Loved getting to know more about the film industry in this book. The enemies to lovers trope was well executed and there was tons of chemistry between the characters.

I DNF’d at 6% because I just wasn’t feeling the writing. There were weird internalized homophobia vibes and CONSTANT talk about coming out. & It felt like the writing was trying to hard to be quirky and funny and different that random phrases were thrown in that made no sense. I think I was supposed to feel like it was an inside joke between the reader and the main character but it just came across as nonsensical and took me out of the story.

I want to thank NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for a copy of this book.

Brief Summary: Valerie Sullivan is lost. She has an Oscar, but her directorial film debut is not going to plan. Instead, all of the press is focusing on her recent coming-out. Concerned that she will never get to make the types of queer projects she dreams of making, Val decides to step away from Hollywood and into her first love, academia. When her first week as a professor does not go according to plan, Val works to find her groove and develop a working relationship with her co-professor, Dr. Maeve Arko. However, as the term unfolds Val finds more than her confidence in the classroom as things between her and Maeve begin to heat up.

Thoughts: Articulating how I feel about this book is a bit of a struggle, so I think I'm just going to try and bullet point what I did and didn't like.

Things I liked about this book:
The fact that Val was in therapy and working on finding anxiety medications/treatments that worked best for her.
There was an honest discussion of how sometimes even in therapy you can backslide or not know how to articulate things, making Val feel more like a real person throughout the book.
Val and her best friend Charlie's relationship
They were so honest and supportive of one another. I truly loved the part toward the end when Charlie went to Val and was honest about how he disagreed with her approach to her problems, without being accusatory
The fact that we got to see some of the first characters from the book make a reappearance.
I love that Romy and Luna are still together and thriving.
The sibling dynamics of Gwen and Val.
The way that Gwen brought lasagna over, stuck up for Val at dinner, and was mortified at potential sex scenes in a movie made her have a supportive, older sister vibe.
Things I did not enjoy as much about this book
The weird callbacks to Luna and Val's relationship. Maybe I don't understand because I am not friends with any of my exes but sometimes things felt incredibly forced. You can fully be friends with an ex, I understand that, but I'm not entirely clear for this book why Luna and Val remain friends or why Val is taking career/relationship advice from her as the depth of their friendship doesn't feel fleshed out. I felt that for many of their scenes, it would have made more sense with Charlie or even Mason.
If I were to make a list Val and Maeve are a good fit, but this book felt more like a coming into adulthood book rather than a romance novel. I think part of the reason I feel that way is because everything is from Val's point of view throughout the book and it didn't feel like Maeve got as much time on the page as a character. I think at the end of the book I can name five things about her, but I didn't feel connected to her. I was invested in Val's gesture for Maeve at the end of the book, but I didn't feel the same excitement as I did when Val got her big news. Overall, I was most invested in Val and her story arch and that just happened to have a love story peppered in.
Overall, the heat felt like a 2.5 out of 5. The scenes were there, but it always felt like things would start to heat up and then they would stop abruptly or the author couldn't quite decide if it was going to be a closed or open-door book.

I enjoyed this book as a book about a woman finding her joy in life, and transitioning from wandering into a more mature place. The love story however didn't give me what I wanted out of a romance. The writing does draw the reader in and you can sympathize/empathize with Val throughout the book.

Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Sexual content, Grief, Alcohol, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Classism and Medical Trauma
Minor: Outing and Vomit

When renowned actress Valeria attempts to move from in front of the camera to behind it after tired of being typecast into queer characters, she has a rocky start. During that transition, she decided to adjunct teach a class on LGBTQ cinema to help people take herself more serious. But when her co-professor Maeve turns out to be stunningly beautiful but also not her biggest fan, she's not sure what to do with herself.

Guys, I tried. I really did. I love celebrity romances and I love enemies-to-lovers, but I just could not get into this one. I think it really lost me when I essentially had to sit through an entire film studies class. Couldn't that bit have been skipped? I also wasn't particularly sympathetic to Valeria, much of who's backstory is explained through exposition that slow unraveling. I'm going to assume this book gets better, or at least more interesting, but life is short and there's too many other books out there, so I had to DNF it.

