TW mention of car accident, mention of sexual assault against main character (past), parent figure with Alzheimer’s

I loved this book— the chemistry between Jesse and Lu had me by the throat. I loved watching them grow as friends and as lovers.
Jesse was struggling. The man who raised him has Alzheimer’s and no longer remembers him and he lost his sense of self after losing his career as a firefighter after a car accident left him injured. His new career path makes perfect sense, and I loved seeing him come to the conclusion that he was capable of achieving it.
Lu’s struggles were relatable. She struggled making new friends and she often feels too loud and too much. I appreciated the way that Lu’s past sexual assault was brought up. Their communication and care and respect for each other made my heart burst. I really enjoyed seeing both Lu and Jesse go through their therapy sessions and seeing the change in them.

5/5 stars, THE FRIENDSHIP STUDY by Ruby Barrett is available February 13!
Thank you to Harlequin and Netgalley for the eARC.

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

I always adore Ruby's writing but gosh this book just hit differently. It felt so soft, so tender, and just so achingly true. The struggle of making friends as an adult, the struggle of trusting someone else enough to be yourself, to just trust in love whether platonic or romantic. Both Jesse and Lulu were knocked down in their lives and the way these two became friends and just traveled that road together. Giving each other grace, making mistakes and just having incredible chemistry.

Because this is just a gorgeous friends to lovers romance. The forbidden romance, the oh we're just friends with benefits who cares about a little mutual masturbation it doens't mean anything. The sfotest and tenderest development of a relatipnship as these two trusted each other and communicated in their own ways and just belonged to each other (IYKYK).

Ruby can write anything, just an incredible talent and a look at being vulnerable and trusting in love.

A m/f romance with bi leads? Yes please! Jesse and Lulu were a winning, funny, easy to root for couple from the very start of this book. Barrett is an excellent writer who knows how to make a romance hot hot hot.
She keeps getting better with every book and this was no exception

This was such a gorgeous rumination on friendship and loneliness, with beautifully constructed characters and a heaping helping of steam. Just utterly beautiful writing that evokes so many emotions. I wanted to crawl inside this book and live there forever.

Ruby Barrett's writing is beautiful and creates a lovely picture of friendship and organic relationships. Many will (and have!) enjoy this book - but I just didn't connect with the storyline or any of the characters. Four starts for the way these words are woven together, but I held out on the last star simply because I didn't connect on a personal level.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin - Romance, Carina Adores for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

something that’s really cool about this book is its focus on making friends as an adult/belonging. i feel like it can be super hard, and no one really talks about it, so seeing the leads struggle with it made me feel less alone.

i enjoyed lulu & jesse’s chemistry. the only issue i really had was that i didn’t really like how jesse came off in the first couple of chapters. i just felt that his stoicism was kind of hard to read (which i get based on his character). i’m just glad we did get dual pov because if i was only ever seeing him through lulu’s eyes i think he would’ve been difficult to accept/understand.

#netgalley

3.5 starts …. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book. I wasn’t sure at first. This is my first book by this author and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the authors writing style and character development, but the more I read the more I enjoyed the story. The romance was good, the spice was also enjoyable and I really enjoyed the bi representation throughout the story as well.

Wow, what a gorgeous and mature story of finding your way, learning to count on people, and opening yourself up to love. I loved these characters, I loved their growth, and the spice was hot hot hot.

I can’t wait to read more from Ruby Barrett and will look forward to bringing The Friendship Study into our store as a Spring Break pick.

This is the first book I read by the author but I want to read all her works. She’s great. I really like her style, the characters development, the narrative arc. I fell in love with both the main characters, Jess and Lulu, but especially Lulu, she’s my favorite. I love the ADHD rep, very well depicted!
But what I love most is that this is a slow burn story with a lot of spicy. Yes, the two things are not totally incompatible and this book proves it!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the arc!

The Friendship Study was a delight to read! Ruby Barrett’s prose is haunting and beautiful, and I was rooting for these two lonely souls only pages into the story.

Jesse is a former firefighter still reeling from an accident two years ago that changed his life forever and Lulu is an accident-prone professor with a PhD in the history of witchcraft. After a disastrous blind date set up by Jesse’s ex and now best friend George, the two find themselves thrown together as participants in George’s study about how millennials make friends. Of course, the rules of the study mandate no sexual relations between participants, so they know they can only be friends— despite the clear chemistry developing between them.

This is a story about two people who are in pain, messy, and lost, trying to find belonging and purpose in their lives again. It’s also a tender and sizzling romance that will pull at your heartstrings and pump up your heart rate. The steam was STEAMY as they come up with loopholes to the rules of the study that…well, let’s just say they put their creativity to the test. The study itself is not the most airtight, so for the sake of enjoyment just don’t think too hard about that aspect.

