I generally enjoyed this book, the hate-to-love was fun, and I enjoyed the fire-y build up to their romance, the camaraderie at work, and the likeable characters (except for the obviously dislikable ones like Dell and his chair.) Having been in on start up culture for the last decade or so, Cara Tanamachi captures some of that energy, some of the heartache, and some of the weird twists of fate that can happen. But this is a romance novel, not a book about start up culture - and it was delightful. I liked the ending and the epilogue.

This was a feel good book - I loved the banter between Jae and Nami, which was funny, silly, and never super mean, just sort of spiky fun. I thought the character development was excellent - we got to see a lot of depth in both of the lead characters, as their layers get peeled back,, and see their perspectives and motivations play out. This had some spicy (food) elements, but was tame in terms of sexy spice - some implied actions, but not much detail, which I thought was well executed. I enjoyed the dedication to competition, even on the silliest of things (see: hell ramen.)

I found the first chapter from Jae's perspective kind of awkward, but subsequent chapters felt better. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary if you've ever seen the inside of a modernish tech company, and/or one undergoing a takeover or dealing with VC fundraising or any of that, but I think it played out relatively well regardless.. When crypto and NFT's were mentioned a couple of times, I got nervous, but there was a reason, and it was cute. No one is actually singing their praises as a current thing to invest in, praise be.

I did not realize this was part of a series until after I had already finished it, and was looking at some of the authour's other books, (The Second You're Single, features Sora and Jack) but I think this is probably fine as a standalone.

This was fun, and laughed a lot throughout, Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-galley.