Member Reviews

4⭐️This book has so many of my favorite tropes - second chance, forced proximity, one bed scene. I had a fun time reading this, but the more I read the more I really felt like this was very similar to Happy Place (which I loved and could reread over and over again). While it was a good read, the romance felt a little dull at times - no butterflies or smiling or kicking my feet the 5 star reads give me. I wanted to love this but it was just a like for me.

This was an advanced read copy I received through Netgalley so it’s not going to be officially published until July 16, 2024! But this is my honest review!

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The Ex Vows

Thank you to @berkleypub for the early access to this amazing e-arc! It was one of my top anticipated reads for the year!

𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐲: 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐉𝐨𝐲𝐜𝐞
𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟏𝟔, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 🎉
𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭: 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞 5 ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

ˀPredictive Text: My ex is an ex because ___.
Or, what are you currently reading?
********************************************
I really enjoyed this book! Not only did it exceed my expectations, but it’s made me a fan of the author’s work. I’m looking forward to reading “You, with a View” by her next.

A beautifully written story about ex couple Georgia and Eli who start their relationship at a young age. Although they thought their love would last forever, a break down in communication, along with long hours at work for Eli, results in the pair breaking up.

Now estranged, the only thing that keeps them “in touch” is their mutual childhood best friend Adam. His wedding is on the horizon, and they’re both invited to be best man and woman.

I found this book to be somewhat of a coming-of-age story for both Georgia and Eli. Self-reflection and growth done on both parts, while also working through their feelings for each other during their friend’s wedding trip.

I love seeing mental health being represented, as I can relate to having anxiety myself (It was handled well and delicately). Men’s mental health still seems at times taboo, so I appreciated seeing Eli working through his anxiety.

This was character driven with a good plot and a nice diverse cast of characters. Loved seeing/reading about the Korean family since I’m half Korean. It made the story that much more relatable to me.

If you enjoy reading rom coms with some depth (layers), second chance romance & found family tropes (steamy spice 🥵). I’d say - look no further! The Ex Vows really has it all and I’d recommend it to everyone.

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If there was ever a book that made me laugh and cry at the same time. It would be this. I’m literally in shambles. I genuinely don’t even know what to do with my life anymore. The angst was angsting, and the humor was humoring. But most of all the romance served on a freakn silver platter. I’m genuinely so obsessed. I even buddy read this with a friend and I think the emotional rollercoaster that this was hit her harder than it did me.

Truly such an amazing story and I can’t wait for this to be out!

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For fans of Emily Henry’s ‘Happy Place’ and Mirrorball by Taylor Swift

It’s hard to put into words how much I loved this book but let me try…

The characters and the friendships really shine here including the friendship between Eli and Georgia which I think was such a solid foundation for their romance that I truly believed in them the entire time. The banter was immaculate but the conversations and the flashbacks really paint such a picture of who they are as people and who they were as a couple. I honestly believe there are not two people more perfect for each other!

Eli and Georgia are the true definition of soulmates 💕

The friend group dynamic left me wanting more of their shenanigans. Do in need a Cole book now? Probably.

Something Jessica did that I loved as well was the “breakup” and reconciliation- it felt like the perfect path for both characters to take before they could truly stand on a solid foundation together

And OMG KILL ME DEAD WITH THE PAPER RINGS

I already want to go back and reread this.

⭐️Childhood friends to lovers
⭐️Found family
⭐️Forced proximity
⭐️Second chance romance
⭐️One bed

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Georgia Woodard loves a good list. They are her rock. Especially, now that she is about to see her ex at a friend's wedding where they are best man and woman. Eli Mora broke Georgia's heart and despite all the reasons that their relationship ended, she still loves him. We learn very quickly that Georgia never got over Eli. As Georgia and Eli have to work together to save the seemingly cursed wedding of their friends, those old feelings are hard to ignore. This couple has great chemistry which is palpable. But no matter how many years have passed, Georgia still has a lot of work she needs to do for herself. I appreciate that the author was open about therapy and working to heal from past trauma. Seeing that Eli and Georgia are working on themselves made the ending much sweeter. I enjoyed this sweet romance.

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review.

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The Ex Vows
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Time is a miracle. It shows you what you had, and sometimes it brings it back to you. Different. Better.”

Thanks so much to @berkleyromance for the free book! #BerkleyPartner #Berkley

I had been waiting and waiting and waiting for this to arrive. I’m always seeking summer reads and this seemed absolutely perfect.
First, this book takes place in Napa Valley, so the summery, beautiful, and warm setting met all of my expectations.
If you’ve talked to me before you’ve heard me say a dozen times that second-chance romance is my favorite trope. So imagine my happiness when I learned that this book is a second-chance romance! It melts my heart every single time.
This has two of the most lovable main characters, and everything about them and their story together felt so authentic. The ups and downs of their love story felt realistic and made connecting with these characters so easy.
This book is “You’re Losing Me” and “Paper Rings” coded!
It’s also no secret that I love a book with mental health representation. The anxiety representation in this book was so well-written, truthful, and realistic.
Georgia and Eli are just so *chefs kiss* together.
This was a delightful book, and I encourage everyone to read this! Any second-chance romance fan is going to adore this story. This has multiple of my favorite tropes combined, it was wonderful!
This book comes out on July 16th so add it to your list! It is a great choice for a beach/pool read!

