Thank you, Harlequin and NetGalley, for the advanced copy of Plot Twist.

Heads up: this is book two in a series; however, if you didn't read the first one, you can still read this one as a stand-alone. I highly recommend reading For Butter or Worse. The characters do make a crossover appearance, and you learn a little bit more about their journey since the end of For Butter or Worse. Woah, Nelly! There were some steamy scenes in this one! I loved this novel. I found myself rooting for both characters and the inner battles that they were facing. When can we have book three in this series? I'll definitely be devouring that one, too!

Romance author Sophie Lyon has just been outed as never having been in love after a drunken confession that someone recorded goes viral. Dash, her hunky landlord and best friend's brother, is a former teen heartthrob that leads a secret life of crafting which he documents on TikTok. With her landlord's help, Sophie will use the social media platform to explore why her past relationships failed. Plot Twist navigates us through the friendship (and so much more!) that Sophie and Dash form while exorcising their own personal demons.

3.5 Stars

Plot Twist is the second in the Hollywood Series by author Erin La Rosa. I haven’t gotten a chance to read the first book in the series because this is my first time reading this author. I picked this book because of the cover!

The story follows Sophie, a romance author with writer’s block, and oh, she has never fallen in love. And Dash, a former teen heartthrob, and Hollywood royalty. Sophie goes viral on TikTok for being drunk and yelling in a karaoke bar that she has never been in love, and it isn’t real. Dash gives Sophie a little nudge and the idea to create videos visiting her exes to find out why it didn’t work out between them.

These two are adorable together in this romcom, and the banter was great. Their chemistry is intense. They both have insecurities to work through throughout this romantic journey. I love that these characters are in their thirties and have their fair share of addictions and mental health issues. I don’t particularly like it when a book mentions a lot of social media. I think it makes it so a book doesn’t age well. I hope that isn’t the case here.

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, Erin La Rosa, and Netgalley for gifting me an eARC of Plot Twist. I am leaving this review voluntarily. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa follows Sophie, a romance author who has never been in love and Dash, the former teenage heartthrob just trying to stay sober. Throughout the novel the two of these characters work together to help better themselves, but will real feelings get in the way?

What I liked: SO MUCH REPRESENTATION in this book. Our lead character is a pansexual author with a pacemaker and the love interest is a recovering alcoholic. What La Rosa did well with Sophie’s identity and disability was that it was not a big deal. It was not the main plot point and just added to the characterization. Dash was also not your typical male lead. He cried, he had genuine friendships where they talked in depth about who they were as people, and even acknowledged his low self-confidence. In this book. The characters truly shined and was an impossible to put down book. The author’s writing was engaging, with great humor and heart.

To keep in mind: I just learned that this book is the second in a series; however, I was not confused at all and it didn’t hinder my reading experience. In regards to plot: I do wish there was more involvement with Dash when Sophie went to see her exes and learn from them. Sophie made huge growth as a character, and adding Dash into more of that specific part of the book would have given this book 5 stars. This book also deals with issues like alcoholism, death of a parent, and family trauma. If these are triggers for you, please evaluate if this is the right book.

Rating: I loved this book and am so happy I discovered this author. I can’t wait to check out what else she has written!

Thank you to NetGalley and Canary Street Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Plot Twist comes out on November 14!

This book was not the first in a series but can be read as a stand alone. I read this book in a day and a half. I could not put it down, it was so good! I would recommend this for lovers of romcoms. I am going to look for the other books in this series and more books by this author.

I just reviewed Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa. #PlotTwist #NetGalley

This was absolutely addictive and I could not put it down!!

Erin La Rosa, I don’t know what kind of illegal substance you used in this book to make it this good but I am utterly addicted and obsessed.

The book was fast paced in all the right places, the characters were well fleshed out and the romance was oh so swoon worthy!

Thank you to Erin La Rosa, NetGalley, and to Canary Street Press for this digital ARC! I really enjoyed it! I went in pretty blind and didn’t know this was a second in her series! I loved the character development and the story flowed well. It kept my interest the whole way through and I’d love to read the first one too!

Great romance novel from author Erin La Rosa. I loved the fact that main character has a pacemaker. The main characters are both imperfect but perfect at the same time.

