This is the first book I've ever read by Sophie Gonzales and trust me, it wouldn't be the last because I'm about to buy her entire backlist and pull off the longest reading marathon known to the human race.

The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist is a hilarious young adult/coming of age story that features relatable and quirky main characters—Ivy, Mack, Henry and Weston. Plus, this awesome story is a friends-to-enemies and an enemies-to-lovers romance and I was here for all the angst, drama and the witty banter.

Ivy and Mack used to be best friends but they had a huge misunderstanding that completely wrecked their friendship and Ivy found comfort in writing fan-fiction about her favorite show HMAD (Hot, Magic and Deadly). I wanted to read this story from the moment I heard that it has a 16 year-old fan-fiction writer who accidentally brings her main character (Weston) to life. I really enjoy reading fan-fiction and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to read this awesome story and meet these wonderful characters. Besides, there were lots of face-palm worthy moments between Ivy and Mack and Henry's snappy wisecracks made me laugh out loudly in very public places and I'm pretty sure my sanity was up for debate in the minds of the people who were blatantly staring at me.

This story is brilliant in every sense of the word because it has a dual time line that goes from the past to present in each chapter and I could clearly see how Ivy and Mack's friendship went downhill. The author clearly shows how important it is to have supportive friends who you can be yourself with and share similar interests. If I could give this book ten stars I would because it is a well-written and highly entertaining novel and I loved every word of it!

The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist is a cute YA romance with a twist. When Ivy inadvertently brings to life a fan fiction character based on her favorite show H-MAD, her life goes completely off the rails. Conveniently her parents are out of town for a week so she has until then to figure this out. With her ex-best friend, who lives across the street, and current bestie Henry, the three must keep Weston contained while he seems to be playing out different versions of the fan fiction Ivy had written for them. I loved all of the fun chaos that Weston created in Ivy's life. At the heart was a sweet story of crushes and her realization of who and what she wants. This YA sapphic romance is endearing and delightful.

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the gifted advanced reader copy.

💜🩵 The Perfect Guy Doesn’t Exist ARC Review 🩵💜

Thank you so much to Sophie Gonzales and Wednesday Books for the opportunity to read and review this book!

The Perfect Guy Doesn’t Exist is a standalone queer, contemporary fantasy novel. For the first time ever, Ivy is home alone for a week while her parents are traveling. She plans to relax, write fanfic and binge her favorite show. But when her favorite character comes to life, are all her romantic dreams coming true??

This was such a fun read! I really enjoyed Ivy and her growth throughout this story. The rest of the characters are well developed and I really enjoyed the world building. I personally would have liked to see more interactions between Ivy and Mack, but that’s absolutely a “me” issue and not a book issue

Overall this was a four star read. I liked the characters and the story - it was fun and unique! This story had a romantic subplot but no on page spice, so one flame for smut

If you’re a fan of queer romance with all the fanfic tropes, then absolutely pick this one up!

Please note: review will be posted to Amazon upon publication

A fanfiction writer brings her favorite character to life and begins to realize that he isn't as perfect as she thought he was.

I wanted to love this, but I just did not. The writing was more juvenile than I expected. It was less fun fanfiction romp and more annoying second-hand embarrassment.

I enjoyed the other books I have read from this author but this book really fell flat for me. The characters didn't have much personality and the conflict wasn't very interesting. I really wanted to like it but it just didn't wow me. I think if it were marketed as a middle grade book it might be better. It was a very quick and easy read and I didn't find it dragging or going slowly which I liked. I also wish we found out more about WHY and HOW Weston was there. I was frustrated that the majority of the conflicts were "solved" by Weston's magic, it didn't leave many problems for them to solve/navigate.

As a long time lover of fanfics this book spoke to me and I am so happy I gave it a try. I’ve long ago realised that a good book doesn’t need to be a serious literary masterpiece but can indeed be a silly, tropey book. This book has not all of the tropes but a good amount of them! I absolutely love the humour in this book and I’ve come to realise that’s just something that Sophie Gonzales writes really well. I also really enjoyed the aroace rep in Henry that was a delightful surprise to me.

I love reading fandom-related books and this one was not an exception. It was a lot of fun to read. Fun and occasionally frustrating because of the characters. They, and their decisions and thoughts, definitely felt age-appropriate to me. Which was both great and annoying in a cringe-worthy, all too relatable way.

The main relationship was cute and full of fun tropes. The flashbacks helped flesh it out. I was definitely rooting for them throughout. I also really liked the main platonic friendship and what it brought to the story. All the shenanigans were very entertaining to read. The book as a whole felt like a love letter to all things fandom.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

I feel like the cover and description of the book don’t really match the plot at all. Also this is the first time I’ve read a YA book that made me feel like I’m too old to read YA. All the characters were way too immature for me. I think other people would enjoy this book, but it definitely isn’t for me.

There was a lot to love here. The coming out, discussions around their friendship ending, but I did find that, for a character who’s a junior in high school, it felt like it leaned a bit younger. I did enjoy it, but it felt more like a book for 12-15 year olds rather than upper teens.

