Thank you netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really sweet & spicy romance. I loved the alternating timeline/POV from both the MC. The FMC was fun and felt relatable, and the MMC was top tier hot and grumpy.

My only quip was the book was the major conflict in the book was just kind of irritating. But I truly enjoyed this and read it in one sitting.

4/5 ⭐
2.5/5 🌶️

Beautiful 2nd chance romance with unique characters and setting. The structure is dual timeline and dual point of view. Our hero, grumpy florist Elliot. narrates the “before” timeline when he and Ama first fell in love. Our heroine, wedding planner Ama, narrates the “now” timeline - 2 years after she broke his heart. They come face to face when working on a wedding for a superstar influencer. The two brides are perfect side characters and their wedding could make or break Ama and Elliot’s careers. So the former lovers have no choice but to work together and maintain peace for the sake of the wedding of the year.
Most of the romance (and spice!) takes place in the past, while the present storyline focuses on the planning of the wedding and the wedding day itself. This helps the reader keep all the moving parts right where they need to be and eliminates any confusion which sometimes occurs with dual timeline/ dual pov. I loved Ama and Elliot’s backstories, their first meeting, and watching them fall in love. I absolutely adored the wedding planning and highjinks involved - every aspect was unique, fun, and picturesque.
I did wish for more heartfelt interaction between Ama and Elliot in the present story. They avoided each other or avoided any difficult conversations, focusing on the 2 brides and the wedding itself. This made the ending a bit abrupt. It was a very quick turnaround from barely speaking to hea. However, I loved the story overall and will definitely read more from this author.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Oh my gosh!!! Yes. More of this. I LOVED this book. I have seen so much hype around this beautiful book and it is so well deserved.

Also, a book heavily around flowers?! Mmmmhhmmmm I will take it.

Forever you picked a winner to represent here. Make sure we get all of Julie Soto's work forever please!

loved this romance between a wedding planner and a florist. Loved that it was in Sacramento and I recognized all of the places mentioned from the firehouse to a city called Carmichael. I loved that I could picture her walk in midtown. I loved the romance and the different point of views from elliot to ama. Loved seeing her siblings and how long they had been apart from each other and loved the ending and all the stuff that happened on the wedding day. I hope to read more from her maybe the siblings .

I was so excited to receive a copy of Forget Me Not - Thank you NetGalley!! I had seen a couple reviews for it that had me very excited to read it for myself.

The story focuses on Ama, who is a wedding planner, and Elliott, who inherited his fathers flower shop. Both have personal issues such as Ama being drawn to weddings due to her mothers 10+ weddings or Elliot wanting to be an architect but ultimately taking over the shop. I thought that there situations seems realistic and each challenging in unique ways.

The dual POV with a forward and backward narration kept me on edge and invested. I was dying to know what exactly happened to leave these two both pining for each other but deeply heart broken.

There were only two things that really took me out of the story and one was the wedding planning component with Ama getting too invested. As someone in the industry, I couldn’t really understand getting invited to bachelorettes. I get wanting to develop a really strong relationship with a client but some of it just seemed too far fetched. I also wish there had been more of an epilogue or ending because it felt a little abrupt.

But overall this was a great and fast paced read! 4/5 stars

This book was very cute. I like books that show two points of view and do a good job at getting the audience to care about both characters that they root for them to be together. I definitely got Norah Ephron romantic comedy vibes from this book that I wish it were also a movie. Overall good read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Forever for the e-arc!

Second chance romances, for me, are something I either love or hate, and I LOVED this book so much! I couldn't put it down. The wedding planning was so fun to read about and the talks about flowers made me want to start up my own flower shop.

The dual POV alternating between past and present really kept me engaged and was a great way to tell the story. I loved the past chapters and how the backstory unfolded; however, I wish that we got more chapters in Ama’s POV in the past and more Elliot POV chapters in the present. There was little interaction in the present between the two, but you could still feel the love and chemistry between them.

I love a good grumpy character and Elliot was perfect for me. He was always more actions than words and I adored every minute of it.

Overall, the book was a mix of super funny wedding planning shenanigans and a bittersweet backstory of a relationship falling apart and coming back together.

4.5/5
I absolutely loved this book!! The storytelling, the characters! it was so much fun to read!

Julie Soto’s debut is fun and full of banter. When wedding planner Ama and florist Elliot are put on a high scale wedding, they are forced to face their past relationship through the… stressful preparations.

