Thank you Random House & NetGalley for the ARC!

I absolutely LOVED this story! As someone wrestling with a queer identity, this was the perfect read at the perfect time. The way Cash had conversations with her daughter about sexual identity, orientation, and ignorance was astounding, and I took notes for when I have those conversations with my own daughter one day! I was deeply sad this story ended, but I'm looking forward to reading more work by this author in the future!

Thank you again for the ARC!

Great book. Loved the interaction between the couples and the concern for the people in the town. gave this feel real life or maybe Hallmark channel vibes. Anyway, cute book. Good job with this one. Enjoy!

Thanks to NetGalley and Dell for an e-arc in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is a sweet, gay awakening, friends to lovers sapphic romance. We follow Cash, a bar manager and single mom, who is trying to keep a chain bar from coming in and tanking her business. She is helped on her quest by her lesbian best friend, Inez and the two fall in love along the way.

Highlights:
The way that this book handled Cash coming to terms with her sexuality was really beautiful. I loved the way it talked about compulsory heterosexuality.
The strong emphasis on communities and small towns.
Cash’s daughter Parker!

i really tried to like this since i really enjoyed sammy espinoza but i simply could not. it was slow and boring and the parts i enjoyed were far and few between

Cash Delgado is a single mom living in Ridley Falls. Her life largely revolves around her daughter, Parker, her job at Joyce’s bar and her best friend Inez. That is, until her ex Chase comes to town and tells her his employer is looking to open a franchise bar in town that could ruin Joyce’s chances for staying open. Cash starts to plan to save the bar with Inez and some feelings start to surface that confuse Cash and make her question everything she has come to know about herself.

This was a cute book. Love scenes are open door. Spice level is about a 4/5. I enjoyed this story, Parker, Cash’s daughter, was a delightful piece of the story. The story has a nice flow, the characters were lovable and it was a great love story about discovering your true self.

I would like to extend my gratitude to Tehlor Kay Mejia, Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for allowing me to read this eARC prior to publication for review!

This was a fun follow up to Sammy Espinoza but for some reason I felt Inez and Cash's relationship was rushed? But the story of the bar and above all Cash and her daughter were the STARS of the show.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the ArC

I went into this book blink (no blurb reading ahead of time!) I was pleasantly surprised by the storyline.

The characters are lovable and the story is believable. I really enjoyed the short chapters and witty banter. Very light on spice!

It is a sweet rom-com where the main character realizes what is really important in her life and fights for it. A lovely hallmarky underdog small town story. I enjoyed it.

This was adorable! I really enjoyed it. It’s light enough that you can trip along through it with no trouble, but it’s got enough to hook you around the heart and squeeze a little bit.

thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the ARC of this book. all opinions are my own.

I wish I could put into words how much I enjoyed this. What a great book. Highly recommend.

This. Is . What. I'm Talking. About. When. I. Say. We. Need. More. Diverse. stories. I ate this up. Give me more more more more more more more. I missed this authros worlds so much.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Cash is a single mom of a very active 6 year old. Her whole life she's been straight but lately she's been having very graphic, steamy dreams about her best friend Inez. It's making her act differently around her and becoming obvious....but how does she talk to her best friend about it when she's having a gay crisis?

Really enjoyed this one. It goes to show that you are never too old to discover your sexuality and it is never wrong to be your true self.

This is a cute story about a single mother who is trying to save her livelihood and discovers her developing feelings for her best friend in the process. Who doesn’t love best friends to lovers? The small town vibe and community is great and the supporting characters are just as fun as the main couple.

It wasn’t the most hooky opening, though the prose is fine. I stopped after chapter 1 (5%) but for slice-of-life slow-paced fans, it feels like a 3-4 stars average.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
The title of this book is absolutely perfect. It all starts when Cash Delgado starts having sexy dreams about her best friend, Inez. These dreams have Cash questioning her sexuality and she can't figure out if she's just having the dreams because she's lonely and she spends most of her time with her beautiful best friend, or if there's something more to it.
This book was fantastic. I love the sense of community in the small town of Ridley Falls, I loved every single character (except Chase), but I especially loved Parker. I love how Inez did Cash's laundry and cleaned her house just because she knew that her best friend needed the help but wouldn't ask anyone for it. I love the shenanigans that the friends got into and I love how everyone came together to help make sure their town had a fighting chance against money hungry corporations. My favorite part was how authentic Cash's character arc was, from her confusion to her Google searches to her conversations with other characters.
This book was so amazing. Go read it, you won't regret it.

Mejia's debut adult romance was perfect, and yet, they have outdone themself with CASH DELGADO. This is such a gentle, sweet story of finding yourself at an older age and learning what love can look like, in its many forms. Grounded in a beautiful sense of community care and gentle single parenting, I found myself returning to this book every chance I could get, and especially on the more stressful days. Cash's daughter, Parker, absolutely stole the show for me though - beautifully innocent and kind and damn clever to boot. I also really appreciated that even though the stakes were high, they never felt stressful to read about because of the emotional safety net Mejia concocted from the first page. Highly highly recommend, especially for the questioning queer.

Oh wow I absolutely loved reading this. It was such an engaging, and emotionally charged novel that seamlessly combines the aspects of romance, drama, and personal growth. Definitely, deserves more than 5 stars.

THANK YOUU PENGUIN (&netgalley) this was fun easy to read and didn’t bore me to hell while reading it CASH IS insane inez insane
granny o’connor jazz parker
everyone INSANE (affectionate)
loved this so much i think this might be my first ever mejia read but definitely won’t be the last

I was very excited to read a book that focused on a character realizing she was queer late in life, and this was a very cute romance. I appreciated how Cash avoided the typical bartender character cliches. Plus the supporting characters were lots of fun, and the anti-corporate vibes were great. I did find it a little weird that not once did Cash herself, anyone she spoke to, nor the things she read online suggest she might have been bi. No reason she would be necessarily! But every late-discovery queer person I've met has made that assumption first, so it jumped out to me that Cash didn't try out that label before discarding the possibility.

I was a little hesitant to pick this book up after I couldn’t get into Sammy Espinoza, but I’m so glad I gave this a shot after all! Even though this takes place in the same town and there’s several Sammy cameos, this absolutely stands on its own with its focus on Cash and wanting to save Joyce’s, a local dive bar. This is also a book where “everything is political” really keeps coming to mind in the way it challenges gentrification and is so focused on community care. Cash is determined to save the bar that has felt like home since moving to Ridley Falls, and when the Kings franchise is considering moving into Ridley Falls it is the community that supports Cash towards renovations, and also wanting to keep franchises out of Ridley Falls. I also really loved the way Cash realizing she’s a lesbian and pushing back against internalized compulsory heterosexuality was handled. In a way, Cash Delgado feels like a book in conversation with the “gay for you” trope and the different ways realizing you’re queer as an adult can go, especially as we also have glimpses of other characters’ queer awakenings and self understanding. Yes, Cash’s attraction is focused on Inez, but she’s also realizing other elements of attraction and the ways her dynamics with men were always a convenience where they pursued her, rather than actual interest in them. Which comes back to how much this is a book of community and community care, the ways Inez’s chosen family is just as much a part of Cash’s journey as the larger community is for the bar. I also adored Parker, Cash’s six-year-old daughter, and how confident she is in herself and the many conversations between Parker and Cash where we see the ways children are often wiser than we give them credit for. All around this was a really good book that I really enjoyed, and this was a journey I loved going along the ride for.