I adored this book. It was so cute but also very heartbreakingly heavy at points, the balance between funny and sad was just right. The heavy topics were handled beautifully (I want to fight Emma's mom and hug Caleb's mom in turn) and the banter and funny parts made me laugh out loud.

i requested this book because i thought the plot was different and would be fun to read. however, the writing is over-the-top ridiculous in a way. I dnf'd towards the 20% mark.

DNF at 20%

Usually I love YA books and find them to be a fun and light read, but this one was really stressing me out for some reason. Maybe I will finish it at a different time, but it was just not doing it for me :(

This was a super cute coming of age book that touched on many important topics for teens: moving, making new friends, self discovery, found family, setting boundaries. It was well written and easy to follow, even though it bounced between perspectives. Definitely adding to our library shelves!

Exes & Foes lived UP to its expectations. I love a good competition amongst ex-best friends to win the new girl's heart, only to fall in love with each other instead.

This book has the ex-best friends (Caleb and Emma) as point-of-views in the book, letting you go inside the mind of these complete opposite characters. Usually, I'm not a fan of books written this way, but Amanda Woody does it WELL. There wasn't a character I favored more than the other one I read their chapters.

Then, we have Juliet (the new girl), who is truly too sweet for her own good, and I wish her all the love in the world. She's also too smart for her own good. . . Juliet's dynamic with both Caleb and Emma had me cackling the whole time as they were fighting over here, but never seemed to get her alone long enough before the competition showed up.

I'm very happy Penguin Teen reached out to me about Amanda's newest book and letting me have an ARC (thank you so much Penguin Teen)! They are slowly becoming one of my favorite authors to read and I can't wait to see what's in store for the future of their work.

Exes & Foes is a good YA friends-to-lovers romance mixed with plenty of friendship and family drama. It’s the first book I’ve read by Amanda Woody, and for the most part I enjoyed it. I think it dragged a bit at times, but I really liked all the positive messages it had and the focus on finding your people.

Caleb, Emma and Juliet are all layered characters, with their own problems and issues. I loved how they all formed a strong friendship and looked out for each other, all while navigating problematic familial relationships and personal revelations. Caleb ended up being my favourite character, though I liked Emma and Juliet too. I also liked the flashbacks of how Caleb and Emma initially became friends, and it definitely gave me more of an insight into their lives.

Exes & Foes will resonate with a lot of teenagers from different backgrounds and family lives, and I’m sure anyone who reads it will take a lot away from it. The writing is good and the characters are very diverse, and I’ll be sure to read more from Amanda Woody in the future.

4.5⭐️

“Always and forever.”

I really enjoyed They Hate Each Other, so I knew I wanted to pick up Amanda Woody’s latest release. Thanks so much to Netgalley and Penguin Young Readers Group for the chance to read this one early.

When two ex-best friends both want to romance the new girl, they suddenly have to deal with being around each other again. Caleb and Emma are two grumps fighting over the sunshine character, Juliet. Obviously, bisexual chaos ensues!

What I loved the most about this book were the wholesome friendship vibes. I loved how, in pursuing Juliet, Caleb and Emma always ended up in the same places, and always dragged their friends along with them. It created so many great opportunities for friendships to bloom and I always love a story where friendship is at the centre (and yes, it is a romance, so romantic feelings grow as well). I also really liked the flashbacks where we got to see moments when Caleb and Emma were best friends. They were so sweet!

Amanda Woody’s stories always seem to have a deeper theme of parental neglect and I think they do such a great job of exploring the different aspects of this theme. As someone who works with young adults on a daily basis, seeing the way Emma’s mum or Caleb’s dad behaved made me so pissed off and sad. The reality is that lots of teens experience this, and I like how Woody talks about it in such a real way.

In short, if you want a super wholesome queer book to read this summer, pre-order this immediately! Exes and Foes is out on 23rd of July.

- highly recommend if you’re looking for a coming of age angsty romance with a queer cast!
- this is dual POV and i love both caleb and emma 🥹 caleb is so sweet and i also relate to him with his type A personality 😩 i was stressed out for emma and just wanted to give her a hug 😭 their relationship felt very sweet and genuine to me 🥹
- emma and caleb’s attraction to juliet felt a little insta-love to me but you don’t really need a strong reason to have a crush on someone so it still felt believable for the most part
- i don’t think i’ll ever like the premise of 2 people treating a potential love interest like a competition it feels icky and caleb and emma even acknowledge that (i love that both their friends call them out for it too) but i do like the way everything was resolved
- i really like all the side characters and their little friend group—it’s nice that friendship is also an important theme in this story, especially for juliet’s storyline since she wasn’t treated very well by her old “friends”

While I didn’t love this quite as much as THEO, I still thoroughly enjoyed it! I was constantly finding things I was able to relate to, from the parental issues to Juliet being nonbinary and using she/they pronouns and also being aroace. The story felt real and had depth.

An auto buy author now for sure!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

DNF at 23%

I love a bi for bi romance, and the premise sounded really good. I could not get into this, though. I don't know if it was just the wrong time or the wrong vibe, just wasn't for me.

I'm usually not a fan of love triangle stuff but this one ended in a way that I appreciated. This was a very easy read, the plot flowed, and I felt satisfied by the ending.

i don't know if amanda woody is for me. their writing is over-the-top ridiculous in a way i don't enjoy. in "they hate each other," i could look past this because there were other aspects of the book i did appreciate. i can't really say the same about "exes & foes." i couldn't overlook how unrealistic i found the plot or how heavy-handed its themes were. it also doesn't help that i much preferred caleb and emma as friends than as romantic partners. though! i do love the inclusion of juliet being aroace, as i am aroace myself. that being the outcome of their dumb competition was a bit funny, i admit.

