This book was so funny I had to pause to just take it in for a few seconds. I think Amy Lea really struck gold with this book. The perfect balance of grumpy sunshine meets small town romance and I just loved everything about it! I think this book is going to be perfect for the spring/summer 2024 season!

A solid city girl meets small town romance.

While I’m sure many readers will enjoy this one, I’m beyond sad to report that the romance fell flat for me. I absolutely love the author’s previous books but this one seemed to have no tension or build up. Which meant when the couple finally got together, there was no fizz or spark.

Although I enjoyed the past character cameos and the crazy Whalers, I just couldn’t really buy into the reasoning behind decisions and ultimate reactions.

Also I think this is spicier than past books in this series, and it was awkward? And too basic? Idk

I would recommend this to people. I thought it was a fun and enjoyable read. I read it one sitting so it’s fairly easy to wrap your head around the plot.

Not my favourite of the series, but still cute and hot and worth a read! I would have liked to see the "enemies" aspect of the enemies-to-lovers last a little longer. I did enjoy the bonding scenes they had; I would have just liked more time spent on the development of their relationship. Good for fans of While You Were Sleeping starring Sandra Bullock (which I am) and It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey (which I also am). Overall, I really enjoyed the Influencer series by Amy Lea and will definitely read whatever she has coming next!

This book cover accurately represents the main characters and how cute their romance is. I haven't read any of the books in this series but I enjoyed this one. The main character Mel is an influencer who lands in a Canadian fishing village where she meets Evan the mmc who is a grumpy fisherman. After a boating accident causes Evan to be in a coma she claims that he's her fiance which leads to them fake dating when he wakes up to help restore Evan's family's relationship and save his Inn. The romance was cute and steamy and I liked that the fmc was a city girl and social media influencer who gets to know and falls in love with a small-town fisherman, I also liked the influencer plot and how the author explores who Mel was and the image she portrayed for her followers on social media. It was nice seeing how her time in the village with Evan and his family opened her up and helped her see how wonderful, lovable, and caring she is. There were some parts of the book that dragged for me and there was a third-act breakup but I didn't mind it much. Along with the romance I thought how the book addressed family loss, grief, and healing was heartwarming and made for a nice rom-com.

Read if you like:
- Small-town romance
- Opposites attracts
- Grumpy/sunshine
- Fake dating
- Family drama

Thank you to the publisher for this copy for an honest review.

I absolutely loved Set On You, liked Ex’s and Oh’s, and unfortunately, was underwhelmed with The Catch.

This started out really cute! The “you’ve booked a room in my decrepit inn but we’re actually not open and you got to get gone” meet cute I LOVED! The town of Cora’s Cove had so much small town personality (if a bit “local yokel” from Mel’s POV). And I loved Evan’s family, meddlesome and in the midst of a feud though they may be.

But for a rom-com, this got heavy pretty fast. I’m not saying a romcom *can’t* address heavy topics, but The Catch never quite got there with any of the things it was trying to comment on. I mean we’re talking grief, parents abandoning their kids, childhood poverty, tragic death of someone’s adult child, and serious depression/anxiety of a side character. And all of those things felt so jarring compared to dick jokes and two grown adults being “enemies” because…well there’s not really a reason other than she insults him for no reason and he doesn’t like her because she’s dressed nice?

Mel is pretty shallow. Evan is grumpy for no reason. And Mel’s commitment to a life she doesn’t seem that enthused about, lifestyle influencing, combined with the first 50% or so being play by play homages to Betty White’s Grammy in The Proposal and Sandra Bullock/Bill Putnam’s coma fake dating scenario made this less than enjoyable. Especially considering how phenomenal and original Set On You was.

If you enjoy The Proposal, While You We’re Sleeping, or It Happened One Summer, you’ll love this one. Sadly, it spent too much time trying to convince me of chemistry that just wasn’t there and reiterating that Melanie couldn’t *possibly* live in the middle of nowhere without wifi or lash extensions or her very empty condo that she’s extremely lonely in and doesn’t seem eager to go back to if it weren’t for her mother role to her grown brother.

