This book was a surprise- I didn't know what to think and went in a bit blind. This is a one setting book and I couldn't put it down. Even though its New Adult it's way more, the characters are in college but so much more-sweet and emotional. Get ready to LOL and cry! This is a great frenemies relationship that starts out like a lot of them with miss understanding (in math class) that builds to a great friendship at the end. This is also a slow burn of a book but does have some big steam at the end.

Love the fact that it was the sports heroine of Willa as lead and was hot tempered, quick to act and judge, amazing athlete and added weight with her mom. Ryder is still in a new area with losing his hearing and covers his viking roots with a beard to keep the ladies away that is until his brother-in-law steps in.

This was my first book by Chloe and will not be the last, I can't wait for more of this series. I just love the family! She developed some of these characters so well! Loved all the Swedish parts woven into it that makes you understand Ryder and his mom especially. Also, she did a great job adding in D1 athletics-female side!- and also disabilities that added so much to this story.

Overall, 4 stars and 4 steams.

Only When It’s Us by Chloe Liese is the first book in the popular Bergman Brothers series. It is a heartfelt and emotional romance that blends humor, love, and personal challenges. The story centers on Willa Sutter, a fierce women's soccer player, and Ryder Bergman, a brooding, lumberjack-like classmate. Their initial relationship is rocky, starting with animosity over missed class notes, but evolves into something deeper as they navigate grief, love, and life’s unexpected turns.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an review this eARC.

In every iteration of this book, I have loved it. I love Willa and her grumpy, stubborn butt. I feel so seen by her grumbling and mumbling under her breath. I love Ryder. Full stop. I love them & their pranks and banter. It’s just a whole heck of a lot of love over here. I adored the additional content in this republished version.

this was fun and i loved the various different kinds of diversity representation as well as how the author handled the topic of grief. i wasn’t going through finding out my aunt had cancer while reading and so i kind of felt connected to willa in that way. i also loved all the background characters and the bergman family and i’m eager to read more of their stories.

I just can’t bring myself to finish this. I can see the appeal, but I feel like I’ve read ten other romance novels exactly like this one. I can’t connect to the characters at all. The writing style is very cringey at times, and for being advertised as an enemies to lovers, the attraction is pretty much immediate on both sides. However, the FL is the main reason I’m finding it hard to push through. She is very immature and even self righteous at times. She makes a lot of assumptions without having any knowledge about situations. Reading her POV chapters and trying to relate to her was exhausting. There is also a lot of the miscommunication trope going on which is just frustrating to read. I may try to pick this back up one day solely because I’m interested in other books in the series.

Ryder and Willa are too adorable.  I couldn’t get enough of these two. Their relationship starts off with a misunderstanding that leads to a lot of fun banter and pranks. Nothing beats a burly, flannel wearing beaded broody hero and a heroine who is a bit cheery and has a habit of sharing her inner thoughts out loud.  Under the lightheartedness was a story full of emotion with two vulnerable characters faced with loss.    

The vulnerability of the characters and the diversity representation couldn’t have been written better.  There is quite a bit of miscommunication between the characters, but their story couldn’t have been told any other way, all the miscommunication was necessary.  Yes, there was one tiny detail that I didn’t quite believe, it fit the storyline.  

I laughed, I cried, and adored the characters.

First off, I love Chloe’s books and choice of representation with the characters she writes. ONLY WHEN IT’S US is a new adult, enemies to lovers story between soccer star Willa, and classmate Ryder.

I loved their interactions, and could feel their tender moments with one another.

*many thanks to Berkley Romance and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review.

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for this arc!

5/5 stars!

Chloe Liese does it again 🥳 These books are such quick reads filled with so much heartwarming romance and family dynamics they feel like a warm blanket :3 Now my only problem is going to be making sure I don't read through this series too quickly then get myself into another slump when they're over, I can tell I'm going to love each book and miss these characters terribly when it's all done! 💜💜💜

Only When It’s Us by Chloe Liese is a new adult, slow-burn, enemies to friends to lovers romance that I found extremely satisfying and engaging. Often funny, yet poignant in many ways I found this book hard to put down.

