Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I DNF at 68% but I skimmed the book from about 20%.

Pros:
Fast paced
Good writing

Cons:
Too many tropes. Every couple of chapters seemed to have a new trope.

There were too many things that could have been developed further and weren't. They could have led to interesting plot points. Instead another trope and situation was introduced.

I tried to love this story, but the couples, while sexy were predictable in both a boring and unbelievable way. I was disappointed and barely got through this one.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this story.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

From the very first paragraph I felt ~seen~ by Sophie. This book was funny, charming, and sweet. I loved how it showed that healing isn’t linear, and we’re all human, so we will inevitably fuck up. But, that doesn’t mean we aren’t worthy of love.

Some of the dialogue felt a little clunky and unnatural, and like not a ton happened, but overall thoroughly enjoyed this book!

This book had a lot of potential. I really liked the premise of it, and I was into it right away. But something just didn’t stick with me. I got bored and didn’t want to keep going. I strongly considered DNF-ing it. The main relationship started to feel too easy, and then parts got too juvenile for me. It wasn’t horribly by any means, just didn’t keep me super engaged.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this ARC.

GENERAL INFO

Year Pub: 11/14/23

Date read: 5/19/23

Format: Kindle

Source: e-ARC. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Page Count:336

Setting: CA

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Women's Romance Fiction, NA

Tropes: enemies to lovers, celebrity romance, sister's best friend, books about books

Standalone/Cliffhanger/Part of a Series: Book#2 The Hollywood Series

HEA/HFN ending: HEA

Epilogue Included: yes, 1 yr. later Second Chance Summer and Seize the Clay

Character(s)POV Spoken: dual povs H Dash and h Sophie

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Synopsis/Plot Summary: Sophie Lyon has writer's block with a tight deadline. Needs a HEA for her romance book. She will meet up w/ exes to find out why they didn't fall in love. Next door neighbor/landlord Dash Montrose was a teen heartthrob turned recluse. He has become a TikTok sensation with an anonymous persona for his secret hobby- crafting. He agrees to help Sophie document her journey.

M/F-M/M-M/M/F-etc: M/F

Representation: pansexual, alcoholism

Contains Cheating: no

Contains Children: no

Flashbacks: yes Dash is forced to confront the pressure his parents put on him and competing w/ his brother Rhys.

Jealy/Possy/OTT H/h: yes, Dash's parents push him and his brother to compete w/ each other getting roles.

Amount of Sex In The Book: enough, massage anyone?

Overall Smex Rating: 4

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

Hero: Dash Montrose

Hero Description: 36, Child actor, teenage heartthrob from Hollywood royalty. Now he's a recluse who uses crafting and pottery to stay sober. No one knows he is an alcoholic. He's an anonymous TikTok sensation @tokcrafty2me and agrees to help Sophie document her experiences. She agrees to help him write the speech for his father's Walk of Fame ceremony. His father wasn't there for him.

Hero Likability Rating: 4

Heroine: Sophie Lyon

Heroine Description: Romance writer, people pleaser, never been in love. Has book contract w/ 6-week deadline. Will document talking to exes about why their relationship failed. Her mother is deceased-10 years ago- and father was never in the picture.

Heroine Likability Rating: 4

Secondary characters:
Chris-Dash's bff and sponsor
Poppy-Sophie's bff and Dash's sister.
Rhys-Dash's older brother, a famous actor
William- Dash's father getting star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kitty, his mother wants Dash back in spotlight.
Nina-Sophie's older sister, celebrity chef h from For Butter or Worse-Book #1 The Hollywood Series

H /h RELATIONSHIP INFO

OW/OM/Exes: 1st ex Sophie revisits-Jewel would not give any answers. Told Sophie to look towards the future. 2nd ex-Ned was her high school boyfriend who she broke up with. Carla-Sophie's Dr. ex who was her longest relationship. Dash has a TikTok friend Cindy he flirts with.

Cheating Before/During/Outside H/h Relationship: no, but they agree to friends w/ benefits relationship.

CONTENT WARNINGS/TRIGGERS
Alcoholism/addiction, mental health

AUTHOR OVERVIEW
Erin La Rosa
New or read before & any favorites: new author for me. I would read the first book in this series, For Butter or Worse, about Sophie's sister Nina.

PERSONAL OVERVIEW

Overall Rating: 4*

Do You Recommend This Book: yes

Will You Re-read This Book: maybe

Would You Read More Books by this Author: yes

°•*⁀➷ 4 Stars.

This is the story of two friends who under unlikely circumstances start developing feelings for each other.
If you like a best-friend's-brother to lovers and forced proximity this one is definitely for you.