Thank you to Berkeley for an ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own!

Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for providing a DRC of this title for review.

In this modern spin on While You Were Sleeping, fashion influencer Melanie and fisherman Evan fake date in order to convince Evan’s extended family to forgo selling their Bed-and-Breakfast, finding themselves falling in love in the process.

This was fun! While I don’t know if it hit the highs of the first two books in the series, I would still definitely recommend this book to fans of Lea’s previous works or readers of light-hearted rom-coms. 3.5 stars/5.

A grumpy guy from a small coastal Canadian town and a fashion influencer from Boston looking to increase her followers meet at an inn that's seen better days but has so much potential. The plot is predictable, but fun, and the swoon factor is strong with fake dating, and enemy-to-lover situations unfolding.

The Catch
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks so much to @berkleyromance for the free ebook! #BerkleyPartner

This is the first book that I’ve read by this author and I really enjoyed it!
This was a true rom-com. There were more laugh-out-loud moments in this book than I could count. Also, this contained SO MANY of my favorite tropes.
It is opposites attract in its truest form. Mel is an influencer who loves designer fashion and growing her social media. Evan is a flannel-loving fisherman. They could not be more different, but this combination was wonderful.
This story has a very strong family dynamic and all of the side characters play an important role in the story.
I loved the energy of this small town and the dedication to town events.
I also adored the relationship between Mel and Evan and witnessing how it changes through the story. They have an interesting initial meeting and it’s sweet to see them slowly work through their feelings!
I definitely recommend this! The book will be available on February 13th, so add it to your TBRs now!

Read If You Like:
🎣fake dating
🎣grumpy/sunshine
🎣slow burn
🎣opposites attract
🎣found family

Let’s be real, Amy Lea’s The Catch was always going to be my favorite of her Influencer series. True, Set on You gave me the confidence to actually use the weight machines at the gym and not just eye them suspiciously, and Exes and O’s gave me a romance loving heroine after my own heart. But The Catch was the one I felt the most excited about for one simple reason: it’s set in Canada, and as a Canadian, I can’t remember if I’ve ever read a romance novel set here before this one. I might not be from Nova Scotia, but I’ve always said if I could live anywhere else in Canada, it would be the Maritimes.

Fortunately for me, there was a lot more to love about this book beyond passing references to Tim Hortons and Shoppers Drug Mart. Fashion and lifestyle influencer Melanie Karlesen is approached by a luxury resort in Halifax for a potential partnership, but a date mix-up has her arriving in Nova Scotia a week ahead of schedule. Thanks to the tourist season, the only room left in the area is at an inn in a rural fishing village. An inn owned and operated by the surly Evan Whaler who does not want Melanie staying there.

When a boating accident ends with Evan unconscious in the hospital, Mel is mistaken for his fiancée, and hatches a plan with Evan and his cousin to stick around for a while to help the two warring sides of their family make peace at last. You thought fake dating was hard, imagine how hard and fast you fall when you’re fake engaged.

Evan and Melanie’s romance is so sweet, and is best served by the fact that its a sloooow burn (book-wise, not real-time-wise), with a lot of effort devoted to how they went from thinking this inconvenient person who just showed up in their lives is kinda cute maybe, to some genuinely lovely moments between them. Initially, it felt like Evan’s large, loving family would get in the way of things, but really all that means is when the two of them do get a chance to be together properly, the moment resonates all the more.

The parts of this book I liked the best all fall firmly under spoiler territory, so I won’t get into them here and deprive you of the sweetness and the heart-wrenchingness of it all, so instead I will end by saying The Catch is an absolute must-read for fans of the small-town vibe who also love their heroines feisty and their heroes unfailingly kind.

