are looking for a refreshing romance!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an audiobook copy of this book!

I really enjoyed this audiobook. The narrators did great keeping me engaged. The story was a very cute friends to lovers saga. When I started this book I wasn't aware it was part of a series. I didn't feel like I'd missed anything by not reading the first two beforehand. I loved Hailey and Wes' story about building an independent life while learning to lean on each other. The character development and story telling was very relatable. I enjoyed the dual perspectives throughout. #AGuidetoBeingJustFriends #NetGalley

I have to be honest, this is not my typical genre. I work in a library so decided I needed to step out of my typical reading material so that I can be well rounded for our patrons and make suggestions. It is your typical romance book, audiobook in this case. The narrators did fine job with the he said/she said and I feel they got the characters right. I do feel it went on longer then it should have. It came to a conclusion and I thought okay it is finished and realized it kept going! Maybe it just needed to be rearranged? I just feel it could have ended, predictably, a lot earlier. I will recommend to our patrons who read romance and I am sure they will love it. I just felt it went on a bit longer then needed.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the chance to read this ARC. I am familiar with the Jansen Brothers and this book did not disappoint. I listened to it as an audiobook and loved the narrators voices! This book hooked me from the first page and I couldn't finish it soon enough. If you've read the other two books in the series, you definitely want to read this one too! If you haven't, you could read this as a standalone, but the entire series is worth the time.

A Guide to Being Just Friends - Sophie Sullivan
Synopsis:
"Hailey Sharp has a one-track mind. Get By the Cup salad shop off the ground. Do literally everything possible to make it a success. Repeat. With a head full of entrepreneurial ideas and a bad ex in her rearview, her one and only focus is living life the way she wants to. No distractions.
Wes Jansen never did understand the fuss about relationships. With a string of lackluster first dates and the pain from his parents' angry divorce following him around, he'd much rather find someone who he likes, but won't love. Companionship, not passion, is the name of the game.
When Hailey and Wes find each other in a disastrous meet cute that wasn't even intended for them, they embarrassingly go their separate ways. But when Wes finds Hailey to apologize for his behavior, they strike a friendship. Because that's all this can be. Hailey doesn't want any distractions. Wes doesn't want to fall in love.
What could possibly go wrong?"

Thoughts
This was a sweet friends to lovers story! I really enjoyed Hailey and Wes's relationship, although I didn't like their meet cute. I actually really loved the first 2/3 of the book.
I didn't vibe well with Hailey, she was very independent to a fault. I understand her characters backstory on why she didn't like to receive help, but it was just a bit
"much".
Wes was mostly adorable, except for the "big fight" moment.
Even though the ending felt a little thrown together, I did still like how it played out.
I received this #gifted via audiobook AND ebook. I did prefer the audiobook version, I liked the narrators a lot!
Thank you @netgalley @stmartinspress and @macmillan.audio for these copies in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Really enjoyed this rom-com. The flow of the story was great. The characters were lovable. I really liked that there was a clear beginning, middle, end. I thought the relationships, both friendships and love ones, were overall positive. I liked that there was no lag on the developing relationship. It's progression felt authentic. Even though the main characters both had flaws, they were able to recognize and work through them quickly. I appreciated that. It felt like every storyline had a clear purpose of why it was included in the story. I would definitely read another Sophie Sullivan novel. Also, Stephanie Willing and Timothy Andres Pabon were great narrators and really added to the story.

I read this book through the audiobook format, and this was a duel narrator situation with both male and female voice actors. Some audiobooks are better than others, but I have found that most male voice actors doing female character voices really make me cringe. In particular, this narrator was really nasally when speaking the female characters’ dialogue.

Overall, I liked the content of the book. I liked the setting and the story arc. What I didn’t like was how the main character, Hailey, has an obsession with her ex and how contradictory she gets when he is brought up. She will say that she doesn’t care about her ex, but will do and say things in spite of him. If she were truly over him, she wouldn’t be thinking about him as much as she does. Not to mention, the unpleasant traits of the ex is used a way to progress the story and explain Hailey’s motivations.

