Apologies for my late review, I've been in autistic burnout and am catching up on my to-do list. The representation of panic attacks and depression were impactful and relatable. It's one of those stories that will stick with me.

Fly With Me was such a wonderful read! I enjoyed getting to know Stella and Olive so so much. As someone who has an intense fear of flying, I was immediately able to relate to Olive, and as the book progressed I realized even more how much I was able to relate to her! I found the mental health rep throughout this book to be incredibly realistic and i felt like i was able to really resonate with so many of the moments experienced. I also thought the struggles with grief and loss to be really realistic, in both women's journeys. I laughed, I cried, I giggled and kicked my feet, I fell in love with Olive and Stella, and I would recommend this book to everyone! Thank you Netgalley, Andie Burke and St. Martin's Press for a free ARC in return for an honest review!

Quick Breakdown

Sapphic Romance
Fake Dating
Opposites Attract
Airline Pilot + ER Nurse
She Takes Care of Her
Difficult Family Dynamics
Anxiety & Celiac Rep
Single POV
Open Door - Moderate Detail

Holy WOW! Nothing better than finding a gem in a debut & this☝🏻is definitely a gem.

I pushed Fly With Me off for wayy too long, partly because I was in a slump all summer & with this being my first sapphic romance, I wanted to give it a fair shot. Still reading more via audio, I jumped when alerted my library added FWM to Libby & started listening / reading soon after.

For a debut, I was surprised how well I connected with the writing. It was simply addictive & I was HOOKED from the beginning, especially with one of the best meet cutes I’ve read in a long time. The whole book is filled with swoony moments & heavy emotional topics mixed with a levity I appreciated & attribute to Andie’s nursing background. You can’t work in healthcare without being able to easily flow between tragedy & inappropriate humor 🙌🏻

That said, I need Andie to write all the medical romances now. This book was a love letter to caretakers, nurses especially & I was 1000% here for it. Everything was touched upon, from everyday common work struggles to almost feeling like you know to much when your loved ones become a patient.

Olive & Stella were a fake dating, opposites attract dream. Despite being a single POV romance, not once did I feel like I was missing something as Stella was written with all the depth I love. I love knowing they are both clearly falling despite everything being “fake.” SWOON!

This was very sweet and very hard to read in some parts. Being in the medical field but not in a nursing profession it was still hard to read how Olive's family dismissed her care and love for her brother in following through with his wishes. I LOVED the banter between Olive and Stella and their tenderness towards each other. In the end I see the point of having Lindsey in the story but we could have definitely done with her lol.

Thanks to St Martins Press and Netgalley for the gifted copy for honest review.

I did not finish this one, it was not for me, I couldn't relate to the characters, and just did not care for the story.

3.5 stars for this fun, steamy sapphic romance.

I really enjoyed the opposites-attract aspect of this text and thought the back and forth between the two main characters, Olive and Stella, was quite fun to read. Both of these leads have interesting backstories that feed into their characters really well and I think the mentions of trauma, anxiety, and grief allow Olive and Stella to function as true individuals in this book, rather than solely be defined by their relationship to one another. Their love story was sweet and I liked the development as their relationship blossomed.

The side-plots were a bit of a turn-off for me, as I wasn't very interested in the obsessive ex-girlfriend plotline, and I felt the story with Olive's family wrapped up too quickly. The end pacing felt a bit fast and I would have liked some points to be fleshed out a bit more.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and found it to be a smooth read. I will definitely keep this book in mind for patrons searching for fun, steamy, sapphic romances!

Fly With Me had moments of greatness but they felt fleeting and I walked away feeling like the novel was too heavy.

One pet peeve I have, especially when using such well known landmarks, is not researching it. Disney World is made up of 4 parks. When Olivia asked Stella if she wanted to go to Disney World with her; which should have been Magic Kingdom, it annoyed me. Especially when Epcot was referred to by its name.

For me this novel was almost too literal with the details. With romance I like an element of ease, but this felt really real and gritty. That isn’t a bad thing, it just didn’t work for me.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press for the gifted ARC!

Fly With Me is an incredibly written contemporary romance debut novel with two brilliant, interesting, successful, and hilarious female characters. Great meet cute and fake dating trope left for some funny/interesting situations and heartfelt moments. The pace was great and kept the storyline and romance on the realistic side. Sometimes I find romance books rush the romance however, it wasn’t the case with this one. I really enjoyed it and can’t wait to see what Andie Burke writes next!