The Catch hits shelves on Feburary 14, 2024. Special thank you to Berkley and Netgalley for the advance copy for review purposes.

Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

“The Catch,” a novel by internationally bestselling author Amy Lea, follows fashion influencer Melanie Karlsen, who gets an opportunity to escape Boston and spend a week at a resort in Nova Scotia, Canada, in exchange for social media content. After the resort mixes up the dates she’s supposed to stay, Mel finds herself in Cora’s Cove, a small fishing town on Canada’s east coast. It’s the kind of small town that thrives off tourism and has exactly one bar. When Mel arrives at the Airbnb she booked at the last minute, the first person she meets is the burly and not-so-friendly owner Evan Whaler.

After only a few days of knowing each other — which included an unfortunate boating accident that left Evan unconscious and concussed in the hospital with only Mel by his side — Mel declares herself Evan’s fiancee. Evan agrees to go along with the fake engagement to ease the tensions between his feuding family members. His mother and his aunt haven’t spoken in years because they can’t decide whether to sell the bed and breakfast that has been in the family for generations but desperately needs repair. For the next week, Evan and Mel pretend to be engaged and end up actually falling for each other.


“The Catch” is the third and final book in Lea’s “The Influencer” series. Social media is a major part of the series, and all of the main characters are influencers — Crystal from “Set on You” is a fitness influencer, Tara from “Exes and O’s” is a book influencer and Mel from the upcoming “The Catch” is a fashion influencer.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Lea shared that before she became an author, she had a “Bookstagram” account. While Lea said that writing Tara’s story came naturally to her, she had to do a bit of “fun research” for the other two books, which meant following a lot of influencers and studying their profiles and the language of their posts.

“A lot of people sometimes don’t like the reality of social media or pop culture references in books,” Lea said. “I totally understand where they are coming from, but at the same time, I think it is just a fact of life nowadays. We socialize via the internet. If you were to ask couples, so many of them met online. That’s just how it is. So I figured it was important to highlight that aspect of life.”

In Lea’s “The Influencer” series, each main character has a different relationship with social media. She said she struggled to figure out how to portray Mel in “The Catch” because in the first two books in the series, Mel is only a side character, a friend to Crystal and Tara. Mel’s persona entails her dressing fabulously and looking amazing, showing off her seemingly perfect life making money from influencing. But in reality, because social media algorithms and trends change, Mel is losing money.

Influencing can be a fleeting profession. Lea said she wanted to show this change over time. At the beginning of her career, Mel loved putting together outfits and talking about fashion, but as negative comments accumulated and companies began dropping her, fashion influencing failed to remain her passion. It just became a job, which, Lea admitted, happens to a lot of creative people in real life, specifically writers.


“When you overshare yourself online, it can lead to burnout,” Lea said. “You’re constantly subjecting yourself to criticism where people feel that they know you and can say whatever they want, as long as they’re anonymous and behind a screen.”

As the books in the “The Influencer” series came out over the past couple of years, Lea said that her own relationship with social media changed. When she started out as a Bookstagrammer, her relationship with books was purely one of a consumer. Now, she’s other authors’ peer — and because of this, she’s more mindful of the books she shares on her account.

There are a variety of tropes at play in “The Catch.” Evan is a rugged, grumpy lobster fisherman while Mel is a sunshine heroine who definitely doesn’t spend as much time outdoors as Evan does — playing into the classic grumpy/sunshine, city girl/small town boy and opposite attracts dynamics.

Lea said she’s a fan of reading enemies-to-lovers stories for their built-in tension and the banter between characters, but the tropes she likes to read most change. When it comes to incorporating tropes into her own writing, she explained that she likes friends-to-lovers stories, though they are more challenging. She said that these plots require writing about the characters’ already established relationship and familiarity with each other.