Willa is a star college soccer player with aspirations of being an Olympian as well as turning pro and she’s considered good enough to do both. An only child of a single parent, Willa has a close relationship with her mother who has spent more time in the hospital than out in the last year due to cancer. She has a lot on her plate, a full schedule of classes, a lot of practice and conditioning, as well as spending time with her mother and thusly, she’s fallen behind in some classes including business math where the professor isn’t cutting her any slack, but he has told her she can get the notes from Ryder, a fellow student. I’ll be honest and say Willa is the reason this book didn’t go higher than four stars. She seemed judgmental, self absorbed, and I found it very difficult to like her for a good part of this book.

Ryder’s life changed two years ago when he contracted meningitis and lost his hearing. Now fully deaf in one ear and mostly in the other, he chooses not to talk and uses text messaging to communicate with others. His big family is quirky and fun, but he’s chosen to not spend a lot of time around them or others for that matter preferring his own company and tolerating his roommates. Ryder has mourned everything he lost along with his hearing but he also has a plan for his life. To say I liked and admired Ryder is putting it mildly, I love that he didn’t cut Willa any slack, but he was compassionate and trusting.

Ryder and Willa are pretty much shoved together by Professor MacCormack who also happens to be Ryder’s brother in law and is determined to push Ryder out of his comfort zone. To be honest, he overstepped his bounds multiple times and while his intentions were good I didn’t agree with some of his methods. It embarrassed Willa, made Ryder look like a jerk to her, and it was inappropriate.

I did love the interactions between Willa and Ryder and how easily she accepted his deafness and refusal to speak and even used sign language with him even though it wasn’t his preferred method of communication. I think they complimented one another quite well, they were very different but it worked for them. He enjoyed helping her and cooking for her and she made him laugh and made him be more sociable just by being herself. The sexual tension between them was obvious from early on, but I loved that it was a very long time before they became lovers. Their friendship grew which made it harder for them to dismiss the relationship when they went through hard times.

This was a long book and honestly I feel like it could have been edited down some to make it flow more smoothly, but I did enjoy it and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Sweet, funny, emotional, and sexy Only When It’s Us was a delight to read.

This is one of those books that has been on my radar for awhile. People kept recommending it to me. I am so glad I finally read it. This is a fantastic slow burn romance with deep and nuanced characters. I really enjoyed the glimpses into the whole family since I know there are seven books. I look forward to reading more in this series.

Finally getting around to reading this series in order, as I've read a random assortment of these already. This follows Ryder and Willa as they are thrown together by their professor, Aiden!, and forced to be partners on a project. This is very much an enemies to lovers, or at least a circumstantial enemy as Willa doesn't know that Ryder needs hearing aids. A fragile friendship develops over the course of this story but when tragedy strikes everything threatens to fall apart. Chloe Liese has created the ultimate comfort family with the Bergmans and is able to create a wonderful love story while pulling on the heart strings.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review,

Just like everything I’ve read of Chloe liese, this was perfect. I cried. I laughed. I adored the characters. I will continue to handsell this whole series.

I LOVE CHLOE LIESE SO MUCH. Seriously. Everything she writes is so good and this is no exception. I would die for the Bergman's.

From the start of this book i was hooked and knew I had found a new favorite author. I thought this would be just another college sports romance, but it was so much more than that. The connection between Willa and Ryder was the kind you dream of having.

The pair got off on a rocky start, but it really pulled me in that much more and had me empathizing with them both. Their banter and back and forth was so fun and you could feel the sexual tension rolling off of them. Chloe weaved in so many tender and beautiful moments as well that I dont. want to spoil for you because they are that special. It made me so emotional and I felt so connected to their story.

Another aspect I loved was the found family and entire dynamic of the Bergman family. Each character presented their own endearing qualities and I want to read each and every one of their stories. This book is special and Chloes writing is special, you need to add this series to your TBR.

Part of a bigger series, that I have enjoyed Liese as always has built a good and fun universe to grow into

Fun & steamy twist on the sport jock frenemies to lovers romance.
This does also come with hidden depths as both leads deal with some heavy duty adjustments and responsibilities. This book hits ya in the feels as well as turns up the tension & heat between the MCs who thankfully do communicate better than a lot of adults in similar romcom type novels - a trope we all know I hate.
Now don't get me wrong there is some serious lack of communication at times but the way this feeds into what the characters are dealing with counterbalances well and deff sucked me into their story and rooting for this modern day Lizzie & Darcy.

