This was super cute. I immediately fell in love with the MMC, because I am also prone to holding grudges and being petty and he was so cute about it. The main characters and side characters interactions were all flawless and everything about the book made me all warm and fuzzy. Melissa Ferguson is becoming one of my auto buy authors for sure.
Also I am a huge fan of Steve West's narrating.

The blurb had me instantly hooked. Who doesn't like a little payback when you've been wronged?
I enjoyed the varied cast of characters in this book. Finn's elderly neighbors were a delight, and I adored Lavender's ride or die besties. And you can't forget the four-legged companions! They were absolutely adorable and made for some very funny scenes.
It was refreshing to see a male main character plotting payback as it's usually the female characters who are out to seek revenge for wrongdoings.
I listened to this in one sitting. A fast, light read. Keeps you hooked.
I wouldn't categorize this as enemies to lovers as the conflict was completely one-sided. Nor grumpy/sunshine as Finn was nice to everyone but Lavender for misguided reasons. There was zero spice, not even closed door, and the story is definitely more comedic than romantic. The romance is slow burn with some kissing here and there.
I enjoyed the narration. Fiona Hardingham and Steve West did a wonderful job bringing Lavender and Finn to life!

I enjoy this authors writing. The characters are relatable. The story made me laugh. The romance is a slow burn. Very charming, fun, quick read.

I was so excited to read this one. Successful screenwriter Finn Masters just landed his dream job writing for Neighbors, one of Hollywood's highly rated long-running sitcoms. The downside was being in proximity to Hollywood sweetheart Lavender Rhodes, who had been inadvertently ruining his life since their school days back in England.

Finn wasn't about to let her ruin another chance for him. Being a screenwriter, he had the perfect opportunity to get back at her by spinning her character in unexpected directions.

Things took a turn when his plans backfired one scene after another, leaving him with a guilty conscience as he began to see Lavender in a new light. As they spent more time together, he was drawn to her refreshing personality which was opposite of what he expected from a universally adored actress.

This was entertaining. I listened to the audio and that definitely contributed to the hilarity of each situation. Amazing job by the narrators!

Thank you to Netgalley and Publisher for a complimentary ALC copy. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Since reading "Meet Me In The Margins", Melissa Ferguson has been one of my favorite romcom authors. I am so grateful to @thomasnelson for sending me the ARC and sharing the audiobook of this new release with me!

Do you have a person in your life who is just a "bad luck charm"? For Finn Masters it's Lavender Rhodes. Since their teenage years she has been one single cause of all of his misfortunes. To Finn's horror, years later, his new job as a writer on popular sitcom brings him face to face with his least favorite person who ironically plays the main character in a sitcom. It's time to plot a payback...

Each of Melissa's books is so different from the other, and the unique plot of this novel simply blew me away! Yes, I cheered for the team "Finn" from the get-go, but then I was in for a huge surprise as Finn's plot got completly derailed.

Finn is your perfect book boyfriend: he is considerate, oldfashioned, extremely helpful and is such a gentleman. He even helped Ukrainian refugees! My heart skipped at that - thank you, Finn! I will not reveal a thing about Lavender, because I want you to meet her yourself and have fun with it! The sitcom setting was so well-written! It reminded me of "Friends". I LOVED getting a sneak peek behind the scenes. If you're a dog lover, this book will have you swooning! Lol So many hilarious moments, sweet and tender scenes and fuzzy feels. Fun, engaging writing style was just a cherry on top!

I adored this delightful closed door romcom. This was also a laugh-out-loud read. What a perfect combo. If you haven't read Melissa Ferguson's books yet, definitely grab this one. The audiobook was great, I loved the dual POV narrators.

Read if you like:
👯‍♀️ Friends
📺 How I Met Your Mother
😂 Funny One-Liners
😠 Enemies to Lovers
🎥 Celebrity Romances

This was a cute story and if you are just looking for something fun, no open door spice, and some enemies to lovers with dual pov I would recommend checking this one out!

Thank you so much to the publisher for my advanced copy in exchange for my review!

How to Plot a Payback was delightful! This audiobook was the perfect companion for a solo weekend! I absolutely loved the ending!

How to Plot a Payback is as charming as all of Melissa Ferguson's sweet romantic comedies. It is a story of two long time acquaintances and one-sided rivals thrown together on a TV series where he is head writer and she is the lead actress. Finn makes a halfhearted attempt to get payback for past slights through his writing with hilarious outcomes. What I like about this one is the character development. We really see both Lavender and Finn grow, face their past, and become better people. I love the dual POV. It helps so much to understand the character motivations. In this story in particular it was necessary to understand their past hurts. To my point, at first I thought Lavender was the absolute worst and terribly annoying. After hearing more from her POV it really changes that perspective. Sometimes sweet romance novels can read very YA. I didn't think that was true in this case. Surprisingly I didn't even miss the spice.