At the beginning of the novel, Mel and Evan don’t exactly get off on the right foot, hinting at an enemies-to-lovers storyline, but the two eventually start fake dating as well, manifesting two extremely popular tropes in contemporary rom-coms. The story, as Lea once said, is a mashup of the rom-coms “While You Were Sleeping” and “The Proposal.”


One theme Lea said she wanted to tackle in “The Catch” was loneliness in adulthood. She wanted to give voice to the increased difficulty of finding friends in as an adult — you truly have to make an effort to maintain those relationships — which few people talk about. In the novel, Mel doesn’t admit to herself that she’s lonely. Though Crystal and Tara are her friends, she doesn’t rely on them and doesn’t like to burden them with her problems. Mel doesn’t fully trust anyone and rarely opens up to her friends and romantic partners. Even within her career, Mel experiences the solitary aspects of being an influencer.

When developing couples, Lea said she likes to make them compatible in that one person has something that the other person needs, and vice versa. While Evan has a big, loud and involved family, Mel only has her younger brother Julian in her life. Throughout the novel, Mel and Evan work to support each other despite their different personalities.

As a character, Mel is extra. She likes girly things, she’s a tad materialistic and she admits to getting work done on her body, an act Lea said is often villainized in society. She commented that people often take beauty as a moral issue and assume it’s a bad thing to put a lot into appearance. In contrast to Mel, Evan doesn’t have social media and often wears the same flannel in different colors. Lea said she wanted to write a dynamic where the man doesn’t try to change the woman, and she accomplished just that. Evan isn’t one of those guys who say women look better without makeup; he likes how Mel outwardly expresses herself.

“Women don’t wear makeup for men,” Lea said. “We’re wearing it for us, or we’re wearing it for confidence, generally speaking. I think I see a lot (in books) where a city girl goes to a small town and becomes really simple. And that’s totally fine, but I also wanted (Mel) to not change and for her to still be herself and for (Evan) to accept that and love her for it.”

Knowing this inspiration, I hope readers love Mel and Evan’s story as much as I did. With many different tropes that appeal to a variety of romance readers, and themes of found family and accepting oneself, “The Catch” should be one of your most anticipated reads of 2024.


Amy Lea’s “The Catch” will be released on Feb. 13, 2024.

Books Beat Editor Ava Seaman can be reached at avasea@umich.edu.

❥ A very special 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾 to @berkleypub @netgalley & @amylea for the e-arc of this amazing book! Amy Lea does it again!

You might be familiar with author Amy Lea from her books - Exes & O’s, Set on You, to name a few. She has become one of my auto-buy authors for sure. I was more than ecstatic when accepted to read this on NG.

❥ 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:

- Small Town feel
- Fake Dating
- Enemies to Lovers
- Slow burn Romances that leave you wanting more
- 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕔𝕖𝕕 ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕩𝕚𝕞𝕚𝕥𝕪

💭:

I really enjoyed this book, so much so that I found myself smiling a lot! I actually had to laugh because I caught myself smiling at the banter between the two main characters. I don’t want to say too much in fear of spoilers, what I will say is I highly recommend this to all romance readers!

㋛ Highlights for me:

❥ There was one scene in particular in the bathroom that had me feeling like a giddy school girl due to some fire and romance (the slow burn was killing me haha). 🫢😂

❥ When Evan took Mel hiking and every detail that followed after their day trip. Again, I don’t want to give too much away, reading this story for the first time I feel would be the best experience.

I loved this book! I devoured it in only a few sittings and wish there was more to read. The story line was paced very well and the characters were easy to love!

Welcome to Cora’s Cove— where the band is always playing, the fishing is fine and the men smell like campfire and have deep seawater eyes. Amy Lea’s final installment in her influencer series brings us to the Canadian coast, where emotionally wary Mel falls into Evan, a dreamy fisherman who has taken on running his family’s inn and cannot get enough of Mel.