I loved Woody's first book and was excited for this one, but it disappointed me. I thought the characters were all pretty one note, and I don't think this should have been marketed as a romance when it is such a heavy book - the cover definitely gives you a different vibe than the story inside!

Thank you Penguin Teen and NetGalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own. So Amanda Woody had me in my feels last night, crying all over myself. The thing I love about Amanda’s stories are they’re funny and romantic but the characters often have trauma, difficulties, and/or disabilities that impact them, that make the stories so deep and complex!! Caleb doesn’t fight but he will stand up for the new girl in school. But in typical fashion when the bully turns to tear down Caleb’s mom he freezes. Enter his ex-best friend Emma. She’s never been one to shy away from fighting back for people. She’s also know as feisty and a troublemaker. The two haven’t spoken in 4 years, each harboring their own feelings about their friend break up. But when the two both find themselves interested in the new student, Juliet, they decide to compete. The first one to get Juliet to kiss them gets to date her. However as they are forced into each other’s orbits feelings they thought they had buried begin to resurface. But is that what they want? Hurt runs deep between the two. Emma’s also struggling with a difficult home situation which has worsened since Caleb was last around. And Caleb’s trying to rebuild a relationship with his father, which Emma wouldn’t approve of. Can they keep their distance while competing? Or is their need to help and protect each other too ingrained? And what about Juliet? If they find out what Caleb and Emma have been doing will they ever forgive the two? A story that will pull at your heartstrings in all kinds of ways! Sweet, charming, funny, romantic, deep, and add some trauma in there! Once again the mcs chemistry is so explosive and it just gives all the feels!!! I loved Juliet’s journey, I related so much to her feelings on gender! As a non binary person myself I also often struggle with not meeting others expectation of what non binary means. Amanda Woody is such a fantastic author and one readers should not miss out on!!

DNF @ 60%

Just not the book for me. The book was extremely immature, but tried to cover serious topics.

The idea was cute, but it tried to span the entire young adult age group rather than focusing on one portion.

This was a highly anticipated read for me but unfortunately I just really could not get into it. I found some of the prose pretty jarring (I'm not one to be bothered by profanity, and I absolutely think profanity has a place in YA but some of it in this book really just felt like it was there for shock value... but in internal monologues, so it felt like the author using it for shock value, not the characters, which could have landed better).

I also just... don't think the author was fully equipped to handle the diversity of the cast they created. The white MCs are fighting over a Black girl* who really just feels like a romanticized/fetishized vehicle for the two of them to get together. Both the MCs have Asian best friends who are both the wise friends who talk sense into them. There were lots of things that built up to just generally make me pretty uncomfortable. I don't think it was intentionally malicious but I do genuinely think I might have been more likely to finish reading if the cast were whiter because the author just really was not equipped to write the diversity they added to the story and that was probably my biggest issue with the book.

Spoiler:
*I have since looked at other reviews, which all use they/them for Jasmine so I'm assuming that Jasmine comes out as nonbinary at some point. I DNF'd at 35% of the way through and that had not happened yet, so on top of the other issues, I just... don't really love a (I think white but definitely not Black) author writing a Black character who is just a vehicle to move the main romance along while also creating a situation where people will be using the wrong pronouns for said Black character.

4.5 stars

After a pretty bad friend breakup in 8th grade, Caleb and Emma haven’t gotten along. According to Caleb, Emma has gotten in the way of every single one of his romantic relationships since then. But really, Emma has just been trying to get by since their 8th grade break up.

When both Caleb and Emma set their sights on the new girl, they decide to hold a competition for her. Whoever gets a kiss first wins. But as they start spending more time together again, they both realize maybe their feelings from 8th grade haven’t completely gone away.

Thanks to Viking Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Exes & Foes by Amanda Woody to review! Foody’s debut, They Hate Each Other, was one of my favorite books of 2023, so I was super excited to pick this one up! They definitely didn’t disappoint with this one, either.

Hands down, Foody excels at writing characters you will connect to right from the beginning. Caleb and Emma might be polar opposites, but it’s clear they have good chemistry together. Even when they’re fighting. The book is split between their points of view, and each of their voices were distinct enough that they don’t blur together.

The plot does follow some typical romance tropes, but I found that didn’t matter because I was so invested in the characters. The love interest Emma and Caleb are competing for, Juliet, has her own identity revelations throughout the book, and it felt so natural for the rest of the book. In general, the side characters were just as engaging as the main characters.

There’s great queer representation in this book, too, which we always love to see. It will definitely be a perfect romance to read on the beach when it comes out in July!

A cute, quirky YA romance between ex-best friends who are competing for the new girl’s heart.

Caleb is an adorably nerdy character with daddy issues who still isn’t sure why his best friend stopped talking to him in eight grade. A few years later and he’s still nursing that hurt - especially when it seems like every time he likes someone, she swoops in and woos them before he had the chance to. But that won’t happen this time if he has anything to say about it!
I enjoyed the diverse representation, the demisexual rep, the bisexual chaos, and trans rep!

I wish I liked this book more. It's a fun love triangle between two ex-best friends, Emma and Caleb, and a race to see who can woo Juliet.

I loved the variety of LGBTQ representation, and the characters have hilarious banter.

Emma and Caleb are more fleshed out compared to Juliet, who primarily acts as a plot device to bring the two main characters together. I would have liked to see her be more developed - she doesn't need a whole character arc, but some more time with her could have helped.

A little trite and too many attempts to be modern, but a sweet message overall that emotionally draws in the reader. Caleb and Emma's relationship is compelling, and their complex relationships with their families feels undeniably real. My main problem with the novel is Juliet's character, which reads very two-dimensional and is largely used as a plot device to bring the two main characters together.