I had the best time reading Alison and Adam’s story 🥹🩷 their story was touching, sweet, real, unique, and genuinely funny. I rooted for them every single second 🫶🏻 …and this third-act break-up really crushed my heart 😭 thankfully, they healed it too.

The whole cast of characters was so entertaining 👏🏻👏🏻 Alison’s best friends are so much fun and I want to get in on their trivia nights so bad! 😆

The tension and chemistry in this story are off the charts; the steam was so well placed and so well written that it simply just worked beautifully within Alison and Adam’s relationship progression.

This is Ellie’s debut novel and I can tell you that I will absolutely be reading whatever she blesses us with next! I saw another reviewer refer to her writing as electric and I wholeheartedly agree! She absolutely knocked this out of the park 🩷

Highly recommend if you like:
forced proximity
enemies-to-lovers
grumpy sunshine
romcoms

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25
🌶️

NOTE: Alison’s story contains a heartfelt breast cancer/BRCA gene mutation storyline. I feel it was handled with so much care and written honestly and beautifully.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam, GP Putnam Sons, for gifting me a digital ARC of the debut romance by Ellie Palmer. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4.5 stars rounded up!

Allison is at her ex-boyfriend, Sam's, funeral when she learns that he didn't tell his family they broke up. Sam's sister begs Allison to keep up the ruse that they were still involved for the sake of her grieving parents. Then she meets Sam's best friend, Adam, when they are tasked to go through Sam's stuff together and clear out his house. Things suddenly become more complicated.

I thought this was a fabulous debut. I'm not always a big romance fan, but certain authors make their works a must read for me. Ellie Palmer is going to be one of those authors. This is a sweet, funny, romance novel with underlying depth. Allison has the BRCA gene (as does the author) and that journey is portrayed so well here; not maudlin, but hopeful and positive. As an aside, I also took turns listening to the audiobook, narrated by the fabulous Karissa Vacker, who is on her breast cancer journey. My hats off to both these strong women for telling their stories. Highly recommended!

3.5 stars!

This book had a great start for me. I liked the premise of Ali being tied to this man and intruding on his life postmortem. Her own relationship with death - or lack there of - was so interesting to me. It was really insightful to me how she felt about her BRCA diagnosis and her own grief with it.
I also really loved Adam from the get go. His banter with Ali was so good and watching him hold back until he had the full story was so well done.

I think the my main issue with the book was Ali was a bit too people pleasing for me. I know everyone handles grief differently but I definitely just wanted to shake her at some points.

Overall, a great debut and I would love to read whatever this author puts out next.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Four Weekends and a Funeral by @elliepalmerwrites
Publication Date: August 6, 2024! Go get a copy now!

Well this was an absolutely delightful read! Thanks to @bookedwiththeemilys @elliepalmerwrites and @putnambooks for the gifted ebook!

I truly enjoyed reading this story and fell in love with characters! If you spent any time on my page, you know I LOVE when romances have extra depth to them. This was no exception! Our main character, Ali, is a thirty-year-old post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier. She finds herself in a precarious situation… the book is silly. There are hallmark moments galore. The side characters are FUN. The love story is sweet!

This is a lovely book that I will hopefully add to my physical collection at some point! 🫶

Tropes if you want to know them!
🫶Forced proximity
🫶Grumpy / Sunshine
🫶Banter for days
🫶Forearms
🫶90s nostalgia
🫶 dash of fake dating
🫶Ex-boyfriend’s best friend

Ellie, I look forward to reading more books by you in the future! This was delightful!

Taylor Swift: Invisible String

This book has it all to be another top favorite of the year for me. The plot is unique: Alison pretends to be the grieving girlfriend at her ex-boyfriend Sam’s funeral, and together with the deceased’s best friend, Adam, agree to clear out Sam’s apartment in the following weekends. The relatable characters and their character development is top tier with so many happy and emotional elements (especially with the main female character being a post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier). The romance takes a gold medal: there is so banter-so much hilariousness and true conversations and dynamic chemistry! The tropes of forced proximity and Grumpy/Sunshine, women in STEM (and others) are among my favorites. My soul needed the exposure to the message of embracing one’s true self oneself: “How am I going to be with you, if you’re so busy trying to be someone else?” And overall, I just felt seen: this book is so real and relatable in so many ways…
Thank you to Booked With the Emily’s, Putnam Books and the author for an eARC

My words are not worthy of this book. What a stunning exploration of grief and our journey to rediscovering ourselves after life hits us unexpectedly. I appreciated that Allison's grief journey was two fold - with herself and alongside Sam's death.