Great read! Fun and unique story about teenage friendships, how they relate to their parents, and learning that what we dream about and wish for isn't exactly what we may truly want. Loveable LGBTQ+ characters. Quick read, good story, tough to put down.

This story wasn’t up my alley. I have read Sophie Gonzalez other books and was excited to read this one. The premise sounded really interesting. However, when I was reading it, it didn’t really hit for me. I didn’t realize how much of this was a fanfiction based story, but also wasn’t into how it made it seem like people who wrote fanfiction didn’t want to face reality. Which comes off weird to me. I also didn’t like Mack and Ivy‘s friendship at all. The moments they had was fighting with each other which always seemed really petty. To me it made them really unlikable. This book came across to young for me. Which I think is the big reason this didn’t land the right way for me. If I was a lot younger I probably would have enjoyed it more. Unfortunately this one just isn’t and wasn’t for me.

This book had a very interesting premise but dragged as time went on. I wasn’t super pulled in by either of the characters, but enjoyed the dynamics and plot line. I did, admittedly, have quite high expectations for this book, and did end up a bit disappointed as a result, so my bad on that, but overall, a fun read.

I hated this book and definitely do not recommend it. I do not know how this is the same author that wrote Never Ever Getting Back Together. This book was literally a terrible idea and premise.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

This is sooooo delightfully silly. It made me giggle constantly. I only give it four stars because sometimes the cheese was a little much.

This story follows a girl who accidentally wishes into existence her favorite tv character and then with the help of her best friend, ex-best friend, and the power of fanfiction they work together to get rid of him.

This is like helpful robot turns evil but make it gay and fanfiction i was obsessed with the plot!

As much as I love Sophie Gonzales, this book was not up my alley 😅 that's the problem with automatically requesting every book of hers, because I didn't read the synopsis. Otherwise I'd known this was about fanfiction, of which I'm not a fan, ooops. But as always, this book was easy to read, fluid, and so muchhhh queeeernesssss 💛

This book was adorable. A queer romance with friends-to-enemies-to-lovers YA novel with elements of magic and fanfic - what's not to love. I enjoyed how the book did not take itself too seriously and poked fun at the tropes in these kinds of books. The enjoyed the dual timeline with a diverse cast of characters. It was really adorable and I am thankful for the arc.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

I would like to preface this review by saying that I have loved Sophie Gonzales books in the past. I've read Only, Mostly Devastated and Perfect On Paper and enjoyed both. I'm too old for the YA genre but after reading the synopsis of the story I thought I'd fall in love with it. It's sapphic (with a bisexual main character and a lesbian Love Interest), it has fanfic tropes, and had the main character bringing her fictional boyfriend to life! That sounded like so much fun in principal but... I didn't like the execution.

I'm sure if I had read this book when I was younger I would've adored it, especially all the fanfic references like coffee shop AU's and the soulmate's first words on your wrist, etc. But reading it in this book felt very awkward like it was being forced onto the reader. There were a lot of scenes too that just didn't work well for me. Specifically the scene where Mack, Henry and Ivy try to write a new fanfic about Weston and they add in ALL these different elements like a TARDIS, dinosaurs, cures for cancer, etc. so that the scenario is completely illogical and made no sense. If they were being serious about testing out a new fanfic idea Ivy should have written something more mundane.

The fights between Mack and Ivy felt really petty too and so unserious. All of Mack's and Ivy's conversations didn't feel like real people talking. Some of the things they said to each other simply made no sense with the context of what they were saying. For example, Mack yelling at Ivy about a "sex dungeon" she had because Mack heard that a boy was over at Ivy's house. It felt so out of left pocket and I didn't enjoy it.

I didn't end up liking either Mack or Ivy by the end of the book. My favorite characters ended up being Henry and Weston. Henry because he was ACTUALLY funny and seemed like a genuinely good person and Weston because even though he was "fake" and was a little scary toward the end he was fun and ended up in funny situations and was so earnest that it was hard not to like him.

I also didn't like the implication that people only write fanfics when they can't face their own reality. That's what it felt like Ivy was saying at the end and as someone who wrote fanfic, that wasn't true for me. I'm sure it's true for some people but it's not true for everyone. It made writing fanfics sound... bad? In a way? Like people should stop doing what makes them happy just because its not real.

I am withholding my review until the publisher:

1) Addresses and denounces the Islamophobic and racist remarks from their employee.
2) Offers tangible steps for how they are going to mitigate the harm this employee caused.
3) Addresses how, moving forward, they will support and protect their Muslim, Arab and Palestinian influencers, authors and readers, in addition to supporting their BIPOC influencers, authors and readers.

Thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for the eARC!

I'm calling it now. This will be in my top 5 books of the year. This effervescent romcom plops is right in to the head of Ivy, a dedicated fan of a show called HMAD about teen models with superpowers (and doesn't that just sound like fun?!)

We get to experience Ivy's cracking friendship with Mack and her relationship with her over eating mother in flashbacks interspersed throughout the book.

I don't want to spoil it but the humor regarding fanfic tropes is lovingly done and right up my alley!

In support of the SMP boycott, I will be withholding my review of this title until SMP speaks out. If the boycott is resolved, I will update with a full review.