The book has both queer rep (Jesse is bisexual and Lulu is “not exactly straight” as she puts it) and thoughtful disability rep (Jesse has chronic pain from his injury and uses a mobility aid when needed, and Lulu is neurodivergent— it’s alluded to that she has ADHD).

Ruby Barrett has once again written a fabulous romance; I will be reading everything she puts out going forward!

So cute, fun, and had some great ADHD rep, and I just ate this story up! Ruby Barrett's writing was great and I had such a wonderful time reading this. The romance was amazing and OMG the cover is so beautiful. There's always something so beautiful and special about Lulu and Jesse’s dynamic that had me swooning like crazy! Loved this!

I LOVED this book. Such a great new friends to lovers book. I especially love to read forbidden sex even if the characters are denying themselves for whatever reason and that happened here. I would have actually enjoyed seeing more held back.

I also enjoyed the ADHD representation from Lulu and her father (although he goes unaddressed). I've been seeing a trend in books lately where they give a main character every single ADHD symptom and then don't address it at all. Or if any mental health gets addressed it's anxiety or depression. I appreciated that it was at least addressed.

A beautiful, poignant love story centered around wonderfully inclusive storylines, THE FRIENDSHIP STUDY has everything a romance reader could ever hope for. Lulu and Jesse’s friends to forever dynamic is so meaningful and lovely, I *dare* you to read Ruby Barrett’s latest and not shed a tear (or two). I couldn’t recommend THE FRIENDSHIP STUDY more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Romance for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions my own.

This was the first book I’ve read by Ruby Barrett. I’m blown away! Fantastic plot and very well developed characters. I loved the slow burn romance between Lulu and Jesse. Steam level is high!

Thank you NetGalley and Carina Adores for this ARC.

What I crave the most in romances is the emotional depth and believability and with its vulnerability, tenderness, and realness, THE FRIENDSHIP STUDY is everything I could hope for. I was hooked from the very beginning, and I think I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time I was reading this beautiful book (which was in one sitting). It's a book about friendships, belonging, finding one's purpose, as much as it is about love. A very well-crafted and layered story about life that happens to have one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever read. I absolutely loved the unique and refreshing storyline and everything about this book.

What happens when you mix someone who thinks he's not enough with someone who thinks she's too much? You get Jesse and Lulu. Even though Jesse is grumpy and silent and Lulu is sunshine and goes on tangents, they have so much in common, especially in feeling lonely and struggling with believing they can succeed at making adult friendships. The connection and intensity between them was off the charts. I found myself holding my breath every time Jesse and Lulu were in the same room together, not wanting to miss a single moment.

As much as I loved watching Jesse and Lulu's relationship unfold, especially from starting from a disastrous blind date, I also admired how much we got to learn about them as individuals and their own journeys regarding their mental health and finding their purpose in life. No longer a firefighter and still recovering mentally from a car accident, Jesse is forced to stop shutting his self off from the world and must find a way to go back to living again (this is where Lulu comes in). Lulu is leery of getting close with anyone after finding out that her ex-boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend. Then comes a friendship study with Jesse that doesn't allow for any romantic relationships between participants. Jesse is also battling with coming out as bisexual to his grandfather who raised him but is now suffering from Alzheimers. Lulu is trying to figure out how to be friends with her co-workers and decide whether she wants to accept a job in a different state that her father wants her to take. I hope readers fall in love with them and their hearts as much as I did.

I greatly appreciated the reminders that we get to choose where we belong, where our home is, and of the importance of trusting ourselves to recover from our mistakes. Jesse and Lulu will always have a place in my heart I love them so much, and I am so grateful to have witnessed their love. I look forward to reading whatever the author decides to grant us with next and will try to be as patient as I can until that day comes!

Much gratitude to Harlequin and NetGalley for the digital advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

I have a type. The quiet one. The brooding one. The ‘there’s much more under the surface’ one. And from the first page on, I fell head over heels for Jesse because he’s that one. The type I mean, not THE one 😂.



The Friendship Study is perfect for Chloe Liese fans! It’s swoon-worthy, quirky, and so incredibly tender. Jesse, the quiet, injured former (bisexual) firefighter, and Lu, the overcompensating, never-stops-talking, neurodivergent history teacher, are both lonely. They long to be seen, to belong, but instead, they hide. Both have only one friend, George, Jesse’s ex-boyfriend and best friend and Lu’s colleague at university.
 