There were several pivotal moments in the book that really stopped me from enjoying it more. Hailey says that she’s fine with not finding love right now, but in the same sentence will turn around and say it would be nice though. This happens several times throughout the book. At least Wes is consistently insistent that he doesn’t want love. Whereas Hailey as a character is very wishy-washy, and I struggled to root for her because of it.

There’s also another moment in the book that made zero sense to me. It’s when Wes gifts Hailey a dress for an event they’re attending together, and they both keep pretending that she doesn’t know where the dress came from. I didn’t understand what the point of this was, and I felt like it detracted from the relationship development.

I didn’t realize at the time of reading this book that it’s a series. But I’d be curious to finish out the series to see how the other books fare in comparison. They’ll be going on my TBR list.

I’ve been reading a lot of dark and twisty lately, which will always be my go-to, but, when I had the chance to read and listen early to Sophie Sullivan’s @authorsophiesullivan A Guide to Being Just Friends, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to make sure I still had feelings.

If you haven’t met the Jansen brothers yet in either Ten Rules for Faking It or How to Love Your Neighbor, this is the perfect time to grab all three books and laugh a little, cry a little, maybe even do some swooning and remind yourself that someone doesn’t always have to end up murdered to absolutely love a book.

A Guide to Being Just Friends by Sophie Sullivan
Jansen Brothers #3. Contemporary romance. Can be read as a stand-alone but the couples from the previous two books have a lot of interaction in this story.
Hailey moved away from Los Angeles to San Verde and opened a small restaurant making salads. It’s the perfect solution for the small strip of businesses and her knowledge of the industry. But she doesn’t have any money for marketing yet, so she’s counting on repeat business and locals finding her. She makes friends with the owner of dessert place next door and other business owners. Wes and Hailey meet and ultimately decide to be friends. The relationship might go deeper but neither is ready.

Sweet and yet emotional as they learn to love and both work through their past heartbreak. Friendships also grow from his brothers and their girlfriends (the previous two books), yet both Wes and Hailey are skittish and unprepared for the impact of the other on their lives.
Wes disappointed me more than once with his decisions. Hailey needed a wake up call too.
Ultimately they make things right but it’s a bumpy road in the last third of the book.

I did find the sister’s bookclub amusing. No books. Just wine and gossip.

Wes:
“Their gazes locked and a strange zap—like he’d stuck his finger in a socket—whipped up his arms, over his back.”

“She laughed and it surprised Wes to his very core that he thought the sound was pretty. Art was pretty. Not laughter.”

Hailey:
“Life without cookies is just dumb.”

🎧 I alternated between an ebook copy and an audiobook and did the last 10 chapters simultaneously. To me the ebook felt sweeter and kind of adorable. More friends to lovers feel. The audiobook gave the text a bit more of a hard edge to the storyline. Maybe I heard more of Wes’s hesitation and stand-back attitude in the performance though he’s clearly smitten right away.
The narration is a dual POV with performances by Stephanie Willing and Timothy Andres Pabon. Both did a fantastic job with telling the story from their characters perspective. I think Stephanie did a better job with voice variances.
I listened to this audiobook at 1.5 which is about my standard at the moment. And slower and it would sound like a stilted conversation.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the audiobook from Macmillan Audio.

4/5 stars

Haley's only concern right now is getting her new salad shop, By The Cup, up and running. She's leaving behind a bad break up and a less than ideal family dynamic and moving on to bigger and better things in San Verde. Wes Jansen is focused on the business he runs with his brothers, making time for a few lackluster dates in between. When he has an accidentally rude run-in with Haley and returns to her store to apologize, they strike up a friendship and connect immediately. Neither is looking for love, despite their instant chemistry so they create the guidelines to remaining just friends. Sounds like a perfect plan, so they thought...

Overall, this was a super cute read! I didn't realize at first this was part of a Jansen brothers series, so I'm really excited to read the other two now! This book is a little bit insta-love, a little enemies to lovers, and a lot friends to lovers, and I liked the mix! There were times when it became a bit redundant and their conflicts started to feel repetitive and I didn't love the male narrator, but the female narrator, Stephanie Willing, really pulled it together for me! Haley and Wes were both really likeable characters and I enjoyed their love story! Can't wait to pick up Sophie Sullivan's other work!