Do you love small-town romances with fake dating and found family? Then this is IT for you. The watery landscape takes on a mind of its own— you’ll want to book your ticket to Nova Scotia looking for tall-as-trees flannel-clad fisherpeople and Nana to take you in with her wit and kindness.

This cozy, lovely book deals with trauma, family healing after loss, adoption, and so much more. You also see our favorite cast of characters from Lea’s previous books. I’m bummed to say goodbye to the influencers, but can’t wait to see what Lea comes up with next!

Thank you to Berkley for an advanced copy to review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the ARC.

🌟🌟🌟🌟 4/5 stars

The Catch is the final installment of Amy Lea’s Influencers series and is just as adorable as the first two. Mel, a fashion influencer from Boston, travels to Canada on what is supposed to be a paid trip that will provide much-needed content for her Instagram. However, a series of events leads her to being stuck in a rural fishing village and staying at a dilapidated B&B with a grumpy lobster fisherman. More hijinks ensue and she finds herself having to be fake engaged to said fisherman.

This was just adorable. I absolutely loved Mel and Evan together. They have excellent banter and grumpyxsunshine chemistry. The storyline has slight notes of the classic While You Were Sleeping, which I appreciated. Overall, an excellent ending to a romantic and sweet series.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Melanie Karlsen travels to the east coast of Canada to rescue her brand. However, this Boston beauty knows nothing about nature. She meets Evan Whaler, the bed-and-breakfast owner, who is grumpy. Evan will take Melanie on a boat to take some great photos!

There is an accident, and to ensure that Evan isn't alone, Melanie is mistaken for his fiance by Evan's family! Melanie agrees to fake their engagement for one week in exchange for Evan's help with making social media content.

They take long hikes. They go places together. They both realize they are falling for one another, and this fake engagement could turn into a real one.

It is so cute! I love the Canadian setting! Evan and Melanie's banter was on point. Definitely a great slow burn romance and grumpy/sunshine.

I have to say, I’m a sucker for all books set in Canada! They always seem to hit different. This romance was so great!

This was beyond fantastic and easily my favorite Amy Lee book. She ate this one up. The chemistry and tension between characters was everything.

Boston based influencer, Melanie, sets course to a small fishing town in Novia Scotia in hopes or reviving her flailing brand. Unfortunately for her when she arrives, she learns there has been a booking mistake.

She scrambles to find accommodations and ends up at a small bed and breakfast. It’s here she meets the burly and not so nice, Evan. After a boating accident lands Evan in the hospital, he mistakes Mel for his past fiancée. She agrees to go along with it for a week in exchange for help with her social media content.

It’s not long before the two go from fake dating, to real feelings, but will they turn into anything more than desires?

This was my second book by this author, and I think that it is going to be my last. I love books about influencers, and wanted to love this series so much, which is why I gave this book a shot. My initial thoughts were that it sounded almost exactly like another book I have read and really enjoyed, and after reading it, I can say that yes, they are very similar.

I did love the banter between Melanie and Evan in this book. The banter also made the slow burn romance worth the wait, which is a hard thing to accomplish in my opinion. But Nona was really the best part of the book for me. She was absolutely amazing! I wish she was presented for more of the book.

If you are looking for a grumpy / sunshine, fake engagement romance set in a small town then check this one out!

Thank you to the publisher Berkley Publishing, @berkleypub, Berkley Romance, @BerkleyRomance and Netgalley @netgalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Enjoyed this read so much! I could not put this book down. Forced proximity, fake dating, grump/sunshine.... what more can I ask for? I love that the setting was rural Canada, very rare to read books set in Canada! I immediately like Mel the most out of all 3 of the main characters from the Influencer Series because she felt very real and I related to her a lot. Mel and Evan both come from very different families, Mel's family being small and a bit dysfunctional and Evan's family being large and extremely loving. Yet, they both understand the importance of family. This book wasn't super long but it portrayed how falling in love can be quick and inevitable. Absolutely loved it and will be recommending this over and over again!