Glorious. Adam was just...the best. Truly out of the Hallmark movie of my dreams.

Thank you! Gonna go sit with my feelings now.

This ended up being a really good surprise!

It was giving Emily Henry but Palmer found a way to have her own flare.
The friendships and pop culture references were my favorite aspects.

Four Weekends and a Funeral was wonderfully surprising. Dealing with serious matters (Double Mastectomy), death, and sticky relationships, Ellie Palmer put a wonderfully hilarious spin on a unique storyline. The main female character was a real and committed as they come. May we all be as lucky to know (and break up with?) someone as loyal as her.

The banter amongst the friend groups was phenomenal. Between the lulls, I found myself looking forward to finding out "what happens next." So many real-life scenarios and discussions put this book on the same shelf with Emily Henry and Abby Jimenez.

Definitely recommend!

Thank you for this ARC!

⭐️: 5
🌶️: 1

🎀 banter
🚂 grumpy x sunshine
🎀 forced proximity
🚂 unusual fake dating scenario
🎀 BRCA1 mutation representation

I’m actually mad at myself for not reading this sooner. It was everything I look for in a contemporary romance, and it was perfect.

The entire plot of this book revolved around the death of Alison’s ex-boyfriend, and yet, the topics of death and grief were discussed so lightly and gently, that it was easy to read. I truly appreciated how differently the grief was presented in this book.

Now for Alison and Adam - their grumpy, enemies to lovers chemistry was dynamite. I loved their dynamic and how they built each other up. And that ending, that ending was perfection 😭😭😭

🌶️ = closed door

Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Group Putnam and Ellie Palmer for the ARC of Four Weekends and a Funeral.

4 stars.

"Four Weekends and a Funeral" by Ellie Palmer is a wonderful debut romance that is part forced proximity romance, part rediscovery, part grumpy/sunshine, and equal parts heartbreaking and a breath of fresh air. I really enjoyed the premise of this book, for starters. I found myself enthralled with and entertained by the main characters, Alison and Adam. Sam was Alison's most recent ex-boyfriend, and Adam was Sam's best friend. When Sam dies suddenly, Alison finds herself lying to his family at the request of Sam's sister. Alison agrees to pretend to be Sam's *current* girlfriend during the funeral to save the family from any unnecessary heartbreak. This lie spirals slightly out of control, and she finds herself volunteering to pack up Sam's condo so his family can put it on the market. Adam agrees to help Alison pack up Sam's life. On paper, Adam and Alison could not be any more different. Alison never stops talking, and Adam is completely content grunting one-word answers to her. The more they open up to one another on the weekends they are together in Sam's condo, the more attraction they feel. The longer they are in each other's presence, the more they fall head over heels even though they are both figuring out how to cope with the loss of Sam. They have both essentially lied to each other about their relationship with Sam when he died, so when it all finally comes out, will they put their feelings aside and capitalize on their mutual attraction? I found myself laughing out loud at some of the interactions between Adam and Alison! The entire scene at the school play had me rolling at their reactions to it and to each other. I also liked the frank discussions about BRCA and Alison's double mastectomy. I haven't read many romance books that deal with this subject matter before, so it was nice to learn something new and feel like I had a bit more information about something that impacts so many women. I also appreciate the heck out of the conversation about not wanting to waste your "second chance" after a major medical incident It's almost survivor's guilt-adjacent for Alison. Ooooof, this really hit close to home! Alison has to figure out what truly makes her happy instead of doing what Sam thought she *should* do with the rest of her life: become a great adventurer who loves to be outside and do walking things and camping and nature stuff, which she is very much not into. This book is closed-door, PG-13 at most, but I don't think it needs a bunch of spice to make it good. It's good on its own, apart from a few miscommunications and a little bit of jumping all over the place! A wonderful debut for Ellie Palmer, such a sweet, effective story.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ellie Palmer, PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, and G.P. Putnam's Sons for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