Read If You Like:
🍇second chances
🍇childhood friends
🍇wedding planning
🍇forced proximity
🍇anxiety representation

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5/5 ⭐️
Release Date: July 16th

The story follows Georgia and Eli who started off as best friends that would later on turn to lovers at the age of 21. 5 years after their break-up, they are out together to create the best wedding in a weeks time for the other best friend Adam. Adams wedding has become a disaster with one thing leading together going wrong blaming it’s all cursed. In a last ditch effort to try and save the wedding of his dreams he enlist Eli and Georgia to drive uptown to handle the plans since he can’t go for another 4 days. The tension between Georgia and Eli was there from the very beginning. You could tell right from the start these characters even after 5 years still had deep feelings from each other. As the story folds you get to see what ultimately brought them to their demise and watch them have great character growth. If you are a fan of Emily Henry, run and get this book on release day because it felt very reminiscent of her banter and the growth of the characters. I finished this in one sitting and will be impatiently waiting for my physical copy so I can annotate it.

If there is one song that I would use to describe some parts of this book would be Tolerate It by Taylor Swift.

Thank you NetGalley for a complementary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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✨”How strange it is to have a first for the second time. How lucky and messy and perfect.”✨

‘The Ex Vows’ is a second chance romance story that I enjoyed… that I LOVED! I found myself giddy and smiling for a large part of the book. I laughed and got anxious for the characters as if I knew them personally. Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a few years, I found myself envisioning the Napa winery setting so cleary. It is a beautiful backdrop for the storyline!

Sure, I could list a few nit-picky things I wished were different, but why should I? Just go into this book with rose-colored glasses on and let the story play out like an adorable y2k romance movie. I think you will enjoy it!

Highly recommend for those who enjoy any of the following romance tropes/aspects:
🍇second chance romance
🍇childhood friends to lovers
🍇he falls first
🍇wedding disaster comedy
🍇found family/personal sense of belonging
🍇one bed trope
🍇spicy romance

I enjoyed this book so much that I zoomed through it, a real page turner! I can see myself reading TEV again as well as other books from this author. Thank you to NetGalley, Berkley Publishing, and Jessica Joyce for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

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The trouble with staying friends with your ex is that you have to shove the hurt deep. Georgia and Eli share a mutual best friend and the only comfort is the distance between SF and NYC. But Adam is getting married and as his best people, they have to step up their friend game when Adam’s wedding is plagued by the curse.
Jessica writes with so much heart and I swear she did some digging around in my feelings for this book. How many times can I say “yes” or “I relate”? It’s immeasurable. I have the biggest crush on Eli and I absolutely loved the ending.

Read for:
🍇 A perfect sub-cast of friends (looking at you, Jamie & Adam)
🍇 So many “it’s me!” moments
🍇 Second chances
🍇 When it rains, it pours
🍇 Paper rings 🥹

Thank you to the author for the traveling arc. All thoughts are my own.

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what an incredible, incredible book. one of my top romance reads of all time. bawled my eyes out

for the girls with mommy with issues; the ones who hold so tight to their friends, always afraid to be forgotten; for the ones who love love and crave it but can never voice it; for the girls who are kind and are people pleasers but hold so much on their hearts; the ones who are the last ones unmarried in their friend groups. this one is for the ones whose lives are held together with lists (me); the ones who would never, ever voice their concerns for fear of rocking the boat; the ones who are ambitious and want to chase their dreams but are always looking for home.

jessica joyce, you will be paying for my therapy but this book was a little bit of therapy in and of itself. i'm so devastated and i love love 😭

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5
🌶️🌶️🌶️ 3/5

Jessica Joyce, this book has bewitched me, body and soul. This book gutted me and broke my heart into a thousand pieces on my flight home from Paris. I loved every 👏 single 👏 minute 👏! (But for real, I was practically sobbing on the plane while eating peanut M&Ms, hoping no one looked at me or noticed the tears streaming down my face. I was a mess!)

This was the most wonderful story of found family and learning (and accepting) that you are enough. I was totally and completely overcome by the lessons on friendship that were shared in abundance throughout this story. The friendship between Georgia, Adam, and Eli was just so heartwarming and supportive.

I also fell head over heels for Georgia and Eli and their list-loving selves. After being broken up for five years, the words left unsaid were numerous and the tension that they felt insurmountable. These two were utterly perfect and I could not get enough. The forced proximity was electric and lord knows I love an only one bed sitch! I will be thinking about this book for months and months!

For anyone who follows me, please be advised that this book now counts as required reading. I just loved it SO MUCH and I know you will too!

Thank you to Jessica Joyce (@jessicajoycewrites) and Berkley Romance (@berkleyromance @berkleypub) for the free book in exchange for an honest review.

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Idk what this author is putting in her novels but I’m addicted. I read it in a day and gobbled it right up!! Must read, total beach read.

