Another good read from Alexis Hall. Super Christmassy, but not enough to stop it being enjoyable in August.
It is quite descriptive of Sam's work, to the point of it being repetitive and almost boring. That being said, the characters more than make up for it.

Another delightful Alexis Hall book. I really liked both characters and how they grew and connected. It takes place at Christmas but isn't so Christmassy that I still enjoyed reading it in August.

this series is everything I couldve ever wanted! I really love the chemistry between characters and the plot and spice is perfection. I highly recommend if you are looking for a good lgbtq+ book.

You probably can't tell from the cover but this is a Christmas novel. It's almost, kind of an Ebenezer Scrooge/Bob Cratchet romance retelling (though without the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future)

Sam is the manager of a bed and bath store. Jonathan is his boss, the owner of all three branches of the store. Jonathan is a grump and a loner. Sam is less of a grump but he is a bit of a loner for reasons we eventually learn.

In the lead up to Christmas Jonathan wants to fire Sam but instead he is sort of responsible for Sam falling into a display shower and hitting his head. Sam has a concussion, Jonathan thinks Sam also has Amnesia. So Sam ends up living at Jonathan's house so Jonathan can make sure the concussion doesn't kill him and also because he is scared Sam will sue him.

Also Sam's kind of ugly grumpy cat moves into Jonathan's too and strangely seems to adore Jonathan the grump.

Jonathan's family are extremely entertaining and are a bit like a cross between Only fools and horses and Gavin and Stacey. The grandfather is totally Del Boy. Sam's employees are also hilarious and not that great at their jobs


If you have read Husband material Jonathan makes a brief, grumpy appearance at a wedding in that book.

and grumps about a bit because he IS a grump. But maybe there is a heart of gold somewhere under all the grump? Very deep down.
"I've worked very hard to be able to pay for things" is basically his life motto.

This book features Grumpy/sunshine, queer main characters, found family, actual (dysfunctional bit also hilarious) actual family.


Alexis Hall writes extremely British stories. As a New Zealander who's been to Britain twice (not recently) but who has had a life long diet of British TV, film and books I love the quirky, Britishness of the author's stories.

This is the 9th Alexis Hall novel I have read and it was probably one of my favourites. The side characters are hilarious, the main characters are a tiny bit of a mess but not as messy as for example Paris Daillencourt from Paris Daillencourt is about to crumble (his anxiety was making me anxious) or Luc from Boyfriend material and Husband material.

i was hesitant to read this because boyfriend material wasn’t my favorite read but wow! i really enjoyed this one!!! definitely wanting to read more from her!!

this was as good as the first book and didn't disappoint i would definitely read this author again thanks for letting me read this one

Enjoyed this book. Nice quick read. Introduced to Jonathan in Husband Material so nice to see more of him. On the whole Jonathan is quite an unlikable character, very grumpy and very unhappy. Sam was quite personable and a bit of a fly boy with his banter, they form an unlikely romance. Their relationship growth to romance was pretty slow, filed with lots of family drama. The book setting was around Christmas time, I usually find this off putting mid way through the year but I was able to overlook it and it will work well for the publishing date. Liked the banter and humour, as a Brit loving overseas I miss the language. Didn’t love the main characters of Jonathan and Sam as a whole, I liked Jonathan’s family. Gollum the cat was my favourite part of the book.

I couldn’t wait to read Sam and Jonathan’s story. I was hooked from the beginning I adored the Boss/employee, Enemies to Lovers aspects and the fake amnesia storyline. The fact that Sam is from Liverpool was another major benefit. However, it did fall a little flat in the middle. I didn’t necessarily think that the storyline was pushed forward and although Nana Pauline was a sassy character I didn’t see the relevance of her being introduced three quarters of the way through for her then to not contribute much. I would have preferred more snippets of Sam and Jonathan.

Surprisingly even though it was told from the perspective of Sam, I understood Jonathan, who was rather complex and broody, more than Sam. The opportunity was missed to delve into his grief over losing his parents, why he gave up the family business and his reasons behind moving the Sheffield. As someone who lives ten minutes away from Liverpool, I know the value of family to the Liverpudlian community, and I was disappointed that it was brushed over.

That being said, I really did enjoy the story and the characters were a real strength-Jonathan’s chaotic family and the many characters within the Sheffield branch of Splashes & Snuggles.