The main topic of this story, making new friends as an adult, is a fantastic one. What if you want to make more friends but don’t know how? What if being around people is always a lot? What if you feel like you could go on for hours, days, weeks, with no one around? But wanting to be alone is something different than feeling lonely. So many people feel lonely, but it’s a topic we hardly talk about. An important one and I’m so happy Ruby Barrett wrote a book about it. I also liked the other themes, Jesse’s Pop, who has Alzheimer's and doesn’t remember Jesse anymore and withdraws more and more from real life. Just like Jessie has been doing after his accident. And Lu’s dad, who means so well but gets in the way because of what Lu really wants. To have a job because she got it on her own, not because her dad presented it on a silver platter. And of course the neurodivergent rep. And Lu, I also have whatever the medical term for clumsiness is that gives me bruises all over my body 😂.
 
I loved, loved, loved this story and Ruby’s vivid and descriptive writing! It’s so soft and adorable and, at the same time, intriguing emotional. I read The Friendship Study with so many smiles on my face, and once in a while, I got a huge lump in my throat. Did I already say I loved, loved this story?

Actual rating 4.5 stars rounded up to five.

Lulu and Jesse.. What an emotional rollercoaster I entered, without even knowing I was doing so! When I started this book, I thought it was going to be a run of the mill romance, but the fragility of each of these characters broke something inside of me.

I can't quite explain when I started to actually care for these deeply-flawed, yet very real, characters. You can tell by the words that Barrett uses and her care with their interactions that anyone who's ever felt lonely in their lives, who's ever felt different, who's ever felt a sense of "not belonging" clearly influenced this book deeply. The rich descriptions and dialogue evoked emotions in me that most romance books don't.

I could discuss the finer plot points, or the spicy-ness level of this book (which, btw, if you are wondering is :hot pepper emoji: X3), or even the way in which the MMC deals with his own internalized bi-phobia.

But I won't do any of that.

Because, this book is SO much more than the sum of its parts. The neurodivergent representation continues to show us that you don't need a medical diagnosis to feel the relief when someone "gets you." Jesse's accident represents the fact that even the strongest, most able bodies can sometimes fail you, and Pop's Alzheimer's represents that not all wounds are visible, and not all wounds heal with time. I will also add - Jesse's sobriety and his care behind the wheel rang so true to me, that I wanted to reach across the pages of the book to give this man a hug.

Don't worry, Lulu gets a hug too... but hers are more directed at the small child inside of her who wants to belong and who wants to be loved, in spite of her Father's last name.

This is Barrett's best book thus far.

*Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for my honest review*

The heartfelt yearning to be seen, heard and even cared for is something that can be so potently real and human, and for Ruby Barrett to translate that so well in her writing with Lulu and Jesse was so beautifully poignant.

I love the tenderness and openness of being vulnerable and letting love fill in the gaps of where we think we’re lacking most.

I love the thematic elements of friendships and the hardships of finding them in adulthood.

And I love how it’s earned with every ache that pulls the reader in for more.

5 ⭐️’s

This was my first book by Ruby Barrett and I was blown out of the water. I loved the straightforward prose and approach to the writing. This story was also so unique and touched on a special circumstance a lot of millennials find themselves in while not beating us over the head with it.

I really loved watching a male main character deal with insecurities in a real way. Jesse and Lulu just fit together so nicely and I rooted for them the entire time.

I found myself still thinking about this book hours after I finished it and that tells me all I need to know about this story. Definitely a recommendation from me.

My heart is so soft right now. Since the very first chapter of this book I knew this was going to be an emotional read. Both Lulu and Jesse are so sensitive and lovable. You’re going to want to hug them both as tight as possible.

Jesse’s bisexuality was one of the biggest highlights for me. I felt him so much. Feeling attraction regardless of the gender of the person is exactly what bisexuality means and he’s the perfect portrayal. I also loved his thoughts on biphobia and how it feels like it’s a sexuality that makes other people feel uncomfortable. I could relate to him so much, and I could also relate to Lulu in lots of ways. I don’t have lifelong friends, and as an adult, making friends is so hard. I love my friends a lot and I rely on them way more than I do on my family, so I completely understood Jesse and Lulu’s struggles with friendship but their need to feel like they belong to someone.

I strongly recommend this book if you can relate to this experiences as well. Well, I also recommend it if you don’t relate, obviously, because it’s such a beautiful romance. It’s full of tenderness, acceptance and insecurities turning into wonderful friendships. Platonic soulmates exist and Jesse and Lulu are the proof, even if they stop being platonic because they fall in love along the way.

TW: Dementia (relative), car accident, sexual assault (past)

Rating: 5/5
Steam level: Open door, +5 scenes, high level of detail

ARC provided by Carina Adores and NetGalley. Opinions are my own!