I really don’t know how to feel about this book. I really liked Dash and his character storyline. I struggled at times with liking Sophie but she redeemed herself at the end.

I wish there was more buildup between Sophie and Dash before they hooked up for the first time. I didn’t fully believe their chemistry- it felt like we were told to believe they liked each other when they’d only hung out a couple of times before for like 10 minutes each time.

I’d say overall I liked this book but I didn’t love it. Thanks to NetGalley and Canary Street Press for an ARC of this book! (I gave this book a 3.5⭐️ rating)

A big thank you to Net Galley & Erin La Rosa for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. I was so excited to get my hands on book two in this series as I had previously read For Butter or Worse and enjoyed the author's writing style along. Book two, Plot Twist centers around romance author Sophie Lyon and former heartthrob Dash Montrose, and follows them on their journey from acquaintance to friendship and eventually love. As all things in life, there are many challenges that face these characters including that cause setbacks in their eventual relationship, including: (possible TW) alcoholism & fear of abandonment.

I truly loved how Sophie & Dash's relationship bloomed and how they not only inspired the best in each other, but they also showed up for each other. there were many scenes in the book that contradict how the character feel about themselves and it was such a delight to read their love story. I think my most favorite part of this book was how real the characters felt. They had their flaws but they were perfect for each other and showcased so much growth throughout the book. Dash was the most supportive and Sophie returned the favor when he most needed it. They earned their happily ever after!

Sophie is a struggling writer, needing to finish her second novel before she gets dropped from her publishing contract. Dash is Sophie’s best friends brother and her landlord. He is also a former actor and a recovering alcoholic. Both of them should not engage anything romantic, but they both fail at staying out of one another’s lives.

The book has deep subject matters and handles those quite well, and I appreciated the “just-one-bed” scene and how the author kind of broke the fourth wall in that one.

Otherwise, some of the characters really fell flat for me and left me wanting more.

In all honesty, I had a tough time with this one. Sophie is a romance writer attempting to meet with her exes to find out why she feels so unlucky in love. Dash is a former child star turned hot craft guy and a recovering alcoholic. I found Dash's family, namely his mother, to be so unsupportive it became hard to read. I also don't love the idea that Sophie kept her best friend in the dark, not giving her the opportunity to respond as her best self.

The things that saved the book for me: a delightful friends-with-benefits trope and some truly steamy sex scenes (that backyard sex scene will live in my head rent-free, Ms. La Rosa!). This novel was smutty in a perfect way. For those reasons, I think this book is a fun summer or vacation read!

Thank you to Net Galley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the ARC and the opportunity to read/review it honestly.

i really wanted to love this book but it just didn't do it for me.

i liked that dash and sophie were in their thirties, but that's about all i liked sadly. i almost didn't finish it but i hoped that the ending would redeem the book for me.

sophie just annoyed me so much i could not get past it, i wanted to like her but really i just wanted to slap her.

thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

I read this quickly but there was something about it that I just didn’t quite connect with. I’m not sure if it was the characters or the writing style, but it was just meh for me. All of the conversations between characters were very stilted. I DID like the representation of alcoholism and recovery but that’s about it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa is a sweet and steamy forced proximity/brothers best friend/celebrity rom-com featuring a pansexual main character.

Sophie, a people pleasing author with a pacemaker, has writers block and is weeks away from her second novel being due. With the help of the Dash, her landlord/childhood crush/best friends brother, she is able to figure out what she needs out of a relationship/ life and how she needs to accomplish this.

An enjoyable read with twists and turns and family drama.

Review in return for ARC - synopsis below, review to follow:
Romance author Sophie Lyon’s ironic secret just went she’s never been in love—and it’s ruining her reputation. With a manuscript deadline looming, Sophie makes an ambitious plan to overcome her writer’s reunite with her exes (including her last girlfriend Carla, the one person she could have loved) to learn why she’s never fallen in love, and document it all for her millions of new online followers.