Read if you enjoy:
•Opposites Attract
•Forced Proximity
•Slow Burn
•Grumpy/ Sunshine
•Boss/ Employee

This is a tricky one to review because everything about it is... fine. It's quite funny, and quite sweet, and quite clever. But what Alexis Hall truly excels at is mental health representation, and that is markedly lacking in this book. That made this novel feel shallow and a bit lifeless compared with some of his others (Boyfriend Material, for example).

Read it if you're after a rom-com full of external complications, but if you prefer your complications more internal, then you might want to give this one a miss.

I absolutely loved this book! Jonathan and Sam make such a good pair and the banter between them was amazing. Their relationship goes from enemies to friends to lovers and I loved every single part of it

10 things that will make you want to strangle the MLs. Jokes aside I almost DNFd because I disliked the male leads so much in that first few chapters, but I'm SO grateful I didn't. The growth of the characters and the world building and just the amount of dry humor made this easily one of my top favorite reads of 2023.

I loved the conflicts that faced the characters and that they wove together and didn't feel forced. I can not get over the cat, the family dynamics and how much I could relate to certain moments throughout the book.

I also really enjoyed the LGBT+ rep that didn't feel like it was about their pain being in the community and coming out, or that it was a conflict they had to face in the plot.

Pick this up.. do it.

I'm really sorry about this but this is a DNF for me and I didn't even get that far into it. Fake dating and marriage-for-convenience tropes taunt my I'm-gonna-pass button but somehow the fake amnesia (which shouldn't have been a surprise and yet somehow was) was just too much for me. I am totally that person yelling at every screen, page, the universe when there is a situation that could be fixed with a conversation. And I get that the point is that the one character doesn't want to listen and the protagonist is faking because he's trying to protect people but it was just too much. This is possibly the longest NetGalley review I've ever written because I have LOVED Alexis Hall's books and was excited for this one and now I'm sad.

Full disclosure: I loved Boyfriend Material and couldn't wait to read this book. And it didn't disappoint me at all.

But I'm not too keen on remembering summaries after I've added a book to my TBR, so I didn't remember any of the tropes the book was going to explore of even the names of the main couple. This made read the beginning very curiously because the tropes? One of them is faked amnesia when Sam is getting fired and a shower they sell where he works hits his head. His boss Jonathan doesn't realize Sam is just joking and jumps to the conclusion the damage was so much, Sam doesn't remember who Jonathan is or why the accident happened. That's why Jonathan decides to take Sam home and make sure to take care of him for the couple of weeks someone needs to make sure the concussion won't evolve to something scarier.

3.5, rounded up to 4.

I had no idea his pairing was Jonathan until this happened. And I was probably just like Sam, asking, "For real??" that Jonathan would care for him. Alexis Hall was a genius showing us how terrible of a human being Jonathan was, so I confess I was excited to see how that would be deconstructed to become a romance.

Their interactions were so funny, and then add to that Jonathan's loud family, and Sam's weird cat who immediately trades him for Jonathan, and you have a book that will give a great time. I'm not even sure in what moment we stop seeing Jonathan as a cold-heart monster and start cheering for them, but it was interesting that we grow to realize Sam also has his faults and issues he needs to work on.

As for problems with the book, there wasn't anything too much. Maybe I didn't close it entirely convinced Jonathan got that much better after meeting Sam, or if him being so rich and with such a nice family was what weighed more there (weighed in my opinion, Sam sure convinces us he likes him). A lot of the dialogs, and I love funny dialogs, were just there to be funny, which led the book to be unnecessarily long. It's a light read, of course, but sometimes I'd wonder why this or that didn't get the axe during revision, did they really have to make jokes every page? The dynamic grew repetitive, as in "Okay, I get it, they like being funny with each other." But the book kept showing me again and again. Sometimes we just want to know what will happen next, as much as we love the characters. Because that took so many pages, the serious part of the plot also seemed short in comparison. Why would you have so much depth planned for your character and not give it the highlight it deserves?

Still, this book is worth your time. It's funny, not so predictable even if in the end it doesn't go too far from the formula, so it's still a good comfort read. I'm not a fan of hot scenes, so for me it is a plus, but it could be a deal breaker to some—this didn't have much if any really. They're explicit enough that it's not a book for younger ages but it's like what you'd expect from a PG-13 movie, I think.

As I said, I'd been looking forward to this and now I can't wait for the next release.


Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

This book was a WILD ride! Overall, it was laugh out loud funny, charming, and had that silliness that we expect from an Alexis Hall read. Honestly, the amnesia was a bit of a ride, especially since the stakes kept getting raised and the lie kept escalating. I also don’t really feel like Jonathan did the self-work I would have liked to have seen in order to be a productive part of a relationship. He was a REAL asshole, and suddenly we see him as this softer dude, but not really, but kinda? I do wish we’d had more development there.
Still and all, I really enjoyed this read!

