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🎧Song Pairing: Hurts So Good - Astrid S

💭What I thought would happen:

Luuuuuuurved her last book so this was high up on my anticipated reads in 2024

📖What actually happens:

Nami’s life is just aces until her high school rival pops back into her life with a mysterious text. Next think she knows she’s part of the corporate takeover for acquire her company. No thanks. She will not be selling to the big bad wolf but damn he looks like his sweat tastes good.

🗯Thoughts/sassy musings:

This month and maybe this year I’ve taken a *slight* step back from romances. Giving all of the other genres a chance 😉

It was cute! Not my favourite but hell give me a corporate alphahole any day and I’m on board. But overall, the chemistry nor the main characters did not sell me on true love but I have soupy Crescent City brain.

Read if you like:
🍜Spicy ramen
😈Enemies to lovers
🤍Workplace romance
🩷Japanese/Korean representation
😉Boy band dance moves

This was an enemy to lover book. They've known each other since school, but each thought the other was horrible and didn't like the other because of a misunderstanding. Now they are forced to work together to save the FMC company. In working together, they must deal with continued misunderstandings and see if they can trust each other.

I loved the witty banner between the two MC's and it assist with the slow burn and build up. You have a funny Spicy Ramen scene where they try to outdo each other and just end up miserable.

The takeover
I didn’t care for this one much. The storyline was subpar and uninteresting to me. I’m going to give it 3 stars, because I don’t think it was “bad”, but just not my cup of tea.

My 2 major cons for this audiobook:
1.) The humor used was not my kind of humor at all. I just didn’t find any of the banter cute or funny.
2.) The female voice in the audiobook- The male’s voice was fine, but the female’s voice was almost robotic.

I do appreciate the ARC of this audiobook feom NetGalley and RB Media. Thank you.

An entertaining enemies to lovers workplace forced proximity read. The tension was so strong at the beginning the overall journey from hate to love paced so well. The narrator voices were strong and powerful I loved them.

The Takeover was a sweet and easy read. I love an enemies to lovers romance and this checked all the boxes in that regards (with a long history of fighting followed by all the cuteness of slowly realizing Jae and Nami had feelings for each other). They had cute funny banter and, of course, found themselves thrown into hilarious random situations with each other (ie a spicy ramen contest). The best part though was the B plot (aka the not romance part) about Nami's company and it was amazing seeing her girlboss away.

I appreciated that this book featured a woman in STEM. I also loved the male narrator's voice- It was perfect for this book. The book felt a little predictable and I did not appreciate the female narrator's voice as much.

Dfn at 35%
This was just insufferable. The protagonist sees herself as the perfect boss, and she tells us over and over again, how great she is. How great her company is. But never actually shown anything. Ok your office seems cool, but? What else? Are you truly so ethical as you're saying? How could I know, it's your company, you're for sure not a neutral judge.
She's also 30 but still stuck in high school, she thinks life's still happening on Facebook, that all her former high school classmates check social media every single day and meticulous follow her life. No one cares about you, girl, grow up. It's been a decade.
I could've kept reading if this was the main problem, but at one point she sees a picture of her ex with a new girlfriend, and she just rants about this girl "bad make-up". I'm sorry, I can't deal with this casual misogyny. It's not her fault your ex was an awful person. This was my final straw.

Nami’s company is in trouble. It’s time to consider selling, but she doesn’t want to sell to Rainforest, the evil company. But as it turns out, her high school nemesis, Jae Lee, works in acquisitions for Rainforest, and he’s making his move. An enemies to lovers romance.

I thought about DNFing this one, but I had an audiobook version, so it was easy to stick with it. I found Nami to be immature and boring. I liked Jae, but in general all the storylines and character dialogue felt really simple. And the pronunciation from the narrators seemed to change sometimes, and there were some awkward word breaks that just confused me.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for an advanced copy of this audiobook.

I liked this book. It was entertaining, but I feel like it was missing something.
My issue was that I didn't like Jae all that much. I found him pretentious and full of himself. I can understand why Nami never really liked him; he's a total jerk. All he cares about is money, and there wasn't enough character development for me to see how that truly changed. Sure, the ending cleared some things up for his character, but I don't think he would have done those things if he hadn't loved Nami. He didn't have enough substance.

I did like how much this book made me laugh. The Ramen scene was hilarious, and I still think about it. I also liked the work dynamics between Nami and her team. They seem like a lively group of people, which I enjoyed reading about.

The narrators did a fantastic job on this book.

Overall, I rated this a 3/5

Where do I start....this book was not my cup of tea. First, it was a little too close to reality and I prefer to read for escapism, which is hard to do when the book starts off mentioning COVID. The MMC works for a corporation that is mentioned to be awful to their employees, but he is making big bucks being a higher up in the company, so he doesn't really care. His company wants to buy FMC's business, so he jumps at the opportunity to be the one to do it because he is bored with his life. FMC is his highschool "enemy". She only hates him because he was competition for her and thought he had everything so easy because he had money growing up, unlike her. Their relationship seems rushed. Immediately after the first time they sleep together, they become inseparable. The competitiveness they've had with each other up to this point is just gone after one night together. The breakup was ridiculous and resolution wasn't any better. Finally, the last few chapter were so cringy and excessively pandering.

