Description: A fast-paced, playful, and engaging romantic comedy featuring fake dating, an enemies-to-lovers theme, a gorgeously awesome ex, and just the right amount of amnesia.
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Five years after giving up her dream career to take over her family’s beloved deli, Ellie Greco discovers that the Taylors, a family of local real estate magnates, plan to bring in an upscale Italian food superstore Mangia and put Greco’s Deli out of business. While Ellie is meeting with Theo Taylor to save the deli, an accident lands him in the hospital with a head injury. A panicked Ellie tells the EMTs that she’s his fiancée so she can stay with him. When Theo’s memory returns, he suggests they continue the fake engagement to stop the Mangia deal. But things quickly get complicated when their fake engagement leads to real feelings.

Facing up to the reality of your life isn't always easy. Ellie had to do that and more and her journey was so relatable that it kept me turning pages.

Ellie runs her families local deli and one day she finds out that a major competitor might move into town. She puts on a brave face and meets with Theo, who works for his families property management company. Unfortunately during their meeting, there was an accident and now Theo has amnesia and everyone think they are engaged. They work together to try and stop the deli competitor from coming to town.

This was a fun read. I generally like Ellie and Theo. I found myself wanting more from them and wishing I could see more chemistry. Overall I enjoyed reading Love You, Mean It.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Cute little book fake dating romance!

*fake romance
*saving the family business

Ellie & Theo’s banter was great and really made the book super fun!

Thank you Random House Publishing and NetGalley for sending me an eARC of Love You, Mean It!!

This book had a very slow start for me. It was hard for me to get into and the main character felt unlikeable to me. I appreciate how hard working Ellie is and how family oriented she is but she just annoyed me at times LOL.

The ending of the book was so good. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know it I love it enough for 4 stars but definitely 3.5 stars.

Loved it. Give me the witty banter, fake romance trope any day. This book was such a treat! Such likable characters, I didn’t want it to end. I bindge-read this book in two days.

A fun read, the story of Ellie and Theo. A fake engagement romance. I would have liked something from Theos point of view.

This romance suffered from a rather unlikable heroine. Ellie Greco had given up her dreams of becoming a costume designer in order to save her family's deli when her father died. When a local property developer threatens to bring in a huge competing deli, Ellie pulls out all the stops to foil the deal. This plot gives a nod to "While You Were Sleeping" with a brief bout of amnesia, and then, for rather bizarre reasons, Theo the property developer agrees to fake-date Ellie because he himself is not actually that into the deal with the other deli. This plot is sounding ridiculous when I type it out. A wacky plot can work with the right characters, but I just never bought in to Ellie and Theo together, and Ellie alone was self-absorbed and petty. If you love fake dating tropes, you might still want to give this book a try, but it was a miss for me. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine/Dell for a digital review copy.

Cute little rom-com. Author didn't succeed in making everything plausible and I didn't love the two main characters. Good for beach reading.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-ARC of this book.

I had so much fun falling in love with this book. It was You’ve Got Mail, While You Were Sleeping and The Proposal all jumbled together into a sweet love story. The writing style had a good flow, and the romantic tropes were well executed. The characters were the right amount of sassy, complex and loveable. When Ellie Greco’s father passed away, she packed up her life as a theater costume designer in New York and moved back to her small town to run her family’s deli. Greco’s Deli has been a part of the town for over 100 years, so when a property management firm run by the town’s wealthy and elite Taylor family plans to rent out an old department store to Mangia, a gourmet food department store, Greco’s Deli’s survival is at stake. Ellie decides to reach out to Theo Taylor, an old high school acquaintance, to see if there is any way she can stop the deal. When a stray ceiling tile hits Theo on the head abruptly ending their meeting, a panicked Ellie lies to the paramedics and says she is Theo’s fiancée so that she can make sure he’s alright. What ensues is trope filled goodness. I don’t read a lot of romance books so I can’t tell you all the cool trope slang, but I had fun and fell in love with Ellie and Theo. This is a perfect summer read that will leave you with the warm and fuzzies.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
This was a cute rom-com premised on the fake dating trope. I have read a bunch of these lately and this book was not a stand-out, while it was enjoyable.

Ellie's life is about to be overturned by a big box store threatening the existence of her family deli. When she goes over to chat with the owner, the ceiling caves in and the (spoiler alert) love interest suffers from amnesia. This is where it almost lost me. Ellie's childish and questionable decision to pretend to be his fiancee was so ick. Luckily, he remembered soon enough and the "fake dating" that ensued became mutual.