Now I am always up for a fake dating story but the fact that Sam had died, and she was to pretend to be dating him at his funeral so his parents wouldn't be upset is a whole nother level of fake dating. It is a great set up to having her spend all the weekend with Sam's best friend Adam getting the condo set for sale. It is one of the perfect rom coms set ups that was done really well. And although this is a rom com set up the rest of the story is very sweet and very moving story, of a woman finding herself and love. I found the entire story line of Alison very moving. She is a woman that feels she has cheated death, and she needs to make her life worth living. In this era of living your best life I think Alison really felt like she needed to be more than she was.
I found her struggles with body image, relationship with her mom and belief that she had to be more than she was to be happy a really amazing story. I love that her and Adam have a little slow burn, hot attraction and the will they or won't they action. I really loved all the phone banter. I felt the book did an amazing job of slowly getting to know someone even though each has their own problems they are trying to deal with while dealing with the grief of losing their friend Sam.
I loved Allison's friends and Adams family. I really loved the trivia competitions and that whole story line so the ending of the books was just a chef's kiss. I loved the whole ending, and it truly made this a 5 star read for me. I really enjoyed this book a lot. I found it's message and story really well done. I would recommend to anyone that loves a good rom com, a grumpy hero, a coming of age in a way type story with Allison learning what living her best life really is. Very good story, very well written.

FOUR WEEKENDDS AND A FUNERAL by Ellie Palmer grabbed me with a bight color, wonderful title, and fascinating premise of a woman attending her ex-boyfriend's funeral only to learn that no one knew they had broken up and must play along with their version of a dead man's reality. Just a short way in, I realized I couldn't read it through to the end. It's workable enough if you are committed, offering a view into breast cancer and hard realities that is seldom covered in the lighter side of fiction. The predictability and the plodding narration and cliched responses and relationships dragged me along until I realized it wasn't going to get any better for me and abandoned the enterprise. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

This book had such an interesting premise. I have never read a book where the main female character has had a double mastectomy after learning she is positive for BRCA1 gene. It was an interesting perspective and I think it should be talked about more. Now onto the story. The initial plot was unique, if a little weird and predictable. But I did enjoy it! The romance was sweet. It is fade to black however so if spice is what you are looking for this may not be the book for you. I liked the friendships between Ali and her friends. And she has a very real and relatable relationship with her mother.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Synopsis:
When thirty-year-old post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier and reluctant thrill-seeker Alison Mullally arrives at her ex-boyfriend Sam’s funeral to find that no one knows he dumped her, she agrees to play the grieving girlfriend for the sake of the family and pack up Sam’s apartment with his prickly best friend, Adam Berg. After all, it’ll only take four weekends . . . what could happen?

But Adam doesn’t want Alison anywhere near him. Forced to spend long hours with the grump, and his monosyllabic demeanor, Alison decides she must put her people-pleasing abilities to the test. And after awkward family affairs and packing up dilemmas, the two form a tenuous friendship . . . if “friendship” means incredible chemistry and tension between them.

What I loved:
1. The BRCA representation. My mother survived breast cancer so that was so relatable to me. The way the author talks about losing your breasts which is tied to a woman’s femininity was so beautiful.
2. The female relationship between Alison, Mara, and Chelsea. Their friendship is so raw, honest and supportive. The banter at trivia made me laugh out loud! I would love to read future books exploring these side characters.
3. All the Old Movie references “You Billy Crystaled me. His face registers zero comprehension. It’s from a movie. With Meg Ryan.” As a movie lover and millennial this made me laugh and swoon.

What I did not love:
1. There were parts that lagged on and were a bit boring. I had to set the book down and read something else for a day or two. It is definitely a slow burn for me.
2. All the negative feelings and talk that Alison had. At times she just seemed whiny and annoying.

Overall, I liked it and it was entertaining. It’s a nice rom-com. I really enjoyed the ending and the epilogue. It tied up all the loose ends well. I look forward to reading another book by this author, I can’t believe this is her debut. Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam Books for the gifted copy

#bookedwiththeemilys #elliepalmerwrites #netgalley #gifted #arcreadsandreviews

This was a well-written, entertaining book. It was fun, heartwarming and kept me reading. I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. I enjoyed this book and would read other books by this author.