Having fallen in love with Liese's newest series (The Willmont sisters) I was excited to see where her career kind of began with these books, and while I did enjoy the first book in the series I didn't enjoy it quite as much as her other books. I'm not 100% sure how much the content of this book was revised (if it was at all) for this edition, but it does seem like her writing has evolved between then and now, if her newer books are any indication. That's not to say that this book was bad, it wasn't, and again I greatly appreciated Liese's portrayal of both mental and physical disabilities and her dedication to showing that people who have one or both deserve love. I think the biggest reason this story wasn't a full 5 stars for me was mainly that both of these main characters badly needed therapy, but it took them SO LONG to get it (if it all). Like, your son looses most of his hearing in college? HE NEEDS THERAPY! You move your daughter around constantly and then are dying of cancer? SHE NEEDS THERAPY! Seeing as therapy isn't seen as bad I'm a little mystified as to why neither of these characters, who had so many people who loved them, weren't already in therapy. I also didn't love how petty Willa was from time to time. Part of the reason their whole prank war started was because she was mad at Ryder for wearing hearing aids without telling her. I'm sorry, but what? How is that okay? If he does or doesn't wear hearing aids it's none of your business. All of that being said I still did enjoy this story, and I'll probably read more of the series down the road. I'll also certainly continue to read what Liese writes, because she's a great author writing important stories that more people should read.

[4 Stars😊] Only When It's Us was my second book by Chloe Liese, and I'm upset it took me this long to read another book by her! I read Always, Only You first, and it's my all-time favorite romance after Pride and Prejudice. I feared my opinion of Always, Only You would change if I picked up another book by her, but I was pleasantly surprised by Ryder and Willa's story! Though it took me a while to warm up to Willa, I fell in love with her character! I loved how messy and guarded yet sensitive she was, and I loved Ryder's slow and determined pursuit of her heart. Chloe Liese wrote two complex and nuanced characters with compassion and delicacy, and I'm so glad because her care and empathy for Willa and Ryder's characters radiated from the pages. Chloe Liese is quickly becoming an all-time favorite author, and I can't wait to read Ever After Always next!

Chloe Liese is an amazing writer and has created a boisterous and loving fictional family that anyone would want to be a part of.

On a soccer scholarship and caring for her sick mother, Willa is finding it challenging to keep up with her school work, and the fact that her Professor won't give her a break but seems to show Ryder, this brooding, flannel-wearing mountain man preferential treatment irks her to no end. The fact that this feisty, chaotic ray of sunshine, who is also the next generation of women's soccer, is set against him, suits Ryder just fine. He doesn't want or need the constant reminder of the game he no longer can play, or the temptation to upend the quite outdoorsy life he has planned for himself. He’s happy to use her animosity as an excuse to keep his distance. But life and a meddling Professor/brother-in-law have other plans and force these two opposites to work together on their final class project. Begrudgingly Willa and Ryder start a prank war that leads to unexpected feelings and the fight for a victory of the other's love. What can you expect as their forced-proximity love story unravels? Lots of sexual tension and slow burn, great deaf representation, flannel as a wearable safety blanket, Pride and Prejudice references, meddling family and friends, and lots of soccer, hiking, and waterfalls. Also an introduction to the Bergman family's famous A-frame.

TW: cancer and death of a family member.

Stars: 4/5
Spice: 3

“Only When It’s Us” is the newest upcoming release by @chloeliese. Set in my hometown, beautiful Southern California, this frenemies-to-lovers romance read between Willa, a women’s soccer star and Ryder, a sexy hipster lumberjack classmate is as fun as their pranks and banters, sexy and hot as their love for soccer, making this slow burn romance a swoon worthy read!

I enjoyed reading about Willa and her strong character physically but emotionally protective creating a wall to the outside world. She is a no excuse kinda girl and I love that about her.
Ryder is the sweetheart and handsome Brawny lumberjack. Enveloped by a loving family who supports him through his tough times.

Chloe Liese writes strong and lovable characters who are marginalized and underrepresented, the less than perfectly ideal and oh so real, whose characters we can all relate to. Character driven stories like these swallow me up into their lives and you will be too. There is always excitement that will make you turn those pages with the alternating story lines giving you the depth of the characters’ thoughts.

I really had fun with this read and hope you will too! Add it to your TBR for a great escape read!