After that initial ick, it's quite a cute, clever, and feel-good romance and if you like the fake dating trope, this is for you!

Love You, Mean It is a rom-com, full of playfulness and sharp humor. Ellie Greco has been managing her family's deli after the death of her father. After the residents and the Greco family learns that a gourmet food department store is looking to move into the neighborhood, concerns rise for the longevity of the family legacy.

Ellie approaches Theo, the landlord of the vacant building. Although they attended high school together, they ran in very different circles, and she has trouble keeping her prejudices at bay despite aiming to persuade him to reject the tenancy of the big-time competition, allowing her family's deli to continue to flourish.

Gagnon uses a mesh of familiar tropes in fun and engaging ways — you know where this is going, but the journey there is definitely a ride featuring tiny unexpected turns and bankable charm. With enemies-to-lovers and grump-to-sunshine paving the way, I enjoyed this gem from beginning to end.

Ellie and Theo meet while Ellie is trying to save her family business. The ceiling collapses, which leads her to get amnesia and claim that Theo is her finance. The meet-cute happened pretty early in the book and hooked me. After that, the book's pace slowed but was still enjoyable. There is a bit of business rivalry, drama, dislike to love, business deals, and lovely, heartwarming friendships. I liked the romance, especially because I felt like the characters had a lot of time to develop their friendship and the relationship. Definitely read this if you like sweet romcoms with good characters and a smidge of steam.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Dell for this e-arc.*

The perfect blend of food and fashion with a twist of a fake relationship trope! I enjoyed this story and the characters were realistic and thought out. I read this in about 24 hrs.

I don’t usually read rom coms, but a friend recommended this, so I thought I would give it a try. Ellie Greco wants to help her family’s business (a deli) survive despite a property manager’s wanting to rent a nearby building to a ritzy gourmet food store, and such serious competition could mean the demise of the deli. After a bizarre accident, Ellie pretends to be the fiance of the property manager’s son, who is injured in the accident, and the two hope that this fake arrangement will somehow help save the deli. The story started out at a good pace but moved very slowly as of about a third of the way through, and I really had a hard time relating to some of the characters, especially Ellie. Nonetheless, this was sort of a cute read . . . but it did not persuade me to read more rom coms.

4 🌟

I love a good fake dating troupe!
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This was such a cute romcom. Both main characters were enjoyable and I loved the growth out of Ellie. I think one of my favorite parts was when an ex gf entered the scene, I was expecting cattiness between the two women and there wasn't any! The ending was a hit abrupt but overall enjoyable.

Thanks, Netgalley for the ARC of this book!

I found this book unputdownable. The banter was delicious, the flirting was scrumptious and the spice was peppered in nicely. While I enjoy a happy witty back and forth in a book, it also hits really hard when the words that come out are hurtful. Jilly Gagnon did that in this book at the perfect time, in the perfect moment. Aaaand that’s also when one of the main characters becomes shut down and unapproachable.

Sam is my favorite character in this book. She is chaos and calm rolled into one. I found myself wanting Ellie’s (the FMC) friendship with her to work out more than her romantic relationship with Theo (the MMC).

Town deli 'meets' behemoth shopping experience in battle🍠🧀

This is a good, small-town romance with very engaging principal characters. It's got emotional ups and downs that made the couple's ultimate future unpredictable and I liked the suspense.

It's the story of the Ellie, manager of her family's Italian deli, and Theo, son of the big property owner in a traditional New England town, I loved the start and the accident that brings them together initially, later morphing into a full-blown fake engagement situation to save the deli and the town's other small businesses from a huge shopping complex called Mangia that's got its eye on a large vacant department store (owned by Theo's family) as an optimal site for their expansion out of Boston.

The plot had more character complexity than I had expected. And I liked that, that both main characters have made compromises for family considerations and have some dreams that didn't pan out. Their relationship, which does contain heat, I felt developed realistically once they had settled on a scheme to keep Mangia out of town. As for Sam, Theo's long ago ex, she added a lot of anxiety and drama to the mix.

Yes, initially this had 'While You Were Sleeping' vibes, but that was a brief interval and it drew me into the story. The writing's good and makes for an entertaining romance.

Thanks to Random House, Ballantine, Dell and NetGalley for sharing a complimentary copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest opinion.

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I could not finish reading this.. and I feel so bad. But it was pretty difficult to follow.. descriptive sentences that were too long.. weird thesaurus type words.. I read 2 chapters but had to stop