Sophie is definitely going through it. She's a writer suffering from writer's block. She has a book she must publish ASAP. The problem is how will she write a story where the characters fall in love and get their happily ever after if she has never experienced that in her life? She has been broken up with multiple times and can't seem to fall in love. She decides to go on a quest interviewing her exes to figure out why she could never seem to say those three words. She is hoping that this quest will help her get her passion for writing back.
Enters Dash. He is her best friend's brother, her neighbour and also the landlord of the house she is currently renting out. Dash is also going through it. He is a recovering alcoholic with a hollywood royalty background. He is dealing with his own sets of insecurities and rethinking what he actually enjoys doing. He is stuck between figuring out who he is without the shackles placed on him by his family.
How will Dash emerge on the other side without the need to be the person everyone wants him to be?

The plot of this book is nothing I have ever read before. It is so well written, funny, quirky and extremely relatable.
Through Sophie and Dash's budding romance we discover what it's like to be loved unconditionally. What it means to live for yourself and not others, and most importantly what it means to honour all parts of yourself whilst loving someone completely.
The book also explores deeper topics like dysfunctional families, alcoholism, addiction, loyalty and everything in-between.

This was my first book by Erin La Rosa but I will definitely be reading more of her!


Thank you so much NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me this arc to read and review!

You’ve already noticed the single star, so I feel obligated to be transparent here: there will be spoilers in this review. I can’t explain my issues with this novel without them. Sorry/not sorry.

The Gist:

Sophie is a romance author whose never-been-in-love status has triggered writer’s block: she can’t write the HEA for her upcoming novel, which is due to her editor soon. She determines to meet up with all of her exes to figure out what went wrong, documenting her journey on TikTok and hoping that it will unblock her writing and maybe even rekindle a past flame. Oh yeah, she also has a longstanding mad crush on her BFF’s brother Dash, who also happens to be her neighbor/landlord.

Dash is a former actor and black sheep of a major Hollywood family. He left acting to focus on his sobriety, although he’s keeping both his alcoholism and recovery a closely guarded secret. Clean for just over 18 months, he’s managed to stay sober by isolating himself, a secret craft-focused TikTok account his only avenue to community. Sophie has always just been his sister’s BFF…until he finally notices her one morning while helping her through a monster hangover. (If you want to avoid the upcoming spoilers, just know that this last detail is one huge red flag for my biggest objections.)

The Good:

1. La Rosa’s writing style is engaging—her smutty scenes are generally satisfying and work to move the plot forward, and her minor characters are well drawn. Had my One Big Objection been handled differently, I certainly would have enjoyed this novel. So, despite my strong fatal objections here, I’m willing to read another of her titles.

2. Probably my favorite aspect of this book was the casual inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters. That Sophie is pansexual is no biggie. One of her exes is enby; another is a BIPOC/same-sex ex. Again and again—no big, no big. They are presented as (gasp!) normal people doing their normal people-y thing. This is exactly as it should be. The seamless weaving in of these characters is so phe.nom.en.al that I debated whether to even mention it here. (Believe me, I recognize the irony of pointing out how much I appreciated the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters without them explicitly being pointed out.)

The Meh:

1. Trope-a-palooza. So many other reviewers have mentioned this that I don’t feel much of a need to elaborate. I think the author was trying to achieve a meta-fiction thing here—a romance author encountering a series of romance tropes. Unfortunately, the plot points aren’t developed well enough to make that approach successful. This is unfortunate because it could have come across as fun; instead, it just came across as lazy.

2. The whole TikTok thing—I get it: it’s supposed to be a fresh, new take on the epistolatory novel. Except it just…isn’t. It immediately gives this novel a limited shelf life, not to mention that TikTok’s format doesn’t lend itself to prose. It was far too awkward to include as such a frequent and important literary device.

The Bad: Beware: spoilers ahead!

1. Penetrative Sex as some sort of threshold for physical intimacy: can we please stop pretending that p-in-v sex somehow ‘counts more’ than other methods? Particularly (but not exclusively) when we’re reading about queer characters?

2. Cheating: Sophie sleeps with Dash after she decides to reconcile with her most recent ex. She even tells Dash on her way out the door, with “all her clothes bundled in her hands,” that she’s “attempting to make things work with Carla.”

Are you, Sophie? Are you really?

Let me just say that cheating is never acceptable. Not even as a plot device. Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

3. And this is the big one: irresponsible depiction of addiction and recovery:

Where do I even begin?

First, Dash’s sponsor Chris—how loudly can I write that a sponsor is not a bestie. And there’s no way, zero, that Chris is going to strap his own baby onto Dash’s chest, send him to a meeting, and then not follow up with him about it. I don’t care how sleep-deprived Chris is or how much he’s jonesing for a nap. This is not sponsor behavior. At all. There also won't be basically zero repercussions—including and most immediately Dash having to find a new sponsor—once Chris realizes he’s been lied to (even if ‘only’ by omission) multiple times.