Thanks to Viking for my eARC and finished copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

3 stars - 4/10

I’m a little biased because like Val, I love academia and really do miss it a lot, even if I never went as far as she did. So the in depth lectures and analysis of everything was an added bonus for me, but I can see how that might bog the book down for other readers. Val’s anxiety spirals were deeply relatable and while it was sometimes frustrating to see that affect her relationship with others, it was still heartwarming to see how hard she tried to use her clout and resources help out to the others around her. Maeve was wonderful and I loved her academic badassery, her energy, and her patience. She was always so respectful of what Val needed without feeling like a blank slate for her.

That said, I really do wish we’d gotten more time in the transition from rivals to lovers. It takes maybe a chapter and a half for the bad blood to be cleared away and they friendship to start, which had me double checking the synopsis thinking I’d misread the premise. Also while Val being unsure what she wants from her career and future is a big part of the book, as a reader I never felt I knew what she wanted either, even when she claimed to be having her eureka moments. I’d have to go back and forth double checking what her decisions were. Maybe that was just me being a little slower, but it just felt like it was going on in a vacuum at times.

Overall, though, this was an enjoyable read and I’m a sucker for queer romances with a Hollywood backdrop.

When actress Val falls for her co professor, she begins to envision a happily ever after she never considered,but does her new love feel the same? Very good sapphic romance

Super cute and really fun to get to see Val get her happily ever after!! I loved the therapy element & the conversations around mental health.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

This was a pretty solid romance! Both of the main characters are endearing, and their individual problems/storylines realistic and engaging without being overly complicated. The main issue I had with this book was that Valeria and Maeve confessed their feelings and got together pretty early on, and I wish it had been more of a slow burn. From the time they got together, the conflict seemed to mostly be on Valeria's side, when there could have been more tension between the two of them.

At first, I also didn't understand just WHY Valeria was putting off telling Maeve her news for so long - I don't like the miscommunication trope, and this wasn't even really miscommunication but omission. But then the scene with Valeria's therapist at the end put a lot of it together for me, and I think that scene is sort of the crux of this novel. It tied everything together, and kept the momentum going until the end.

Overall, this was a good read that didn't drag on, and I liked all the characters' dynamics with each other. If you want a sapphic romance that has a focus on the film industry...here ya go!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. This review reflects my honest opinions.

What a fun book this was, I deeply enjoyed it and had a great time. It was light, airy, and fun. The setting in the entertainment world was great and the romance had me invested.

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

The premise of this book really grabbed me. I loved the premise of the actor-turned-director-turned-academic, and the circumstances in which she found herself: successful, but kneecapped by coming out. The exploration of how women are treated in Hollywood, and how that kind of attention gets even more invasive after coming out, was really interesting to me. I’m also a huge film lover, and I really enjoyed the small insights we got into the lesson planning for Val and Maeve’s course. It seems like one I would have loved to take!

I have anxiety myself, and the approach to it felt very honest. As a reader, I always find miscommunication to be frustrating, but I understand how Val got into a spiral and couldn’t figure out how to share the news with Maeve until it was literally forced out of her.

Their romance was exciting and fun to read about. It’s the heart of this story and I never get tired of reading about women falling in love, especially when they’re all-in immediately, moving so quickly even as they’re worrying about moving too quickly.

I didn’t find out until after reading that this was a sequel; and I wish I had known that/was able to read the first one before this. But overall, I really liked this romance!


Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for making this ARC available.
Pub date: 21 May 2024

Overall I really enjoyed this one. It covers a pretty long timeline, and there was a point where I felt myself dragging a little bit. I might've been in danger of putting the book down if I hadn't been stuck on a plane with nothing to do but read. I am glad I stuck with it because it picked back up and I did enjoy the ending.

If you're gonna have a miscommunication trope, this is the way to do it. Believable chemistry, a little longer than it needed to be.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was a bit bored throughout the entire thing and just kind of wanted it to be done. I wish the book at multiple POV's because I would've really liked to hear from Maeve and Charlie.

