4.75/5

The slow burn, hates everyone but her trope, and gorgeous tattoos had me obsessing over Elliot from the beginning. Then there’s Ama, an independent girl boss who is heavily dependent on donuts. This was such a sweet (and spicy) second chance romance.

This book follows Ama who is a wedding planner, and we see the present day timeline in her pov. Then we have the grumpy and talented florist Elliot, and we get to see the past timeline in his pov. Ama and Elliot are forced to work together again when Ama is hired for her biggest wedding yet by a famous influencer. Throughout the book, we find out more about their past and what led them to drift apart. This was a beautiful second chance romance that had my heart absolutely breaking.

This was definitely a book I felt like I wanted to reread right after I finished it. We get to see how hard Elliot fell for Ama in the past, and I love how nervous and innocent he was in the beginning. When I found out the meaning behind the dates counting down in the beginning of Elliot’s chapters, I was unwell. He is such a romantic and deserves the WORLD. I wish we got to see more of their relationship develop at the end, but still really enjoyed this read!

Thank you NetGalley & Julie Soto for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Ama is a wedding planner that has recently set out to run her own business after being employed by one of the largest wedding planners in her area. She just landed her biggest job as planner for a social media influencer. She runs into a huge issue as her couple wants to use her ex boyfriend Elliot Bloom as their florist.

This is a really fun grumpy-sunshine and second chance romance. Ama and Elliot have great chemistry. This book is super hot and equally sweet. I enjoyed the dual timeline of the story. There also was an interesting antagonist side plot that I will not discuss to keep the review spoiler free.

This book was such a delight to read! I was captivated from the start with a refreshing storyline of a wedding planner being forced to work with her ex-boyfriend who is the florist for the wedding that will send her career to all time stardom!

Ama Torres is an ambitious wedding planner who ventured out on her own after being trained by a big shot wedding planner in the area for years. She has a unique gift for being able to transform a couples vision for their wedding into a magical atmosphere. Everything is perfect and flawless. But that’s because she’s see her mother wed and divorced 14+ men. Due to this instability, Ama believes that marriage is something that is destined to fail and closes herself off to longterm dating. While she doesn’t have hope for herself, Ama has seen it all and knows right away if a couple will make it or not.

Enter Elliot Bloom. Elliot was forced to take over his fathers florist business after he passed away, forcing Elliot to quit school to become an architect and take on the flower business. He says from the beginning “flowers are better than people” and his angst and grumpiness doesn’t end. Elliot notices Ama at one of the weddings when she is shamed by her mentor, this bitch named Whitney, and never forgets her. But is he nice to her when she walks in the door years later looking to work with him on floral designs for her mothers latest wedding? Absolutely not.

Ama and Elliot do this back and forth dance of insulting each other and complimenting each other over the course of the wedding season as they work together almost every week to pull of dream weddings. Next thing we know, they are hooking up and not dating but not seeing other people.

This is where the book is so interesting to me. We have present day drama of Ama and Elliot as they are not broken up and being forced to work together for a celebrity couple. We don’t know what went wrong but at the same time, alternating chapters go back to the past and detail how their relationship began up to how it fell apart.

I loved that the dual POV so much because without having Elliot’s POV you’d think he was such a jerk. It gave so much insight to his thoughts and feelings as he dealt with his growing love for Ama even though she was so resistant to being in a relationship. Their love felt real and the tenderness in which Elliot treated Ama while dating and even after was just so swoon worthy.

I think this book is going to be such a huge hit for romance readers everywhere with such a unique perspective and a woman being the one not willing to commit for once. I laughed out loud, I felt the hurt, and I shed a tear for the day of the wedding situation with Ama. The ending was beautiful and made perfect sense for this couple. Just such a great book that I already ordered my own copy.

Thank you forever publishing and Netgalley!

Forget Me Not is a second chance romance between Ama Torres, a sunshine wedding planner boss ass babe who doesn’t believe in marriage, and Elliot Bloom, a florist with a scowling grumpy exterior and cinnamon roll interior. Ama scores the opportunity to plan a celebrity wedding that could potentially launch her career into new heights, but the catch is that one of the nonnegotiables for celebrity couple Hazel Renee and Jacqueline Nguyen is that they work with Elliot as their florist, who happens to be Ama’s ex.

In a countdown to now, Forget Me Not bounces between the dual timeline and dual points of view between Ama moving forward in the present and Elliot backwards from the past. I personally am a big fan of this type of nonlinear storytelling, so I was hooked and thriving in the moments that were built across time as they blended together from different perspectives.