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Wow, this made me feel all of the emotions. I feel like I’ve seen a lot of dislike for the second chance romance trope, but I honestly thought it worked perfectly here. Georgia and Eli, sigh, I loved them so much. Their relationship was full of ups and downs, but also so insanely romantic. Their story is about doing things that scare you, embracing the messy parts of life, and loving each other through the good and the bad.

There were of course plenty of fun moments too - cursed weddings, excellent banter, and the pretending/sneaking around…*chef’s kiss*. Highly recommend this for romance lovers especially those of us in our late 20s/30s trying to figure out what the next stage of life looks like. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from Jessica Joyce!

Thank you to Berkeley for the ARC!

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infinity stars. five stars will never, ever be enough for this book.

absolutely heartbreaking, gut-wrenchingly genuine, and disgustingly perfect. jessica joyce wrecked me with this one.

with every chapter, every damn page, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. my face was set in a permanent frown because I was fighting my tears. Georgia and Eli are absolutely everything—and more—to me. their love is embedded into my soul for the rest of my life.

there are so many moments in this that really just tore me up inside. it was such a vulnerable story that shows the messiness of love, the importance of authenticity in love. but it also is just so lovely in every way. it broke my heart, but it also made my heart yell and sing with a happiness that not many of the six hundred books I have read in the last two years can come close to claiming.

I want to say so much more, but I also want to keep the moments of this book to myself because it was such a magical experience to live alongside Georgia and Eli for the last three days, and I want everyone who picks this book up to experience it in a similar way. all I’ll say is “still” (iykyk).

if you need me, I’ll be in the corner crying while rocking in a fetal position.

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Jessica Joyce’s books are always written with such beautiful prose. I loved the wine country setting and the premise so much. Second chances are always a fav of mine because of the inherent angst and Jessica absolutely nailed it.

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Jessica Joyce does it again! What a great second chance romance book! I feel like this book and story was so fresh. I had been flashing this book to read during the summer and it was honestly such a delight! Georgia and Eli felt like people you knew and people you were rooting to get together. Sometimes second chance books can rely too much on either past/present timelines or just the author’s word that the couple was in love, but I felt like the was the story unfolded you could really see and feel their connection throughout the years. Definitely am recommending this book and will definitely be a staple in my second chance romance books.

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Great read. Eli Mora is one of those male leads in a romance book that becomes an instant and a favorite book boyfriend. Just what us romance lovers want/need/like in a story like this. The feels were there, the family dynamics were great, and the relationship between the two leads was top tier.

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I enjoy Jessica Joyce's writing, but didn't feel connected with this story in particular. Thank you for the opportunity to read it!

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I have been looking forward to this book ever since it was announced and it absolutely did not let me down. I absolutely loved it - it made me laugh, it made me cry, it was sweet and spicy, and it was a perfect second chance romance. There was so much delicious tension and longing between Georgia and Eli - you could immediately tell that these two people still deeply loved each other and I adored watching them reconnect and fall for each other again.

I thought the pace of the book was good, it did get just a tiny bit slow in the middle, but it wasn't awful, and I really enjoyed how the ending all played out. Can't wait for more from Jessica Joyce, she's absolutely become an auto-buy author for me.

Thank you so much to Berkley Romance for the e-arc. All opinions are my own!

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Thanks for the free book @berkleyromance @netgalley #berkleypartner #berkleybooks !!

Being part of this #berkleyinfluencer program means that sometimes I get to treat myself and treat myself I did — I got my grubby little paws on a @jessicajoycewrites book ARC that doesn’t come out til July!

Listen, you’re in for a treat because nobody writes rolling around in your own head and yearning the way that @jessicajoycewrites does. This book is from the POV of Georgia Woodward, a super competent woman, kick ass employee up for a big promotion that would move her from SF (her home) to Seattle. One catch: she’s already extremely lonely in the way we’re all lonely at 29 because our friends are all moving on and drifting apart because life happens. This move, she fears, will break her. And she can’t tell anybody how she feels because the worst thing on earth is feeling needy and having people realize you need things. Childhood was a mother who walked out, and a workaholic, absentee father (not *super* thrilled that his absenteeism was explained by him being a public defender ngl).

We meet Georgia about two weeks before her best friend Adam is getting married. The other catch? Georgia might be Adam’s best woman, but Eli Mora is his co-best man, and Eli broke Georgia’s heart five years ago as an absentee workaholic boyfriend.

That’s right folks, we’ve got a second chance romance here, and some delicious, delicious angst and regret and refusal to have feelings out loud, you know, your late 20s.

I’ve never met an Eli that I didn’t like (IYKYK). What happens when this Eli, a five years later Eli, is seeing a therapist about his own childhood trauma and his job is on the back burner? Can Georgia really keep what’s happening between her and Eli strictly physical? IS ADAM’S WEDDING FOR REAL CURSED?

I want to answer, but I also don’t because I loved finding the answers amongst the angst and the fear and the horniness and the shenanigans along with Georgia, and I think you guys will too.

This book is bittersweet but affirming, smart, funny (BANTER, we’ve got banter Dodson) and very very extremely hot. “Make it messy,” I die I swoon I goggle I gasp 🤐🥵🔥☠️

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