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!

I absolutely loved Amy Lea's latest romantic comedy, where the clash between a Boston fashion influencer and a gruff lobster fisherman in a quaint Canadian village provided a delightful escape. The story's exploration of the fish-out-of-water dynamic was both humorous and heartwarming, as Melanie navigates the challenges of rural life while maintaining her impeccably curated online persona. The author skillfully weaves in tropes that add a layer of familiarity to the narrative, making it a joy to follow the unexpected romance that blooms between the protagonist and the rugged Evan Whaler. The fake engagement plotline adds a charming twist to the story, creating moments of both hilarity and genuine connection. As a fan of romantic comedies, I found myself thoroughly entertained by the witty dialogue, quirky family dynamics, and the question lingering throughout—will Mel choose the wild and unfiltered love she discovers in the coastal village over her picture-perfect city life?

I read the first book in this series from Amy Lea featuring online influencers but missed the second. This one looked cute, so I grabbed it, and I'm glad I did. It was like a combo of the Sandra Bullock masterpiece rom coms While You Were Sleeping and The Proposal with a bit of Tessa Bailey's It Happened One Summer thrown in for good measure. Fashion influencer Mel Karsten gets stuck in a tiny Nova Scotian fishing town after a booking issue with a brand trip. The only lodging is a small, rundown inn, whose gruff and grumpy manager Evan overhears Mel complaining about the state of the inn and takes a major disliking to her. Of course he's a hot, flannel-wearing fisherman that Mel begrudgingly finds attractive. He runs the inn with his bubbly cousin who wants to take advantage of Mel's social media marketing expertise to help get the business back on its feet, but all of that is interrupted when Evan falls off his boat during a whaling tour with Mel and hits his head. In the hospital, she lies and says she's his fiance so that she can see him, and the news quickly gets back to his family, including his mother and aunt who haven't spoken in years because they disagree about what to do with the family inn. His aunt wants to sell, his mom doesn't, and everyone else is just trying to figure out how to keep the family together. Evan's accident (and surprise "engagement") brings everyone together, so his cousin convinces Evan and Mel to pretend to be engaged to keep the tentative peace. I liked that Mel, despite being a fashion influencer, is not portrayed as a vapid, spoiled material girl. Her backstory - adopted, raised in a family that lived far above its means and then lost everything, and eventually raised by her father, along with her younger brother. Both Mel and her brother are still grieving the loss of their father a few years prior, and Evan is grieving his own cousin's death, so we do get to see lots of layers to both characters.

I enjoy While You Were Sleeping (just rewatched it, in fact), but I haven't yet found an example of that plotline working in a novel. Here, it felt flimsy, kind of lifeless and uninspired. Evan and Mel made a bland pairing and I didn't find the book funny at all, which was weird because I thought Exes and Ohs was hilarious! I liked the tourist vibes of Cora's Cove, but overall this was a disappointing follow-up.

I loved every second of this. This book? It's exactly how I feel. Like where do I even begin??

First off, I can't believe Amy wrote a book where I fell in love with a blonde man who fishes. I never knew it could be done and yet here we are.

I found myself smiling at my kindle like a fool because I, yet again, have fallen in love with another set of characters. Melanie is a fashion social media influencer and has a paid opportunity at a resort in Canada. However, after realizing the resort had mixed up the dates, Mel has no other options than to book a room at an airbnb in a small fishing town. But when she notices how rundown the place is compared to the photos online, her and the one of the owners, Evan, don't start on the right foot. Cue the enemies to lovers 🤭

One day, Evan is volun-told to take Mel out on the water, but that quickly escalates to Evan falling overboard and rushed to the hospital where Mel informs the doctors that she is his his fiance just so she can go in the back with him. From there, the two are stuck in a fake engagement to bring Evan's family back together to fix the airbnb.

Look, if I'm swiping on a dating app and see a guy holding up a fish, it's an immediate no from me. But if I saw a picture of ✨Evan✨ fishing, I'd insta-super-like him with a rose because WOW. He's your classic grump (for certain reasons that we learn later on), but is super soft inside and falls first and hard.

Although Evan and his family are struggling to come back together to restore the airbnb, they're comforting and welcoming towards Mel. For once, she doesn't feel alone and has a home where she feels loved and cherished. I loved watching her walls come down and accepting people into her life.

“You’re never alone in this world while I’m in it, Mel.”

Like...c'mon!! Ugh your honor, I love them.

All of that being said, this would have been a five star for me if we had a longer time frame to develop Mel and Evan's relationship because two weeks was not enough in my opinion. And of course the third act break up, which irked me because had Mel's brother just communicated with her, all would have been fine. I will say, I really loved the way Mel and Evan compromised in the end!

Overall, a wonderful way to end the series! Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for an e-arc for my honest review! Now I'll be patiently (not really) waiting for February so I can get my hands on a copy.

Tropes:
-enemies to lovers/ grumpy x sunshine
-fake engagement
-small fishing town
-they're both dominant 👀
-it's giving The Proposal movie vibes

Adorable rom com with great characters. I loved and related with the MFC and would read anything by this author in the future. The cover pulled me in and the romance kept me in. Cute read!!!

I have a feeling this book is going to go absolutely viral. For fans of It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey, this book is perfect if you miss that seaside town. Don't even get me started on the spice. Amy Lea is one to watch for sure.

I’m not going to lie, this one fell pretty flat for me. I liked Set On You and really loved Exes and Ohs, so I was hoping for more from this series finale. The character and plot development fell pretty flat for me, and I also struggled to feel immersed in the settings. Cora’s Cove had so much potential! I love a seaside down and ocean adventures. And Boston is my hometown, so some of the inaccurate descriptions of the city and places that don’t actually exist pulled me out of the immersion of the story. I’m still excited about other books by this author, but this one was not my favorite!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC.

Amy Lea has quietly become one of my new favorite contemporary romance authors after Exes and O's, so I was expecting to enjoy <i>The Catch</i> since it loosely follows the same circle of heroines and their respective journeys to an HEA. What made this stand out for me (apart from the familiar conceit of grumpy fisherman + privileged influencer) was the <i>While You Were Sleeping</i> element, which Lea manages to pull off with a fun variation on a tried-and-true trope. Melanie and Evan's evolving dynamic hits the right slow-burn beats, to the point where you might be screaming at your e-reader for these two to kiss as often as I was! This book was the perfect blend of funny + steamy + sweet, and while I'm a little sad to see this series end, I'm definitely going to be checking out whatever Lea writes next.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a wonderful slow burn of a book. Thank you Net Gallery for the sneak peek. The characters were likable and three-dimensional. I loved the setting of Nova Scotia and the small-town feel.