Elliot fell hard, and he fell fast. The sheer angst and pining despite the years past between Elliot and Ama was palpable. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of second chance romance, but I was absolutely routing for these characters and their growth towards each other. Together, their work makes magic for Jackie and Hazel Renee’s wedding, and together, they are magic.

I absolutely loved Forget Me Not. Reading Ama coming into herself by gaining confidence and trusting herself and the genius that she puts forth into her work and then facing her saboteur head on was so satisfying. Reading Elliot coming into his job that he felt forced into, embracing his creativity and his father’s legacy, and his steadfast love for Ama (no matter how much time has passed) had my stomach rolling with butterflies.

Julie Soto has gained herself a loyal fan, and I’m excited to read more of her work. Thank you Forever and Netgalley for the ARC!

I was extremely fortunate to get a ARC of this amazing book earlier this year and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I finished reading it. Forget Me Not has everything the romcom girlies could want- second chance, grumpy/sunshine, TATTOOS, dual POV’s, and of course some spice too 😏 it’s full of humor and so much pining, I couldn’t put it down! Our leads, Ama and Elliot’s chemistry is electric (I Can See You by Taylor Swift literally belongs to them) and their banter had me laughing out loud so many times. You’re gonna love every minute of this amazing book. Be sure to grab your copy at your favorite book store!

Thank you to Forever and Grand Central Publishing for sending me this copy in exchange for an honest review 💜

Would you be able to work with your ex on the biggest wedding of your life? Let’s discover-

Wedding Planner - Ama is a wedding planner who has been approached to do a very high-profile wedding

Influencer - The bride is an influencer with her own makeup line, and Ama is pleased to come with creative concepts for this event

Florist - However, there are a lot of flowers involved, and the florist that the clients want, is Ama’s ex Elliot

Timeline- As we follow Ama’s story in the present, and Elliots POV in the past, we see what happened to break them up in the first place

Thanks to Forever pub, I was able to finally read this book that I had been hearing a lot about. First off - this book has a LOT of spice. More than I was expecting really and at time I felt like the spice was occurring too much that it would jar me out of the story. But if you LOVE it, this one won’t disappoint. I really just wanted to live in Ama’s timeline because hers was all about the wedding and the design and I wanted to so much of that. The descriptions were great. But since Elliots timeline was pretty much where the spice occurs, I felt like I didn’t know him as much as I wanted. However, still a great read and very fun!

this book immediately captured my attention by its stunning cover and intriguing premise. a second chance romance featuring an ambitious wedding planner and her grumpy florist ex who have to work together again on a high-profile wedding for the first time since they split two years ago - what more could you want!

let's start with our main characters. ama is this super ambitious and eager wedding planner who puts her whole heart and soul into what she does. seeing her develop and grow throughout the story, becoming more confident in herself and her work was so fun. and elliot bloom. a brooding, grumpy florist with a harsh exterior yet so much care and love in his heart. the way he remembers small things and evidently cared so much about her was so sweet.

written in dual POV and dual timelines, I loved getting to see both of their perspectives throughout and how they truly felt about each other. their chemistry and banter was just so good and I loved the grumpy x sunshine dynamic between the two. there were some points where I maybe wanted a bit more interaction and emotional connection between the two but I really just adored their relationship. plus I thought the side characters and the wedding industry setting was just super interesting and the writing style made it so easy to envision exactly what was going on.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and finished it in just one day! perfect for lovers of second chance and grumpy x sunshine romances, I would definitely recommend picking this one up!

Oh my heart. This book.

Second chance romances are an emotional journey—they always are—and usually that makes me turn away from them or avoid them, but this one? This one? I absolutely adored it.

Told in dual timelines in dual points-of-view—the past mainly from Elliot’s perspective and the present from Ama’s—Forget Me Not weaves together the then-and-now love story of a florist who doesn’t “let go of things easily” and the wedding planner who “doesn’t believe marriage works”. He’s the all-in type and she’s the no-labels type. And here’s the thing: while this setup in other books may make it easy to point the finger at one or the other main character and declare, “How could you do this to him/her? How dare you act in this way,” Soto crafts the story arc and the characters so that the reader ends up feeling for both of them. You see why they are the way they are, and your heart breaks for them. You root for their happily ever after. Thank goodness romance as a genre guarantees one of those.