Thank you, St. Martin’s Press, and netgalley for an ARC in exchange for a review.

Fly with Me by Andie Burke has everything that you could want in a novel, and it's for that reason I am both conflicted about it, and would recommend it. It genuinely has everything - slow burn, fake dating, familial drama, ex-girlfriend drama, work issues, sexism - and that can bog down a novel. While I enjoyed watching Stella and Olive's relationship develop, there were so many storyline strings that sometimes it felt like a bit much. Overall, a fun read though!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review Fly with Me before it was published! I was so excited for this and feel terrible giving it a lower rating because Andie is such a great human!

I already knew sapphic romances are usually a miss for me, but I was hoping this one would be different. I really struggled with the instant love feel it gave off. I'm not sure if it was intended, but that's how I took it. And I could not connect to any part of the story. I was hoping it would hook me as I went, but I realized I didn't care to pick it up.

A tender and wonderful debut romance! Swoony and full of fun details I loved. Always appreciate an author who deals with hard stuff in a compassionate way and doesn't surprise the reader with traumatic events.
Plus, I always love an airplane/airport meet-cute!
Can't wait to see what Andie writes next.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and netgalley for an egalley copy.

Thank you NetGalley for gifting me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review and opinions. I greatly enjoyed this novel.

Flying phobic ER nurse Olive Murphy and type-A copilot Stella Soriano’s lives collide mid-flight in Andie Burke’s sexy romance Fly with Me. Burke’s vivid description, dynamic and colorful dialogue, and world-building drew me into her multilayered and original story, which kept me turning the pages until the novel’s ending came before I knew it. She deftly develops her complex, fallible, likable, fascinating, and diverse characters through funny, silly, and emotional dialogue and interactions.

Burke writes moments and scenes that are intensely emotional and dark but humorous, without them feeling cruel or like she’s laughing at the character—i.e., during Olive’s panic attack aboard the plane. Sometimes, grasping onto humor helps us hang on at those worst moments in our lives. Burke beautifully writes about grief, loss, and emotional pain with nuance and care authentically and heartbreakingly. The scenes with Olive’s panic attack, emotional breakdown, and attempts to compartmentalize all her pain and keep it together are all vivid and wonderfully composed.

Olive isn’t coping well with takeoff during her first flight when an in-flight emergency is announced. Despite her terror, she responds to the call for a medical professional and saves another passenger’s life. A video of her saving the passenger’s life goes viral. Unfortunately, when the flight’s diverted, she ends up stuck in an airport hours away from the marathon she’s signed up to run in her brother’s honor. Stella offers to drive her so she doesn’t miss it. Olive and Stella spend an incredible, magical day together at Disneyland. Then, they return to their regular lives, not expecting to see each other again.

However, when Stella sees how positively the video impacts her airline’s sales, she hopes Olive can help her get in with the airline’s boys club executives, who continue to overlook her and deny her long overdue promotion. So, Stella asks Olive to pretend they’re in a relationship, and Olive agrees despite her misgivings. Olive dives headlong into memorizing Stella’s out-of-control binder guide to fake dating. Olive and Stella start spending time together and put their fake dating scheme into motion. And, before they know it, their fake relationship begins to feel all too real. Is this an exciting opportunity for a genuine romance, or are they destined to become nothing more than two people playing at being in love?

I love Burke’s development of Stella and Olive’s relationship from strangers to friends to lovers through sexy, intimate, funny, sweet, passionate, and emotional love scenes and interactions—combined with their snarky and sexy banter. Because the novel is told only from Olive’s POV, you have a biased view of Stella and Olive’s relationship. But Burke does a beautiful job through her description and character development of showing that Stella cares just as deeply for Olive as Olive does for her—even if we don’t get inside her head.

Smart, weird, OCD, and driven, Stella is fast-talking, highly organized, in love with flying, and determined to convince Olive to fly with her or take a trip by international air travel. She’s beautiful, unattainable, and so out of Olive’s league—as far as Olive’s concerned. Despite being an ER nurse, Olive is risk averse. She’s self-deprecating with a terrific sense of humor about life and herself and a disorganized, strong survivor whose life could be in the dictionary listing under Murphy’s Law. To Stella, Olive’s a Hero. Interestingly, while they couldn’t be more different, they share many common interests and likes.