What's a guy to do when their boss threatens to nor only fire him but all of his employees? Fake amnesia, of course!

Set in the same universe as Boyfriend Material, 10 Things That Never Happened follows Sam and Jonathan.

I really liked this one. Sam is an easy to root for protagonist, who gets himself into quite the pickle when he accidentally implies he has amnesia after his boss yells at him and Sam gets a concussion. Soon Sam finds himself in too deep and seeing a side of Jonathan that he didn't think existed.

I adore Jonathan's family in this, too! Especially how they lowkey adopt Sam.

If you like 90's/00's romcoms, Alexis Hall, etc, add this to your tbr!

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC!

Alexis Hall just hands down writes good funny stories. I can't say enough good things about this book. It had me laughing out loud, reveling in the Lord of the Rings references, crying and tearing up again and again.
This book has all the wonderful moments you get with Hall's books: humor, witticisms, three dimensional characters, relatable situations, social commentary, heaps of romance, the many facets of love, emotionally resonant communication, and the reality that love makes things better, but it doesn't magically fix everything and doesn't need to. Hall gives us characters with flaws, with their own issues and pasts, characters who grow and progress as the story progresses but who aren't magically fixed by love, or another person, or a new situation. They remain themselves, flawed and unique and relatable, and with a deeper understanding of themselves and each other. With someone at their sides who gets them for who they are and how they are and has compassion and understanding and takes them as they are. This book gave me all the feels I laughed and even cried and when it was over it was a good ending.

I've heard of the amnesia plot, but I don't think I've ever heard of the fake-amnesia plot. Which made this book so much better and different than I thought it was going to be. After falling into a glass shower and getting a concussion at work, Sam ends up having to live with his boss, Jonathan who is under the impression that he has amnesia. When he doesn't.
This book is very different than anything I have ever read before and I absolutely loved it. It did have a lot 0f deep topics, don't get me wrong, but there was a good mix of deep topics and humor.
All in all, this book is definitely one of Alexis Hall's better books and I'm so very excited to see how they improve over time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an eARC of this book.

This is the third book I've read by this author, and third book I adore. I love the stories she creates and how she manages to make you happy while reading. She has a way of captivating you in her pages and making you think only of continuing reading. This is something that I have felt very few times.

Maybe this shouldn't be emphasized, but I like that the book doesn't play around the fact that the homosexual relationship is in fact homosexual. In a sense that this book really normalizes it by not making a big deal out of it. Recently i’ve read some books where the central axis was like "you couldn't tell that this type of relationship exists", so reading this story for me was also refreshing.

It is true that the central core of the book is a lie, so of course there are people who will like it and others who doesn’t. But the truth is that I enjoyed the story a lot, I didn't care about the things that could be more "questionable" and from this moment I want to protect Sam and Jonathan from any evil so they can be completely happy.

Also we cannot forget about the clichés that this book has, because amnesia is obviously important, but we have an enemies to lovers, it's a grumpy/sunshine, although Sam is not so adorable either, but Jonathan is grumpy less for his sunshine when he wants to (you know what I mean), they are boss and employee... what more can we ask for? I don't know, but this book is wonderful. You’re gonna love it.

Of course, I can't wait to see what the second book of the saga has in store for us. I don't know if the author has already said anything about whether the second book will continue with this couple or with a different one, but whatever it is, I'll be here to read it.

I've read a lot of Alexis Hall books -- I think he's one of the best contemporary romance writers today. However, a handful of his recent books haven't necessarily been hitting the mark for me like his earlier works did. I love Boyfriend Material, of course, but I also love Glitterland and For Real and Pansies and the Ardy trilogy. And I absolutely LOVED 10 Things!
It had all the wit and joy that have become hallmarks of Hall's writing, and I found myself laughing along with the jokes and situations that Sam and Jonathan were in. I loved watching the characters grow, while also remaining ridiculously stubborn and REAL. This is my favorite sort of AJH book, and I can't wait for it to be out in October!

I loved the books I read previously by Alexis Hall. Like those, 10 Things That Never Happened is full of snarky banter and delightful Britishisms. Perhaps I'm too impatient, but slow burn romance should still have romantic tension. That's why I love the enemies to lovers trope, This wasn't my favorite but others may still find it entertaining.