Ultimately, the story is as gorgeous as its cover art. Allow yourself to get swept up in Soto’s writing and Elliot and Ama’s love story; you won’t regret it.

I received an advance copy from Forever and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.

I thought this was such a fun romance, I loved how it focused on two people working in the wedding industry and I always LOVE a second chance romance! Definitely a 4.5 star read.

Synopsis: Ama Torres is a wedding planner who doesn't believe in marriage. Her own mother has been married over a dozen times, so Ama believes that relationships and marriages aren't forever but that you can definitely have a great wedding party. She leaves the large party planning company she works for and is making her own way as a wedding planner for smaller, budget weddings until she lands a potentially career-changing opportunity - to plan the wedding for a huge social media influencer. The only catch is, the couple has already chosen their florist, who just so happens to be Ama's ex-boyfriend, Elliot.

When they had dated, they had fit together so perfectly, both personally and in their business endeavors. But Ama's refusal to commit to anything long-term had pushed them apart. Now forced to work together closely to design and pull off this huge wedding, will they be able to deny their chemistry a second time around?

Review: One thing I really loved about this story is that it was dual POV and dual timelines. In the "now", we are reading from Ama's point of view as she tries to plan this crazy wedding and work with Elliot again. In the chapters set in the past, we are reading from Elliot's point of view from when he met Ama and they start dating the first time. It gives such great context for how their relationship is now and their feelings toward each other. I love how in the past POV chapters, Ama basically just barrels into Elliot's life and makes herself comfortable there, and he is totally perplexed but also intrigued by her.

I also liked that Ama had commitment issues but still was a happy and fulfilled person. She loved her career and the couples that she got to plan weddings for, and always went above and beyond to do her best even though she didn't believe in commitment. I think she was secretly such a romantic but needed to come to terms with how her mother's approach to relationships had impacted her. Now that she's older and more mature the second time around with Elliot, she can see and approach things differently.

I so enjoy a good grumpy/sunshine and that's exactly what this is! Elliot has always been grumpy but in the "now" he is definitely not pleased to be back around Ama and it trying to maintain a gruff exterior even though he so clearly cares about her. You could totally feel the tension between them, this had such a good "slow burn" while still giving us some great spicy scenes.

The wedding storyline was a lot of fun and kept things interesting, I was really rooting for Ama to be able to pull it off. Overall this was such a fun read, thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review!

l'm giving this book 4.75/5. Thank-you to Net Galley, Forever publishing, and author Julie Soto for an advanced reader copy.
We find AMA a wedding planner being hired to do one of the weddings of the year. There is one small problem-one of the brides wants to use her exs flower shop for the wedding. No matter how much she tries to steer them in a different direction-they insist. So a few days later AMA finds herself in front of Elliot Bloom. They have the initial meeting and even the brides can feel the chemistry.
This book takes you back in time and you can see how AMA and Elliott meet and how they progress from there. He falls head over heels for this woman. AMA has a lot of personal things that make her a commitment phone (in the past towards marriage). Their relationship progresses with some hot scenes of past encounters and we finally see what happened to split them up.
Present day: we have now a film crew filming them and AMA's ex boss trying to slightly ruin the wedding. AMA gets the job and injures herself. However, Elliott helps greatly and AMA hears his pep talk to one of the brides and realizes that she still has feelings for him. Read the book to see how this end.
[loved the author's ability to write about emotionally challenged people. Really great read!

This book holds many of my favorite tropes - grumpy sunshine, he falls first being the two best. I enjoyed this book, and it was a quick read. Would definitely recommend to friends!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this book!

I loved this dual timeline, dual POV, second chance romance. Really I should've known it would be great based on the fact that the book boyfriend is named Elliot. IYKYK

Elliot was fantastic- I understood his character and motives easily. Ama was harder to empathize with as her actions didn't match her thoughts/words. She seemed to essentially be taking MMC for granted and using while it suited her. I liked the side characters but did feel like everything was a bit rushed at the end.

I think what kept me from fully embracing Ama was the fact that she KNEW her mother's relationships screwed up her views on love and marriage, even joked about needing therapy, but did nothing to understand or heal.

This was fun, sweet, and hot. Read it in one sitting on the beach. Julie Soto is a long time fan fiction writer and she pays such sweet homage to the fan fiction world in her arc copies. I really enjoyed this book and I think fans of Ali Hazelwood or Tessa Bailey will love this one as well! Thanks so much to @readforeverpub for the advanced copy!