I love Ama and Elliot so bad I am obsessed with their dynamic and I enjoyed this second chance romance!! I was very impressed with how quickly the story moved, I felt totally along for the ride and my attention never wavered.

I was worried it would make be cheesy but this story felt very real and anything cutesy and romantic didn’t come across cheesy. Perfectly realistic and I enjoyed the characters depth most of all!

I will be recommending and waiting for the authors next book!

Did I immediately pre-order the physical copy of Forget Me Not by Julie Soto after reading the ARC? YES!

Weddings run in Ama’s blood. And not in the good way. Her mother has been married 16 times! And while her mother was off falling in love, Ama was falling in love with the chaos of wedding planning. To her, love is fickle and not worth the commitment or marriage. But weddings were just one big party. And saying yes to wedding planning was the only commitment she could see in her future. That is until she meets a florist named Elliot.

Flowers are better than people. That was until Elliot met a girl named after a flower. Elliot is a grumpy local florist. What he lacks in customer service, he mades up for in stunning floral designs that leave couples speechless. When a high profile couple request Ama and Elliot work together, can they put aside their differences to plan a wedding that will make or break their careers?

Not only was this book angsty and steamy, it was laugh out loud funny. I loved the way the story unfolded with the two timelines between present and past. Ama is such a relatable character and Elliot’s sassy attitude with her when they first started working together had me giddy. I couldn’t possibly love this book any more than I do.

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was absolute perfection, a true 5 star read!

Forget Me Not is like going back to '90s West Coast romcom marrying into (see what I did there?) 2023 sensibilities, but with depth and spice and everything nice. You get a wedding planner who is trying to build a business on selling commitment despite her commitment issues. You get a TDH broody tattooed florist who has perfected the art of pining. You get a smoldering tension that sputters, dies, gets run over by a trolley, and then revives in a second chance romance. You get petty business moguls, reality TV drama, and what potentially could be two bridezillas (but not really). And with all the fantasy reading I've been doing lately, I'm actually really glad I picked up this book in between.

Especially because it has Elliot effing Bloom.

I think what this book did really well was the pacing and formatting of each perspective. Ama's story takes place in the present time, and she is scrambling to plan what is essentially the wedding of the year. The problem with this is that her two brides have already arranged the florist for the event: Elliot Bloom, who happens to be the guy she practically ghosted over two years ago. Now, the very thought of working with Elliot has Ama completely at odds with her ambitions, and not only does she have to struggle with the flame she still has for this broody florist, she also has to continue to deal with all of the obstacles that come with a high-stakes wedding.

Elliot's perspective starts the very moment he and Ama met, some three years ago. His storyline moves up towards the infamous break-up and runs concurrently with Ama's present. By the time the story makes it to the climax, we eventually see how everything went wrong, but also how everything goes wrong within Ama's story. It's clear that the two still have a lot to hash out between them--both in the past and in the present--but my god, the hashing out was so. damn. great.

Also also also, just Elliot Bloom with his superhero florist saves. I can't even begin to list the amount of things he's done for Ama without telling Ama he still loves her. We all just end up knowing it after every action he's taken. Pretty sure Ama did as well.

There's no doubt Julie Soto can write slow-burn romances. There's no doubt Julie Soto can write spice into her romances. There's no doubt that there'll always be that one damn sentence or statement that will make me cry. And Forget Me Not had that in spades. Even a little look at my Kindle highlights and notes could tell you how often my mind broke reading certain chapters. I had to put the book down a few times just so I didn't get worked up over the drama so often. But boy, was I invested.

This was such a fun read! I loved every second of it! Wedding planner Ama (whose favorite food group is donuts.. same though) isn’t the relationship type, after seeing her mom get married over and over… and over again but she’s all about the party! After landing a HUGE influencer wedding, she finds out she’ll have to work with her florist ex. They haven’t spoken in years, and their chemistry was undeniable. I absolutely adore dual POV books AND different timelines, the way Julie wrote this giving present from AMA’s perspective and the past from Elliot’s perspective was perfection! Getting to see what he was feeling in the moment, and how she thinks of those same moments still. It was a little spicy! Honestly I can see this book going viral and I’m very happy to have been able to read it and be a part of the books journey!

Oh my god!!! I read this book in one day and I am so sad that it’s over!