Next, Dash’s relapse—I have no problem with the fact that Dash had a third-act relapse. In the course of the narrative, this absolutely makes sense. However, I do have a few major problems with his time in rehab:

There’s a soft implication that he wants to get better ‘for her,’ so that he can ‘be the man she thinks he is.’ (Please note that I’m paraphrasing here.) What’s worse, these implications go largely unchallenged. Even Dash’s therapist goes along with this, which is not something an addiction counselor would ever do, especially within the first days and weeks of residential treatment. No. Just, no.

Next, Sophie sets up a scavenger hunt at the rehab facility with her ‘I love you, so let’s officially kick off our romantic relationship’ at the end of it? And the treatment center lets her do this? On visitors’ day? Seriously? Because, no. No, they didn’t. It’s basically s.o.p. for addicts to focus only on their sobriety for the first year of treatment. There is absolutely no way that Dash’s sponsor (such as he is), therapist, and rehab center staff would condone this. Which of course means that the one-year-later Epilogue should have been Dash and Sophie’s first official date.

And this brings me to my biggest beef with the way Dash’s alcoholism was treated in this novel—he is never shown going to a meeting, not even after his on-page stint in rehab. I get that for most of the novel Dash was trying to ‘do things on his own,’ but after his relapse? The dude has to go to meetings. Readers need to see his character grow in a very specific way—and that means meetings. On the regular. And probably therapy. And a new sponsor. These things are non-negotiable. As it’s written, the Epilogue basically shows him being ‘all better’ after a year with Sophie, which dangerously supports the ‘love can fix addiction’ lie. For me, this absolutely kills the book and I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anybody. At all. Ever.

And don’t even get me started on Sophie’s tattoo, about which I will just say this: getting inked as a way to announce your love is cringey. Creepy. Ill-advised. And honestly, Dash—who faced a cringey, creepy stalker within the course of the narrative—absolutely should have seen it as a red flag. Ew. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.

Romance, cuteness, and just a touch of book-nerdy-ness!

I devoured this book in one sitting! Both the FMC and MMC were delightful to read and when they came together sparks flew (no books where harmed thankfully).

This was weirdly more intense than I expected it to be even with the obvious plot notes in the blurb. Like homeboy is going through it and just needs some love. But not like a voodoo doll kind. Just a normal kind sane love.

I was very invested in their friendship and I kind of wish we had seen more of that before it moved to the ✨next level✨ because, although they’ve obviously seen each other around, they both admittedly have not had many interactions. But then they move real quickly to having All The Interactions, which tbh is understandable considering their families I guess.

I read it all in one day! It’s nice to have representation (of addiction, invisible/less visible illness, etc) that is portrayed in a real way, and I am so glad to see it more and more in media!

I thought this book was really cute! Outrageous and predictable, yes, but an entertaining read. I'm a big trope gal, and all the tropes included were like a romance book lovers dream come true. I also love pop culture references in books, and Plot Twist was full of them. Dash and Sophie were both sweet and vulnerable, but an explosive match in the bedroom too. And the cover??? SO CUTE (if you say you don't judge a book by its cover, you're lying). There was a balance between feel-good romance and deeper issues, but if you're looking for an overall fluffy romance read - this is it!

Thanks to NetGalley and Erin La Rosa for an ARC!

Read if you love reading about:
- best friends brother
- grumpy x sunshine
- forced proximity (landlord x guest house)
- celebrities
- only one bed
- tiktok and social media
- pansexual representation
- friends with benefits
- dysfunctional families
- sobriety and mental health issues

As always, I like to start this by thanking Erin La Rosa for the ARC! Feel super grateful. Now, this story was the definition of a fun summer read. This story is a best friend's brother rom-com with a lil more depth. The story follows Sophie who has written a popular romance novel. While writing the second one, she gets severe writer's block. Trying to blow off some steam, she gets drunk with her best friend, and someone records her announcing that she's never fallen in love before, which goes viral on Tik Tok. From there she decides to publicly share her journey of meeting all of her exes and asking them questions about their relationship. Why they thought it didn't work out, if she had done anything wrong, etc.
Along for the ride is her landlord aka her best friend's brother, Dash. Even though she has lived in his pool house for a while, they have never really gotten to know one another much, until the viral video. What starts off as a friendship, slowly turns into something more. But Dash is a recovering alcoholic, and wants to get that handled before jumping into a relationship. Not only that, but he feels like he will never be worthy of a healthy relationship after all of his struggles with alcohol.
So Sophie comes up with the perfect solution, a secret friends with benefits situation. A casual relationship is bound to not cause any problems, right?
This story was quick, funny, and overall enjoyable read. I have never read about a character that has struggles with addiction, and enjoyed reading his perspective. I feel the conflicts were dragged out a lil too long, but overall it was a great read. 3.5 Stars!