Okay, you all NEED to pick up this book. This was the author’s DEBUT. And it astounded me. Definitely one of the best romances I read this year. (She’s right up there with Abby Jimenez for me.) This book was SO sweet, adorable, and funny. (Ellie Palmer is hilarious!) It also had me crying, but not for the reason you might expect.

The FMC has the BRCA1 mutation and had chosen to get a double mastectomy to help prevent getting breast cancer later in life. The author also has BRCA, so I assume some of her personal life is shared with her character Alison. I honestly had never thought too much about what it would be like to lose your breasts, something that makes up so much of your femininity, so this book was definitely eye-opening in that way, too.

But I’m sure you all want to know: what was the romance like? What was the spice like? The romance: ultimate swoonworthy. I loved the MMC Adam, aka the Northshore Grump. (And yes there’s the Grumpy x Sunshine trope here pulled off flawlessly!) Their relationship was 👩🏻‍🍳💋 (chef’s kiss), and speaking of kiss, that’s mostly what you’ll get in this fairly closed-door romance. (A little bit of second base numbness, too.) Even with just that peek of their physical relationship, though, you know that the chemistry is off the charts.

My other favorite things about this book were all the Minnesota references- the author is from MN, too! Also, this has one of the best first lines of a book! (Swipe to see it.) So what are you waiting for? Go pick this book up today!

I recently finished Four Weekends and a Funeral, and I cannot stop thinking about the story and the characters, Allison and Adam. This debut novel by Ellie Palmer is outstanding! I appreciate Ellie's vulnerability and sharing her personal experience as a post-double-mastectomy BRCA 1 carrier through Allison's story. The whole premise was so unique and handled with so much care. I also didn't know this book was based in the Twin Cities and Duluth (both places I have lived). I love my home state, so I'm grateful to have another book take place here. This book will be one of my favorite books of 2024. I can already tell!

Please read this book if you like:
-Books set in Minnesota
-Grumpy/sunshine
-Forced proximity
-Trivia nights
-Overcoming health scares/breast cancer awareness
-Deep conversation & emotions
-Rom-coms with many laugh-out-loud moments!

One of my all time favorite 90s rom coms is While You Were Sleeping. You just don't get much better than Sandra Bullock, hot Bill Pullman and Peter Gallagher (aka Sandy Cohen) in a coma.

If you love that movie like I do (or actually even if you don't lol) you should absolutely read Ellie Palmer's FOUR WEEKENDS AND A FUNERAL. It's got a similar feeling and Adam Berg absolutely has Jack Callahan vibes.

Alison Mullally is a BCRA1 carrier and had a double mastectomy — something she is still working through. When she goes to her ex-boyfriend Sam's funeral, she discovers that no one except his sister knew they broke up. And his sister wants her to pretend they were still a couple for their parents, who wanted to see Sam settles. People pleasing Alison agrees to help his grieving family. She also offers to help pack up Sam's apartment with Sam's grumpy best friend Adam.

Adam wants nothing to do with Alison, and they are forced to spend several weekends together to work in Sam's apartment. Alison does her best to make Adam her friend, and slowly he thaws to her. But Alison can't ignore their chemistry and her growing feelings for Adam. But can they make a relationship work when Adam finds out the truth? And can Alison finally learn to be happy with who she is?

THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD!!! I cannot even describe my love for Adam and Alison. There's carpentry! And trains! And super intense trivia! It's so funny and sad (but not like sob sad. Just you know, dealing with grief and also guilt) and heartwarming. And the chemistry!

Everyone needs to go read it NOW! And it's out today!

Thanks to NetGalley and Putnam for my ARC.

When Alison attends her ex boyfriend’s funeral , his family is unaware that they have broken up. They ask her to work with his best friend to clean out his apartment and get it ready to sell. Not wanting to upset the ex’s parents she agrees to do this. Alison and the best friend end up liking each other but both are hiding things about their friendship with the deceased. Also she has had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer and is dealing with that. This book was just ok to me.

A fantastically funny contemporary mf rom com with great banter. I'm so glad I was able to read this via Netgalley. I look forward to future books from this author.