This is a quick and easy read. There is some good banter throughout the book. I did enjoy the ramen scene and the chair bit was entertaining. I used the audiobook, so it did not take too long to finish. The male narrator was better than the female one, but overall the audio was good.

There is a fine line between love and hate, but when two well matched sparring partners let the verbal banter loose, the line gets blurred really quickly! This book made me continuously giggle and laugh spontaneously! The banter between the main characters was on point from the start and it was perfect to the last word in the book! He's the wolf who comes in to eat up smaller companies, she's running a small tech start up that just needs a bit more time to get things going. The interactions between all the characters are so realistic. The characters are fleshed out so well and brought to life in an interesting and believable manner. The narration of the audiobook is so well done that they truly bring the story to life! The intriguing part of the plot is the interactions between the families. While the author was bringing to light some of the cultural beliefs of the parents, it also makes it clear to me that regardless of what culture you are from parental influence and beliefs are very similar. I absolutely could envision my own mother and mother-in-law in the role as Nami's mother especially in regard to the wedding planning. Mothers are mothers regardless of the background or culture. Some are more supportive and others are more take over types. The humor was on point and I have become one of Cara Tanamachi's greatest fans! I love her writing and can't wait to read or listen to the next book she creates!

This book was great. A perfect fun, quick and easy romance book. I loved that the main characters had history with each other. I also liked that the hero in this book already had feelings or was interested in the heroine way before they started spending time together and the heroine had no clue that he felt that way about her. The narrators for this book did an amazing jib with it. They gave the characters life and made it super entertaining. I feel like if you are in the mood for a rivals/enemies to lovers book, with witty banter between the two main character this would be perfect.

this book was sort of cringey, but not enough to DnF. There were a lot of moments I loved. the characters were good but it sort of felt like something was missing. I dont usually do audiobooks so that might have an effect. It was a solid book and it was interesting enough to keep me interested the whole time. I actually really liked the conflict as it drove the plot and made the book more interesting. I liked the way the romance progressed but found other problems in the structure and dialogue.

Quick and sweet read!

Nami is the millenial boss we are all dying to have. She goes to bat for employees and loves them like family.

This is an enemies to lovers story. So if that's your trope, this book may be for you.

The story is about the sale of Nami's company Toggle, she co-owns it with a few other people. The company is doing well, so well that they are considering going public, which is a HUGE deal for startups, and along comes Rainforest (cough cough Amazon). Jae, an old high school rival, is heading the team at Rainforest that is trying to buy Toggle.

This story is not only about Jae and Nami's inevitable relationship but also about family, and the fine line children of immigrants toe when it comes to respecting their parents and family, and making space for themselves.

I loved this book!

Thank you NetGalley and Cara Tanamachi for this copy of The Takeover in exchange for an honest review!
The Takeover was a funny enjoyable read. It tells the story of the owner of a small startup company reuniting with her former high school rival as he tries to buy her company for the very large company he works for. The story was fun and light hearted, and the side characters were hilarious. I loved the look also into the stress of being the first born child in a Korean Family, and the small glimpses into how Japanese families still are healing from the internment camps. It gave each lead character depth and honesty. The spice is mild but well done, and overall a fun story.

I truly enjoyed the book, and I feel that the narrators really helped bring the story to life. I tried to read the E book and it just did not work out for me so I was glad that I was accepted for the audio book because I would have DNf'ed the story. I will only talk about the narrators and not the story due to the SMP boycott. Again, I genuinely enjoyed the narration and the production of the audio book. I will definitely check out the narrators with anything else that they contribute to.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of this Audiobook. The premise of this book sounded really cute and entertaining. I unfortunately didn’t enjoy it and over halfway through I was forcing myself to finish it. I decided to stop it at 65%.

Thank you NetGalley. I found myself really dreading picking this book up. Despite the fact that the two love interests come from awful backgrounds, that wasn’t really my reason for not loving it. It just felt like there was no connection between the love interests and some of the plot points felt thrown in. I would be open to giving the author another shot though.

This book really didn't do it for me. I really disliked the main characters and found them both childish. The MC was the worst and extremely selfish while the FMC talked like she was in high school.
Usually I love a good enemies-to-lovers, but this just didn't hit the mark for me. The switch from enemies to lovers was too quick and the third act conflict was unnecessary.

Thanks to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for the gifted copies!

Synopsis: Nami is living her dream running her own tech company. But when funding runs low, threatening to ruin everything, she might have to turn to the most unlikely person for help - her high school nemesis, Jae Lee.

Thoughts: This was a fun rivals to lovers rom com. I really loved the main character - always love to see a woman in stem, especially this one where she owns her own company! I really enjoyed the workplace aspect and the coworkers as the cast of side characters. They were fun and spunky and really rounded out the story. I didn’t like the male main character quite as much, he was more difficult to like I think by design though. If you’re a fan of rivals to lovers, workplace romance, low spice romances, definitely check this out! I had both an electronic and audio copy of this book and I will say the audio narrators definitely made the book for me!

Read this if you like:
💻 workplace romance
💻 rivals to lovers
💻 women in STEM