This book was cute. Took me until at 60% to really get into it but that last 40% really made my heart swoon!

I was <i>so</i> stupid excited when I was approved for this arc. An enemies-to-friends-to-lovers sapphic romance set on a North Carolina flower farm? The dream!

Which is why it's devastating this didn't live up to my anticipation.

This is a perfectly good book and I started on a high with it, but it just slowly started to dwindle more and more. This book was much more internal conflict and these two women just not being willing to talk to each other than I expected. I thought, once it got introduced, that the flower show was going to be the big event for this book, but turns out, it's just a tiny piece of it. It's over in three chapters. Trish is introduced as one of the antagonists, but again, over in a chapter. Same with Laney and Miles. They're built up to be these big conflicts, but they inevitably fizzle into nothing.

Again, a perfectly good (if at times cringey) book that introduces a ton of interesting ideas but ultimately does nothing with any of it.

review: late bloomer by mazey eddings ✨🩷🌷

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"i want our house. our home. next to you is my favorite place in the world, and that’s the only spot i care about holding on to.”" 💬✨🩷

✨ MY THOUGHTS ✨

⚠️ cw: abandonment, emotional abuse, grief, death of a loved one, alcoholism, toxic friendship, ableism, & gaslighting ⚠️

if you love changing your hair color at minor inconveniences, floral sculptures, daydreaming of winning the lottery, taylor swift references, found families, punny jokes, queer romance, neurodivergent representation, lots of laughs, cries, & spice this book might be for you...

alexa play mirrorball by taylor swift 🎶

🌟 RATING: ★★★★★/5
🥵 spice scale: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (some details but not too explicit)

📆✨ release date: april 16th, 2024

mazey eddings is literally one of my favorite authors!! i love love love all of her books!! so absolutely no one should be surprised i fell completely in love with pepper & opal!! this book was wonderful not criticism!! just phenomenal!! add it to your tbr!! i promise you won't regret it! thank you ____ for the e-arc!! ✨🩷

Mazzey always delivers with a beautiful written story. Full of angst and emotional depth I found myself unable to put this book down.

Mazey did an amazing job with the aspects of each character, Opal and Pepper have my heart! I loved how even though there is plenty of spice, she also included vulnerability and tough topics that she approached beautifully. This book is a beautiful reminder that we’re all messy and imperfect but still deserving of love. Definitely recommend preordering! I will be reading more from Mazey!

This one was incredibly disappointing. I try to not DNF books that I get from NetGalley but I could not mentally do it. I LOVED her other books but I found these characters to be absolutely immature or insufferable. I wanted so badly to like this one but I was very disappointed

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased, honest review.

Mazey Eddings wrote the most perfect sapphic romance filled with spice, flowers, and lots of laughter! Opal and Pepper are forced to coexist under the same roof (of a beautiful flower farm) as they figure out a way out of their complicated situation. They're total opposites - sunshine vs. grumpy - but they slowly let their guards down as they get to know each other.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I didn't have any expectations going into my reading but I was blown away. Mazey Eddings did a beautiful job painting the most beautiful flower farm. Her imagery of flowers blooming at the farm sent a calming, warming feeling over me each time I read a chapter. I almost felt like I was right there (or wished I was). Honorary mention: the book cover is gorgeous.

The author also did an outstanding job at picturing what it is like to be neurodivergent - explaining the hardships of it, but also making it feel normal to experience life as someone who struggles with their mental health. The representation warmed my heart and I related to so many aspects of Opal's and Pepper's mental health struggles.

However, I think my favorite part of the book was reading about Pepper's grief journey. I recently experienced a similar loss of my own and I truly believe this book found me at the right time. It was comforting yet heart-wrenching and somehow cathartic in a way. Like a warm blanket on a cold night.

All in all, I think everyone would benefit from an Opal and a Pepper in their lives. Their story will warm your heart, make you laugh out loud, and have you wishing of a flower farm of your own.

Mazey Eddings is an auto-buy author for me. I love her books. Her characters are always very real and three-dimensional, with struggles and quirks and things that make them special and unique. From her debut, I've been a Mazey stan, and Late Bloomer is another wonderful romance delivered with her signature humor and heart. This is her first sapphic story, and it's a wonderful, natural pivot from her first three interconnected stories.

At the beginning of the story, Opal wins the lottery, which starts a chain of events that culminates in her purchasing, sight-unseen, a flower farm from a stranger on Facebook Marketplace. However, when she shows up ready to move in, she meets Pepper--who has lived at the flower farm since her mom dropped her off with her great aunt as a teenager. They decide to be roommates while they figure out the ownership situation, and sparks fly.

The autism and neurodivergent rep is amazing. Both Opal and Pepper are neurodivergent, and I related to Opal so much, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.

The audiobook was phenomenal. Ellie Gossage delivers a fantastic performance, making the difference between the two women and their POVs clear and distinct.

Thank you SMP for my advance review copy.

You know those characters people say to “protect at all costs”? These two are those characters. Somehow I had an insta-love moment with these two. Very endearing, and they just pulled at my mama heart.

I always enjoy a Mazey Eddings book. They're well-rounded, funny, emotional, and full of growth and heart. This is no different.