This story follows Ama, a wedding designer, as she plans the biggest wedding of her career. The only problem is her clients’ choice of florist, Elliot Bloom… who just happens to be her ex.

This became one of my most anticipated reads of 2023 just from seeing the cover, and then I read the blurb and realized I was stepping into romcom heaven! Also, I loved the idea of a male florist because it’s something I’ve never read in a book before and it was so good! I can not put into words how much I loved the entire thing, from the plot, to the drama, to the characters, to the relationship between the main characters in each timeline. It made me laugh, cry, roll my eyes… the whole nine yards!

There’s just so many hidden gems in this piece of art. All of the little details that made up such a beautiful and cohesive story, like the FMC’s full name and its meaning, or the MMC’s tattoos. I also liked how the present timeline is in the FMC’s POV while the past timeline is in the MMC’s POV. I felt it was a very wonderful detail that held a lot of significance.

The slow burn made me cry. I seriously got so emotional from the smallest interactions between the two mcs. This is why I don’t understand not liking second chance romance, because the ANGST. The SADNESS. It grips me so wholeheartedly every time, and this book was NO exception. The events of this book were realistic, raw, and powerful. And it made the ending that much more meaningful!

*Actual rating is a 4.5

Ama Torres is a wedding planner that doesn’t believe that long, committed relationships last but despite this, she’s great at her job and knows exactly what her clients want down to every vendor for their special day. When Ama gets hired for a wedding that can make or break her small business, she’s ready to dive head first into the planning and talking vendors but this couple already has the perfect florist in mind, Elliot Bloom, who just so happens to be the exact man that Ama has been trying to avoid ever seeing again after things went down between them a few years back.

This already awkward dynamic is made more so when it’s blatantly obvious the chemistry that Ama and Elliot have with each other and they’re surrounded by the wedding couple who are determined to set them up and a tv film crew that is documenting all of the wedding prep. Despite the time and distance, they work together just as wonderfully as they used to and now their hearts are on the line as well as the futures of their businesses.

This story was so freaking cute. I assumed going into it that I would really enjoy myself and was super excited to read a book that features the industry that I personally work in. I think that the chaos that goes on behind the scenes for wedding vendors was captured beautifully and elevated with the relationship both past and present between Ama and Elliot.

Elliot was the star of the show, in my opinion. Ama drove me a little crazy and I was nervous that my opinion on her wouldn’t change but the last 25% of the book really had me reanalyzing her as a character. Their relationship and the complexities of it was explored beautifully and I loved that it was dual pov because we got to really see both sides of their story.

I do wish that we would have gotten more conversations between them that weren’t necessarily wedding related throughout the book but otherwise, this was a super solid read and I enjoyed myself!

- Second chance romance
- Sunshine x Grumpy (ish?)
- Opposites attract
- Forced Proximity
- He Falls First
- Slowburn
- Caretaking
- Broody Male lead
- Wedding Events / Industry
- Dual POV & Timeline

This was perfection. Will be a top romance read this year.

Second chance romance
Grumpy sunshine
Dual POV
He falls first
Alternating timelines

Does that not sound divine?!

My interest was peaked in the first chapter and held the entire way through, I loved the humour mixed with raw emotions, the juxtaposition of Amas tough and rumble demeanour and Elliot’s brooding sensitivity.

There was angst but it was the believable kind, all through out there is a sense of mystery surrounding what went wrong between them that kept me turning pages to understand.

Heaps of chemistry, self growth, tender moments and serious steam, this is a sure fire hit for summer reading.

Thank you to NetGalley, Forever and Grand Central Publishing for the ARC all opinions are my own.

I’ll be posting a more extensive review on my Instagram closer to publication date.

Forget Me Not - By Julie Soto

"𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒅 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒖𝒔, 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒆 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒐𝒖𝒕. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒏'𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒅 '𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈' 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒎𝒆."

Special thanks to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for the eARC of this book 🫶

I absolutely adored this! It’s been one I’ve had on my list for months, and I squealed when I was approved for it on NetGalley! I was happy to find that it lived up to the hype and I had such a great time with it!

Ama is a wedding planner who doesn’t believe in marriage. But she is amazing at her job anyways! From the start there is obvious tension between her and the rude florist, Elliot. They are forced to work together on a high profile wedding that could be very beneficial for both their careers, but because of past drama they can hardly stand to be in the same room together.