Luckily, Sophie’s reclusive landlord, Dash Montrose—a former teen heartthrob—has social media all figured out and is willing to help. What he doesn’t mention is that he’s an anonymous online crafter, a hobby that helps him maintain his sobriety. No one knows about his complicated relationship with alcohol, and with a family that’s Hollywood royalty, Dash has to steer clear of scandal.

As Sophie and Dash grow closer, they discover a heat between them that rivals Dash’s pottery kiln. But Sophie needs to figure out who she is outside her relationships, and Dash isn’t sure he’s stable enough for the commitment she deserves. So Sophie suggests what any good romance author a friends-with-benefits arrangement. Surely a strictly casual relationship won’t cause any trouble…

Review:
I really enjoyed the character development in this book, even though the pacing made the development a bit too spaced out for my liking. The characters are fun and easy to relate to, and I found that Sophie and Dash had such easy chemistry that I was rooting for them the whole time.

My only real issue with the story was miscommunication, which is historically my least favourite romance trope. While it absolutely makes sense in the context of this story, where trust issues and sobriety issues abound, I had a tough time getting through those scenes where it was heavily employed, and really had to push myself to continue. This could have also been because at some times I found the pace a little slow.

Overall all though, this book is sweet, fun, wholesome and very steamy! I would still absolutely recommend it for those who love a light romance read!

⭐️⭐️
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

I had high hopes for this one. Only one bed! Friends to lovers! Queer rep! Recovery rep! Social media! Spice!

But sadly... this book was not for me. Much of it felt forced, including the sex scenes. And as someone who's married to someone with 10 years sober, I really did not like the "choose not to drink/can be a better person FOR HER" arc. At first I was pleasantly surprised to see an MC in recovery, but choosing to abstain for someone else should be the beginning of a character's arc, not the end. The end should be a realization about staying sober for yourself. Hinging his recovery on someone, especially someone he just started dating, is not romantic. It's problematic. I'd been leaning toward 3 stars while reading this book, but the ending pushed me to 2 stars.

So, if AA or NA or Al Anon is part of your life, I recommend steering clear of this book.

Thank you NetGalley, Erin La Rosa, and Harlequin for a free copy of Plot Twist (coming out November 14th) in exchange for an honest review.


For 2023, I’ll be using this rating scale:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I mourned the ending of this journey 🥹
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ really enjoyed and would recommend
⭐️⭐️⭐️ it was fine
⭐️⭐️ I didn’t enjoy this journey
⭐️ I dnf’d or wish I’d dnf’d
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ this is smutty smutty erotica 🥵
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ medium burn
🌶️🌶️🌶️ slow burn
🌶️🌶️ romantic b plot / closed door / YA romance
🌶️ no romance / nonfiction

DNF at 40%. The third POV was not it. I could not get behind it. I actually considered DNFing at 10%, and looked at some reviews and people seemed to generally like the book so I gave it another shot. I just do not think the writing style was for me. the dialogue was cringey.

I wanted to like this, but unfortunately, I couldn't get past the tiktok references. It was this one specific thing that bothered me too much for me to enjoy the book, and I had to just put it down. The characters are interesting, and I enjoyed their backstories. I feel like if this hadn't started so heavy with social media references, I would have really enjoyed it.
However, this is just my opinion. I urge anyone to pick this up and give it a go!
Out November 14, 2024!
Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

3/5. Releases 11/14/2023.

Vibes: much social media awareness, flipping through past exes, crafting, and the anxiety that comes with putting your life back together.

Sophie released a hit of a romance novel--and nothing else since. Feeling the pressure to drop her next book, but very aware that she's never actually been in love herself, she sets up a project on TikTok to track down her exes and figure out why she never fall hard. Roped into the deal? Her landlord and (sort of) friend Dash, a former actor who now works on crafts as he works through recovery. Their chemistry is immediate, though Dash isn't ready for a relationship; but if he waits much longer, one of Sophie's exes may just snap her up.

This was fine. It didn't annoy me, but it also didn't stir me. Erin La Rosa can for sure write, and can definitely write some heat, but I just wasn't bowled over. I did appreciate some of the representation (Dash as a recovering alcoholic, the very casual queerness of Sophie's past relationships) but the story didn't grab me.