This book was about an academic and a movie star/director falling for each other. My favorite parts were the lectures Val gave. I really enjoyed her commentary on Hollywood and queer media. Would love to read Maeve’s book about this if it existed! I do feel like Maeve and Val rushed into their relationship and the third act breakup was so frustrating.

I’m giving this 3 stars because I want to encourage the market for more lesbian romance novels. However, I was very upset to find out that Director’s Cut is actually book 2, or a connected book to the author’s first book Sizzle Reel. That should have been mentioned in the blurb. I’d never read a connected book before the original. And I always rate books that pull this stunt at 1 star so this is as positive as I’ll go for the situation, regardless of the actual book. Note for the author to listen to their audiobooks to get a feel for how the dialogue sounds, not just how it reads. That’s where I think the writing needs more improvement. That said, I felt like the author has promise and I’ll consider future books.
*Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the ebook copy

I would give this 2.5 stars rounded up to 3. I struggled to get through it. I feel like the MC fell flat. There was an opportunity to have 2-3 POV. I think adding Maeve’s and Charlie’s POV would have livened up the book and not felt so one sided.

I couldn't connect with this one! I just did not find it engaging. I was skimming from 30-50% and finally stopped there.

I enjoyed reading this book. I love when you have a ~professional out of water. Even though Valeria had experience in academia, she was out of practice and then you pair her with Maeve. I will always love a grump in the books I read and you can understand Maeve's hesitation to having Valeria in her classroom. She has past experience with other celebrities coming in and coasting. I loved Maeve putting on her grown-up pants fairly early on and apologizing. Once that hurdle was cleared, I *loved* the chemistry between the two of them and how they were able to play off each other in the classroom. And ultimately, how that grew into something more.
I do love some good classic miscommunication, but I did struggle with Valeria's holding back the festival circuit. I could understand the initial withholding because if she thought it wasn't going to get in with the initial Sundance pass over, but once it was accepted, I don't know. I didn't find it the most believable outcome even though I knew Valeria had negative relationship experience in the past and Maeve had been reluctant with the level of Valeria's celebrity. I think it was just one of those situations where it was very clear that things were only going to get much much worse from there on out. There was no outcome where Maeve wasn't going to find out (that was inevitable) and you knew Maeve was going to be pissed (if not for Valeria for having to be away, but absolutely for her withholding the knowledge). Each time the potential for Val to share with Maeve came up, I caught myself not only urging her to say it, but then eyerolling when she didn't.
That aside, I did enjoy reading the book. I loved the concept overall and the chemistry between your main characters was excellent.

What a fabulous book! I am not even a big movie person (I know I know), but I loved every aspect of learning about the movie theory and the behind the scene looks into the industry. At some points I felt like I was in film class myself and loved how much research went into any snippets of the coursework that were included in the story. What I loved even more were Val and Maeve. This is one of those times I wish we got to see Maeve's POVs also because she is so interesting and I would have so loved to get a peak into her head and her thoughts about both her career and the romance.

Val was SUCH an amazing relatable character. I don't care if she is famous and "has people". The way her anxiety is described is the most real to me of anything I've read before. This is a miscommunication troupe I actually can get behind because you can see very clearly the REASON for the miscommunication is the anxiety PHYSICALLY preventing Val from expressing herself to Maeve. It isn't laziness, stubbornness, lack of care...it is the anxiety controlling the narrative in her head.

I also love love all the conversation about Queerness in Hollywood; both the struggles and discrimination, the public obsession with getting to personal and demanding all the answers, and the accolades, the hope, and the joy.

The writing was lovely, the characters amazing, the spice amazing, and this just left me with all the warm and fuzzies!

Enjoyed the overall vibes of this book. I feel that the conflict was a bit of a stretch in some aspects but given the severity of Val's anxiety it also was fairly believable still. I do like how both women realized that there were in the wrong on some aspects and there was a mutual grovel/apology scene.