This book is the ultimate grumpy sunshine and second chance romance lover’s dream! Beyond the romance story itself I loved seeing into the wedding planning world. As someone who had a very no strings attached, do it yourself wedding it was fun to see into the world of the rich, and what goes into planning their big days that seems inconsequential to real life people. But the author was great at making us also care about all the seemingly silly details! It was a unique setting and I loved it!

This book is also deceptively spicy 🌶️ which I was pleasantly surprised to find 😜

This book is 5 stars for me, and from what I can tell a debut for this author! I will now be adding Julie Soto to my auto buy list for sure! The only thing I wish I could’ve seen a liiiitle more of was Elliot’s personality, and why Ama fell for him. Not to say it’s not there or it’s not good, it is! Their connection is obvious! But I did find myself wanting just a tiny bit more.

It’s out July 11th, so be sure to get your copy this summer! This is one I will def be purchasing for my shelf 💜

💐

“B-because I want to know you. I want to know what you like, what you hate—even if it’s me.” I start pressing a second finger inside slowly. “Fuck fuck fuck—I want to love what you love, even if it’s extinct.” -Ama

I just love books about love.
And that’s precisely what this book is about.

The story is initially being told in two different time lines. We get both POVs which I really liked. We get Elliot’s POV from the past and Ama’s in the future. I kept trying to figure out what was going to happen next on both sides.

My favorite thing about this book would definitely have to be Elliot’s devotion to Ama. He was there for her every step of the way. Also the chemistry between Elliot and Ama is unmatched! 🤭

“If you want to move forward with whatever this is between us, you don’t have to worry about me backing out. You may think everything ends one day, but you haven’t had ‘everything’ with me” -Elliot

Overall I really enjoyed the story and the characters.

Definitely recommend if you like:
•Flower shop setting
•Wedding setting
•Second chance romance
•he fell first and he fell hard
•grumpy vs sunshine
•spicy scenes (including a work table) 🫠🙌

-Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an Arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up

"Forget Me Not" is cute, second chance romance novel, with a dual POV. Ama Torres is a wedding planner who loves weddings but doesn’t believe in marriage while Elliot Bloom (pun intended) owns a flower shop but prefers being an architect. They had a falling out a few years back but can't seem to avoid each other as they are both in the wedding business.

I must say, I really liked the time jumps. We hear from Ama in present day as she begrudging works with Elliott on a high profile wedding while Elliott recounts their history and explains why they are so uncomfortable being around each other. I loved their chemistry but was annoyed with Ama for taking Elliott for granted.

While this is a work of fiction, I thought Ama's reason for rebuffing Elliott didn't seem plausible. Also, who gets married 16 times?

Still, if you like sizzling reads with lots of angst, add this one to your TBR!

Thank you NetGalley and Forever Pub for this ARC. All reviews are my own.

I loved the dual timelines, especially having Elliot's POV in the past and Ama's POV in the present. So unique.

It was awesome seeing the behind the scenes of a wedding planner. The drama and the stress of the day of the wedding was so exciting and stressful. It definitely gave me all the feels. And I could picture perfectly all the floral arrangements and the space that Ama created for the reception.

Elliot's speech and his small acts of kindness were so swoon worthy. But also the grumpy banter he would do with Ama was amazing. And let's not forget his tattoos.

I loved the way that Ama stood up for herself the day of the wedding. And Elliot was always in her corner. I'm glad she finally listened. Plus I wish I could see those memes in real life.

I really need to stop requesting books on Netgalley just because I love the covers. I CANT STAND SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE. Most of the couples past and learning each other happens off page, which is usually my favorite part of romance. Add onto the slowness in the beginning, its a meh for me,.

When you think “i need a 2000’s romcom movies type of book” This book is what you need to go for.

The story is both light and a angsty to grasp your attention as you root for this couple to get their second chance together.
Elliot is the perfect tall, broody, and tattooed man. He can’t stop thinking about Ama from the minute he sets his eyes on her, them working together for months as a florist and wedding planner is only making it worse. That is until he finally gets a taste of which only makes him hungrier for her–only to realize she doesn’t do long term or believe in marriage (the irony of a wedding planner who doesn’t believe in marriage).

We get Elliot’s pov from 3 years ago when they started and Ama’s present one as she’s forced to work with him again while she plans the wedding of her dreams to grow her business.

I personally will sign whatever petition needed to turn this deliciously sexy and sweet book into a movie. 10/10