Quick Takes:

--So, the good. Like I said, I do think the writing is solid, and you're not bored. The setup of going through the past exes leads to some interesting takes, and the fact that Sophie just has a nonbinary ex, just has a female ex, is very much attracted to Dash--is just normal? Was really nice to see, and still not as common in romance as I think some imagine it is. You feel the tension rising between Dash and Sophie in a dynamic that is in some ways a slow burn and in some ways very much not.

--Where I started struggling with the exes project is... the TikTok of it all. TikTok is a surprisingly big part of this romance, and while the summary (on Netgalley, at least) does mention Sophie gaining millions of new followers, I don't think TikTok is mentioned by name. She actually documents her project on TikTok, and Dash is kind of a bigger name on... CraftTok?

And I feel like I have mixed emotions on this. Social media here to stay, and I don't think that making it a part of a romance novel automatically "dates" it, any more than including the Internet dates it. These are big parts of contemporary life, and they're not fleeting. That is, social media in general isn't fleeting. The concept of recording and posting your actions--blogging, sharing videos, etc. That's not fleeting. That will stay for the long haul, I think.

But when you get into specific mechanisms and sites, I feel like you're really toeing the line. Twitter may have seemed like a mainstay, but suddenly it's not even called Twitter anymore. Facebook was The Shit for a while, but now I would side-eye a contemporary about a twenty-something who's allll about FB. TikTok really hasn't been around that long, and while lots of people use it--let's be real, the people who really, really obsess over it tend to be confined to a somewhat small age range. It's all about trends, by design. I just don't see TikTok being this big a part of your romance novel (it's baked into the premise) aging well.

--Another issue I did take with the book was that Sophie seemed like a really passive protagonist. And perhaps that was part of what the story was trying to confront, but until then, it came off as her just sort of going with the story, not really pushing much of it forward That makes it hard for me at least to bond with her, and I had a hard time getting invested in her character.

She's a grown woman, and there is a moment in which she allows her high school boyfriend (now a married father!) to guilt her about teenage bullshit. That just didn't work to me, and it kind of felt like I was reading therapy speak, but from the perspective of a character who bought into it.

--I did appreciate Dash; his love of crafting, his focus on recovery. This was also something that I do think kind of made Sophie a tougher sell. At points, it felt like Dash was doing the work in a way that took, well, a lot more work than Sophie. This is a man very literally in recovery, doing his best. And while that doesn't invalidate Sophie's issues, it does mean I'm much more invested in Dash. I mean, him coming from a complicated famous family added to his appeal. He's just got more going on, and it felt to me like there was an uneven level of depth to these characters.

The Sex:

I've seen some saying this isn't explicit and uh... it is? She's riding his face like, halfway into the book. But there is a reluctance to go into full on intercourse on Dash's part, because of his perception of recovery (he's past the point when AA would typically recommend waiting on sex and relationships). Frankly, I found everything else they were doing super hot, so that hesitance worked for me and kind of added to the story.

While I can't say I was thrilled with this novel, I did find it interesting, and I will try more from Erin La Rosa. I'm curious about what else she's done.

Thanks to Netgalley and Canary Street Press for providing me with a free copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was so excited to read this. On paper, all the tropes seemed like a delicious combination I was ready to sink into. Unfortunately, it kind of read as a jumble of tropes thrown in together, without anything to smooth it out into a congruent plot.

I found it hard to buy into the chemistry between the leads, Sophie and Dash. I do love the queerness, and the relatable issues each character brought to the table. However, I think the strength in each character didn’t translate well when they “shared the stage”, and were in the same scene together.

Sophie makes a few bad choices that I don’t quite understand. Her fights with her friends don’t make total sense to me, since they feel like totally avoidable problems. I also have trouble buying into why a best friend’s sibling is off limits to date/sleep with, so Poppy getting that mad seemed over dramatic. I also didn’t really care for the other love interests, so I didn’t buy into the added tension of “will they won’t they” with the second love interests, because it just seemed obviously temporary to me.

Dash and Sophie are cute. But they both didn’t have that much ground to stand on in terms of being jealous of each other’s sort-of relationships with other people, especially when they both are quite tentative and unsure about their relationship with each other.