How is it possible that this is a debut?!?? I could NOT put this book down.

We have so many tropes. And they are all very well done...
-grumpy sunshine
-second chance romance
-workplace romance
-he falls first

Elliot Bloom is my new book boyfriend and I would literally die for him. I loved hearing the past through his eyes. He was a true cinnamon roll hero, so grumpy, but sweet in disguise.

Ama was a bit more annoying. I did like her, but I didn't love how wishy washy she was. I think she did grow, which I love a good growth/development arc.

I will continue to read from this author and am very excited for his next book in 2024!

5/5

This 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍-𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 was so much better than I ever expected! I was 𝕖𝕟𝕣𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕕 from the very beginning and I couldn’t put it down! I’ve been recommending it to everyone! It’s my top July read so far, and while we’re still early into the month, it’s going to be hard to beat! I 𝙖𝙗𝙨𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙙𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙙 both Ama and Elliot. I’m a sucker for dual timelines and POV and this has both.

Ama is a wedding planner who has just recently branches out on her own. She scored the biggest wedding of the year but it comes with a catch. She has to work with her grouchy florist ex-boyfriend.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞:
✿Grumpy x Sunshine
❁Dual POV
❀Dual Timelines
✿Second Chance Romance
❁Brooding MMC
❀Spice
✿Feel Good Romance

4.25 stars

“No one should have to wait for happiness a second longer than they have to.”

I don’t think I’ll be able to say anything different than what most people are saying about this book. Forget Me Not is such a great debut novel. There is so much depth of feeling, that it had me laughing, crying, & my heart breaking & soaring. The writing was fantastic & I felt as though I could watch all the scenes play out in my head in such a colorful way; everything jumped off the pages.

I always find myself saying that I don’t like second chance romance, but I think maybe I do actually! I really enjoyed exploring the relationship between Elliot & Ama, their push & pull, especially with the flashbacks from Elliot’s POV. Tbh, I loved Elliot so much, he’s such a great character in an “I’m angry at the world but underneath I’m a soft little flower” way! I felt I resonated more with him than with Ama, & definitely agree with him that “flowers are better than people.” (btw did anyone have Reindeers are Better than People from Frozen stuck in their head after they read that? Just me?) He felt things so deeply & it was refreshing to see a MMC that wanted to pursue a girl seriously & make her a priority. He was a hero in every sense of the word for Ama & the wedding they were planning. He is a total sweetheart & I just know that Elliot is going to be the new book boyfriend of the summer!

In reference to Ama, I felt that in the flashback chapters, even though Ama was saying she wanted to keep things casual, it more felt like she was taking advantage of Elliot, just for sex & personal gratification- to get what she wanted from him but always keeping him guessing & at arm's length. For some reason, the more she denied her feelings, the more I started to get frustrated with her. It took me a really long time to warm up to her, & it wasn’t until basically the end that I found myself really rooting for her character, when she was confident in her decision making skills & was honest with herself.

Jackie & Hazel were such great supporting characters & I loved that they meddled in Ama’s love life. I think that the relationship of client vs. friend could have been explored a bit more since one of Ama’s struggles was to “be a professional”. Clearly, she had been scarred by Whitney’s words & she carried the hurt from it & allowed it to affect her work. However, it was interesting bc even though she put up walls, we could still see that her way of connecting & relating to her clients was extremely successful. Jackie & Hazel were able to balance work/play really well so it would have been nice to see that expanded with Ama.

My one point of contention for the whole entirety of the book (besides Ama in the beginning) are the last handful of chapters. I felt that they took away all the angst Elliot & Ama had working in the present during this wedding, & from their budding whirlwind romance in the flashback chapters. I’m dissatisfied bc I am not sure why or when Elliot’s feelings changed about his wants. He had been desiring this for so long, that when Ama made her big gesture to show Elliot how she really felt, he didn’t deny her, but he made it seem like this is not what he had been looking for all this time. It left me a little confused & I suppose this is a HFN ending, so there is hope for the couple, but with the entire story about marriages & weddings it felt a bit off for me.

Overall, this is a book I would highly recommend. The writing was great & the chemistry between the characters is undeniable. The spicy scenes were done so well, & this is such a refreshing story! Forget Me Not is for sure going to be talked about for a while! Also- can we give it up for the cover bc omg it's so beautiful! If you’re a fan of dual timeline, dual POV, second chance, angsty romances, you’ll be sure to love it!