Thank you so much for the ARC!

Initial Thoughts
This was good but not my favorite from this author. Pepper and Opal were both very interesting characters and I wanted to see good thing happen in their life. The situation that brought them together was a little odd but I decided to just go with it. I enjoyed watching these two find themselves and each other. I listened to the audiobook and thought that the narrator did a great job with the story.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Full review to be posted soon.

Enjoyed this book as a cute rom-com complete with fun side characters and quirky dialogue. I was happy that it deleted a bit deeper into grief and neurodiversity as it helped me relate with the characters more. Opal was enjoyable from the beginning and I found myself really rooting for her.
It felt a bit more YA to me than adult, but overall the mature aspects kept it together.

This story was so cute! Two neurodivergent/autistic women trying to make the best of a situation and end up falling for each other? Set on a flower farm? Count me all the way in right from the beginning. I love these two so much. Their “no feelings no strings attached” agreement had me in giggles. I truly wish I had friends like theirs too, their little found family had my heart so full. Did I mention it was SPICY? Cause godsdamn, this was HOT. Don’t let the sweet cover fool you.

One thing that bothered me was the slang, I get that it happens in todays day and age but reading the word “deadass” just wasn’t a vibe for me 🤷‍♀️ the other thing was the damn miscommunication, like dear gods you’re both too far into your heads! Speak up damnit!

Overall, glorious read.

I need to stop picking up romance books when I know they’re not for me (I love a sapphic relationship, but I need some more plot/worldbuilding/physical movement that the romance genre simply doesn’t give me).

I would burn down the world for Pepper. She felt very familiar and had such a beautiful vulnerability to her. I loved her conversations around grief, around expectations, and especially around her Autism. I liked that she struggled to put words together and would opt for silence or action over saying the wrong thing.

Opal on the other hand didn’t really stick in my head. I didn’t like her views on money (but I guess any 24 year old who wins the lottery would be kinda the same?) and she was just generally harder for me to follow and understand - in a way that made her feel inconsistent, like she was being warped to fuel Pepper’s story.

I also wish we saw more of the ensemble cast, since they really only have one key scene as a group and a handful of paragraphs individually. It makes both Opal and Pepper seem very isolated.

Beautifully told story with unique characters and a fantastic voice! I've never read this author before and I'll definitely be looking into their blacklist for more reads

I was really looking forward to this book and enjoyed it.

I would love to give it a more detailed review on all of my book related social media platforms.

Unfortunately, I will be withholding my detailed review until the publisher, St. Martin's Press publicly condemns the queerphobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian speech exhibited by one of their employees.

Until then, I will be withholding more detailed review, and withholding public reviews from my book related social media platforms.

💥 Pub Date: 4/16/2024

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

• sapphic, spring-y romance
• opposites attract / forced proximity
• dual POV

Spring has sprung! 🌱🌸🌞 This is the first book I've read by this author and I really enjoyed her writing style. Nice representation, too!

🗣 Thank you to netgalley and St Martin's Griffin for the opportunity to read and review this book via gifted eARC! All opinions are honest and my own.

In solidarity with the St Martins Press boycott, I will not be reviewing this book on any of my platforms. (which is too bad because I'd love to talk about it)

Thanks to the publisher though for providing the ARC. I hope I get to review their titles again after they make appropriate responses to the reasonable demands of Readers For Accountability.

Thank you to St Martin's for the review copy of Late Bloomer from Mazey Eddings. I am a big fan of this author, I love their writing, focus on diverse experiences with neurodivergence (and making neurodivergence part of someone's identity, what makes them special versus a disorder!), and here a strong focus on inclusive queer relationships. Eddings' books always sing with joy even as they dive into the challenges of neurodiversity and mental health struggles; the characters feel real and their experiences capture real world experiences with identity, family, and growing into one's identity.

Late Bloomer is spicy sapphic romance but it's also a story of creativity and identity, of finding out what passions are and how to pursue them, and a story of love and grief and family/found family. I loved Opal's spirit, her openness to taking risks and to making her life and dreams her own; Pepper's journey to process her grief, her past relationship with her mother, and her love for Thistle and Bloom were written with an authentic caring voice. The secondary characters with Opal's loving sisters and Pepper's genuine friends were really well developed too, adding a richness to themes on family and found family that added depth to the story. I have to admit as well that I loved the setting, a flower farm as a business but also a place of creativity and artistry, I really wanted to be there on the farm with Opal's painting and help Pepper care for her blooms.

A note, this is really well done on audiobook, I read some of the book and listened to some, the voice acting really made the two main characters stand out!

a sapphic romance! from the lovely mazey eddings nonetheless 🤭 I was so excited to receive the arc of this and quite enjoyed it. However, there was still something i felt was lacking in this story, whether that was chemistry between our two leads or it simply could have been the story and plot line itself. it was good, but i feel like i kept waiting for it to be great…all in all she was cute and i DID finish it in one go so??

I wanted to love this book. Sadly, I DNFed it at 47%. I thought it was cheesy, cliche and a bit boring. The writing seemed a touch too YA for my tastes. I'm rating it three stars because, while it wasn't the book for me, it could be the perfect book for someone else.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the E-ARC. And to Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.