This book is the second book in the Hollywood Series but can be read as a stand alone. I didn’t even know it was the second book until I went to write this review.

Sophie is a romance author who has writer’s block and is pretty sure it’s because she’s never been in love. How can she write a HEA if she doesn’t have one?

Dash is a retired teen movie star. He agreed to rent out his guest house to his sister’s best friend Sophie. They never interact until one morning his sister is worried about Sophie and asks him to go check on her.

This book is full of tension, swoon factor, dysfunctional families, addiction, scandal, and a friends-with-benefits arrangement that is doomed from the start. It successfully describes love regardless of gender, and handles heavy topics with care. The side characters are fantastic additions to the story. Shout out to Dick the squirrel (full name is Richard Gere), who I enjoyed probably more than the author intended.

This book is out November 14th! Thanks to @netgalley, @harlequinbooks and @erinlarosalit for this eARC. All opinions are my own.

This was the first book that I read by this author, and it definitely will not be my last! I really loved the characters and the storyline and enjoyed how the author tackled topics such as alcoholism and dysfunctional family. Gotta love the grump x sunshine trope (one of my personal favourites) that was in this story, which is honestly one of the main reasons I picked it up!

I've already recommended this book to some friends of mine and I cannot wait to pick up more books by this author!

I loved this book! It was so smart, fast and enjoyable. The characters were dynamic and relatable - I loved the growth we saw in them as individuals but also in their relationship (and not just romantic). They grew as friends, siblings and children. This book had a great plot line and I will definitely be including it at my business.

As soon as I could see the trope for this book was grumpy sunshine, I assumed I would love it. This did give the best rom com vibes and I was feeling it for the first 75% the last 25% fell a little flat for me. I lost interest but followed through since this was an arc for me. I didn’t love the tiktok concept but I didn’t hate it. Some cringe dialogue. Not a favorite but not the worst.

This one was definitely a case of “second book-itis” for me - sort of like the sequel curse. I LOVED For Butter or Worse but thé follow up left me feeling slightly sad? The Trope of best friends brother is strong but we also are dealing with a character fighting to stay sober in his battle with alcoholism (definitely take this as a CW if you are sensitive to this topic) and I think because For Butter or Worse made me laugh and felt light I preferred it? Regardless! I still do recommend this one and the series overall. The topics are definitely worthy of adding to romance novels overall, and they are well written with a couple of fun moments woven in

This is an incredibly sweet story.
Sophie and Dash have known each other for a long time. He's Sophie's best friends brother. A former actor recovering from an addiction and her long time crush and she's an author trying to finish her latest romance novel.
Sophie moves into his rental unit and before you know it things get heated. This isn't an easy road to their hea. Many events make things nearly impossible for them to stay together.
Can they make their way to the ultimate hea? Will Sophie ever be able to say those 3 special words to Dash?  You definitely need to read and find out.
4.5 stars

First and foremost, I would like to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for granting me this advanced reader's copy!

What initially drew me to this book was the cover, but I was even more pleased when I found that the main characters had real depth and nuance. Sophie and Dash's story was certainly not linear, nor predictable. I found it charming, and watching them struggle with their own interpersonal issues was refreshing. Yes, the book is a romance; however, I loved that it was more complementary to them becoming the best versions of themselves.

Sophie, a romance author, is struggling with writer's block. Despite having numerous relationships, she has never truly experienced love. She embarks on a reflective journey by interviewing her past lovers and questioning why their relationships didn't work out. While pursuing this insight, Dash, her best friend's ex and a former childhood actor, is there, cheering her on. Dash, dealing with his own pressures of sobriety from alcoholism and the expectations imposed by his momager to return to the family business, simply wants to focus on his pottery.

As Sophie and Dash form a bond that evolves into something more, questions arise: Are they capable of being what the other person needs? Do they even know what they truly need? And are their needs at odds with what they want?

This forbidden love tale has a lot to unpack.

Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐️

Too cute! First a thank you to netgalley.com and the publisher for the prepub copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rom-com sums up this book.

Sophie is a writer who rents from her best friends brother, who happens to be her childhood crush, as in movie star crush. Her next romance novel is due in less than a month and she is stuck. You see, Sophie has never been in love, though she has dated a lot.

Dash is a recovering alcoholic ex-actor who just wants to make pottery, but his mom keeps trying to force him back into acting and thus back into drinking.

Together these two end up starting something, but will it be good for them? Or will their lives crash and burn?

Love this. If you are looking for a cute romcom with just the right amount of romance with getting all sappy, this is perfect.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this e-arc.

3.5⭐️

I really enjoyed this cute, steamy and fun rom-com. Sophie and Dash were absolutely delightful, but those references to pop culture and TikTok were so cringey and I just couldn't stand them. But all in all, lovely story and characters.