I love Olive’s friends, their interactions with her, and how they contribute to her development and evolution and the story’s progression. Stella and Olive’s families also reveal their characters’ back stories, contributing to who they are and how they became the women they are.

Surprisingly, Burke’s novel is more angsty and triggering than I expected. Still, it’s a captivating, more enjoyable novel if you read it prepared. So, please take the author’s content warnings seriously! Had I read it at any other time, I would have loved it without reservation, and I did love it. Unfortunately, our lives impact how we feel about what we read. And this has been the absolute worst year of my life because of personal tragedy and loss.

Burke’s writing is genuinely funny, emotional, and compelling. I look forward to reading more of her books. Fly with Me is a steamy, funny, sexy, angsty, and snarky fake dating romance recommended for fans of lesbian/queer opposites-attract romances that are funny and angsty. It explores themes of following your dreams, friendship, self-discovery, grief, family, caring for ill parents and siblings, emotional healing and recovery, workplace sexism and homophobia, anxiety, depression, and panic attacks.

Advanced review copy provided by St. Martin’s Griffin via Netgalley for review.

I'm sad I didn't love this book because I heard so many good things about it.

Partially I think this was marketed as a rom-com but both women in the book deal with some really heavy issues, I didn't really find any comic relief and just felt sad.

This is not really a slow-burn romance and more almost love (lust?) at first sight and personally I'm just not a fan of love at first sight stories. The fake-dating storyline also felt a bit forced and didn't sound believable.

Even towards the end, I felt like both women have a lot of problems to sort through, and I'm not really sure if they should be together.

3 star

I just want to hug these characters!

Fly With Me has been a book I’ve been looking forward to reading for some time now, I’m excited to say it does not disappoint! 🩷💜💙

This sapphic romance was full of steamy bits, darling tender moments, and tons of emotional goodness!

I adore when a romance packs an emotional punch, and this one absolutely does! There is depression, panic attacks, end of life care, sexism in the workplace, and so much more. Surrounding all of that though is a cute wlw love story with fake dating, a funny dog, delicious food, pop culture references, road trips, a sick/comfort moment, and deep conversations!

All in all- I really enjoyed this one! Andie did an amazing job at writing characters that felt real and familiar! I can’t wait to see what else she writes moving forward!

(This review contains spoilers for the novel)

This novel was so much more than just a romance novel. There was definitely a lot of romance involved and some of the plot points someone would expect of the genre (such as the fake-dating, third act breakup, etc), but there was also a lot of heartbreaking moments that flesh out Olive and Stella as real people: Olive's anxiety and depression, the struggle she's facing with her brother's situation and the pushback she's getting from the rest of her family as she's trying to fulfill his wishes, and Stella's being a caretaker for her father with Parkinson's.

I wasn't sure how to feel about the novel at first, especially because I'm not the biggest fan of fake-dating, but the last 10-15 chapters really sold me on how much I loved it. I loved how emotional the writing and plot made me, it also helps that I'm a sap for time-skip epilogues.

I think this was a wonderful debut novel from Andie Burke, even if I (like many other readers, probably) am going to have weird targeted ads after copying Derek in Chapter 44 and googling the Urban Dictionary definition of Spider-Manning.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of this novel.

This was a delightful sapphic romance, a great debut from Andie Burke. I will definitely pick up books of hers in the future.

I received this ebook from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

A romance novel with depth, what could be better?

I enjoyed this novel and the main characters for their strengths and flaws. The author realistically portrayed their struggles and joys. The spicey parts were well done.

I look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Olive Murphy is terrified of flying, but during her first ever flight she ends up saving a man from a medical emergency. Since their flight has been diverted, the beautiful copilot offers to give Olive a ride to her original destination. A fake-dating scheme and emotional roller coaster ensues!

There were elements of this book I really enjoyed, like the struggles both women had in their careers, Olive’s conflict with her family over life support, and learning to face her fears. The whole fake-dating scenario was a little more tenuous than I would normally like. Based on the synopsis, I was expecting a portion of it to be a road trip romance, but sadly no. I didn’t really feel the emotional connection between these characters. Sometimes this can be because the single POV makes me feel less connected to the other character and shows less of their dimensions.

While Fly with Me is a sweet lesbian fake-dating romance, it missed the mark for me on the emotional level.

I don't have much to say except I just loved this romance, and how romantic it was. Stella and Olive both had to find themselves, learn to love themselves, then they were able to love each other. The book had me bawling at times, but I still had to make it through in one sitting.