Thank you so much to Netgalley & the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for a review!

I want to read every book that Julie Soto is going to write. It’s as simple as that. To say that I enjoyed this book would be an understatement, I adored it. Certain novels just seem to hit the mark for certain readers, well, this one hit me right in the heart.

A book is nothing without its characters, and Ama and Elliot were great characters. Other than working in the wedding industry, these two were opposites in every way. She was a bubbly, charismatic sweet tooth who was all about making a couple’s special day perfect. He was a brooding, grumpy man of few words who would rather eat dirt than sugar. Oh, but their chemistry was off the charts.

Ama’s goal was always to be a wedding planner and never a bride. She didn’t believe in the longevity of romantic relationships, her mother proved that point over and over…and over again.

Elliot wasn’t too experienced with relationships, but he believed that they could last. While he had a gruff exterior, he also had a vulnerable side that, I will confess, made my heart pitter-patter. He may have come across as rude and uninterested much of the time, but I don’t know, there was just something that I found endearing about him.

In my opinion, Forget Me Not was a perfect summer read. Okay, also the perfect fall, winter, and spring read. My point is, just read this book. It had great banter, plenty of humor (I actually laughed out loud), sizzling chemistry, and just an overall wonderful story.

*5 Stars

This book is still on my mind DAYS after reading which is always a good sign! Elliot is the owner of Bloom flowers and Ama is an up and coming wedding coordinator. Being forced to use Elliot as one of her vendors for an influencer’s wedding has Ama on edge because of course, they used to bang. I say that because Ama would NEVER admit that what they did was dating, let alone entering into a relationship with Elliot because commitment is strictly off limits for her. So banging it is. Elliott is the grump to Ama’s sunshine and yet this book was not tropey at all. I cannot put my finger on why I loved this book so much but I feel like I devoured it. And the more I read, the better and better it got. I think its uniqueness lies in the dual timelines: Elliot’s POV is firmly in the past and Ama’s is in the present. This allows the reader to see how Elliot falls for Ama and learns to love her (the past) while seeing the fear and awkwardness Ama has of working in the present day with Elliot as coworkers. The reader sees both MCs fears from these POVs and the tension builds as we work towards the “how will they handle their past now that they’re confronted with one another?” Being kept in the dark about what happened to Ama and Elliot keeps the anticipation of their interactions sizzling.

Which brings me to things I’m obsessed over:
-Elliot’s tattoos (like I actually Googled and looked up all of them)
-sex on a table with roses and dirt
-Love showing up when it counts
-All things flowers and wedding creativity
-FMC who asks for what she wants physically
-Ama’s gift to Elliot—SWOON!
-Really hot steamy scenes

I would hate to say more to ruin a good time, but definitely pick up this book if any of the above sounds interesting to you. Julie Soto is a force to be reckoned with! I received an advanced copy from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Well this was an amazing debut!

It’s a second chance romance between Ama, an up & coming wedding planner, and Elliot, her ex boyfriend and the florist already contracted to do the wedding Ama has just signed on to plan. It’s a well known influencer’s wedding that could launch her wedding planning career, so she’s forced to work beside the man who she shares a history with, which is unraveled through flashbacks as the book progresses.

Both characters were interesting and I liked Ama’s growth throughout the book, but the real winner for me here was Elliot. He comes across as grumpy and maybe a little rude but he’s so soft and gooey on the inside and is such a caretaker of Ama. He’s absolute book boyfriend material and I’m still swooning over the deliberate way he took care of Ama, even after she broke his heart. Also, he has a thigh tattoo.

Look, I’m not a fan in general of dual timelines (I lose interest when the timeline changes and I never feel like we get enough of them together in the present day because so much time is spent in the past) but I did appreciate that the past chapters were told from Elliot’s POV. He’s an outwardly stoic character so it was a much needed insight into what he was thinking.

The writing is light and funny but still emotional at times when it needed to be and it was honestly hard to believe this was a debut. There’s a good bit of steam, excellent supporting characters (I’m going to need Mar’s story next, thx), and a fun plot set around planning a splashy wedding.

Overall this was a really great read! Especially if you like dual timelines!

HOLY CRAP. This is tied with Yours Truly for my favorite read of the year so far. It was so dang good, and I saw EVERY SCENE like a movie in my mind. Incredible. Loved the wedding mischief, the dual timelines, Elliot is so DELICIOUSLY grumpy... their relationship evolution...and the spice? yummy. 5+++