The audio really adds to the story. The voices are absolutely perfect! As mentioned I didn't like Lavender's character to start. I think it was the narrator that saved her character. The voice was perfect and sweet. The narrator voicing Finn was also great with the cutest accent!

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and Thomas Nelson--FICTION for this audio ARC!

This book was so cute! I loved the plot, characters and writing. I’ll for sure be getting a physical copy of the book and so thankful to have received the ARC. I will do a full review on my blog.

How To Plot A Playback by Melissa Ferguson is a cute, funny & clean RomCom.
This story was a bit slow for me at first, but once it got going I was laughing out loud. It has some great banter. And Love the Puppies.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas Nelson and Zondervan Fiction Audio for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

How to Plot a Payback is a lighthearted and very silly story about Fynn, a tv writer, and his nemesis Lavender, famous tv actor. Since high school Lavender has had her hand in many disasters in Fynn’s life from stealing roles to breaking up his almost engagement. Needless to say he wants to stay as far away as possible, until he gets the chance of a lifetime to be a writer on her show.

As I said, this is very silly. It is really funny but sometimes in the way that Michael Scott from The Office is funny - sometimes you have to look away (Scott’s tots anyone?). But I love the office so enjoyed that part.

My main gripe with this though: Lavender is insufferable as a character. I’m sure all the things I don’t like about her was intentional on the authors part but my goodness she is so oblivious and it drove me NUTS. She is so cheery all the time in a way that makes me roll my eyes (maybe I’m a grinch tho) but has no idea how her actions affect others and really just comes off as self centered (shocking! A celeb that is out of touch!). Again, all very fitting for a famous actress but very annoying to read about.

While both Fynn and Lavender were over the top in their bad luck and vapidness respectively, they did eventually start gaining depth. I liked Fynn and his quirks and his elderly neighbors. They ended up being a likeable couple in the end. Maybe go into this book expecting to basically read a sitcom and my above issues will likely not bother you!

Settling on a rating is tough because I thought it was funny and it delivered on what it promised. I didn’t have a problem with the writing and I liked the story. I can logically say this is a good book, I just didn’t enjoy reading it.

Ps my favorite characters were definitely the dogs

I love a celebrity rom com so much so I knew I had to read this when I read the description. Going into Finn and Lavender’s world was such a delight. Lavender was the ultimate golden retriever character, rescuing dogs like it was no big deal. Finn was a little too man childish for me - like, dude get over it! I’m glad he saw the error of his ways quickly though. Overall, a cute, quick and silly rom com perfect for TV fans. I wasn’t a huge fan of the narration but it wouldn’t deter me from them in the future.

As usual, Melissa’s rom-com delivered chuckles and giggles and witty dialogue from a cast of loveable characters. It’s a storyline is fresh and hasn’t been done a bazillion times, at least that I have read anyway, and has my fav tropes-grumpy/sunshine or enemies to lovers (although I wouldn’t really call them enemies as the bad feelings are one sided and kind of misguided really)
Finn sets out to get back at Lavender for what he thinks is a list of wrongs she has done to him over the course of them knowing each other, the thing is, Lavender has no idea that Finn thinks she is such an awful person. When they are forced to work with each other, she as an actress and he as her new head writer, he starts to realize that maybe she isn’t completely awful after all.
Lavender is America’s sweetheart and has been playing in a long running show for years. She’s ready to move on but the world isn’t ready for her to let go of her character. When Finn is hired as her producer, he has a new set of ideas and ways to make changes and Lavender is captivated by him despite the fact that he seems familiar but she can’t figure out how she knows him.
Even during Finn’s childish attempts at payback and petty revenge, I found both characters loveable and I was totally invested in their story. And then once he finally got over it all, it got even better and they just made sense together. Their first kiss was swoon worthy. Slow and sweet like a summer peach.
This story is witty and funny and I enjoyed every bit. It is clean, feel-good and lighthearted and the perfect beach read. I see this as being big this summer.
Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for this ALC in exchange for my review.

Ok this was such a cute story! If you like grumpy/sunshine romance tropes, this is the book for you. It’s lighthearted, humorous, and a quick read.

Even with Finn’s hard exterior and need for revenge, you can’t help but love him. And Lavender, although maybe a little naive, is a total sweetheart that is always looking out for others and doesn’t let anything get her down.

I really enjoyed listening to this story and the narrators were perfect for these characters.

Thanks NetGalley and HarperCollins Christian Publishing for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook.

This is such a sweet and wholesome novel! I love it so much! the characters, especially the FMC, are adorable and relatable, even though I haven’t been in the acting world since I was five.
How to Plot a Payback was so cozy I wanted to roll up in a blanket and listen to it on repeat for days. Melissa Ferguson did a great job writing lovable characters who don’t need to jump each other’s bones to make you want these characters to fall in love and get together by the end.
There wasn’t any traditional spice, which was perfectly okay with me. It would’ve ruined the book if they’d been 🌶️ 🥵 throughout the novel. It was so much better that the MCs were going about their lives together, surviving crazy antics, and learning about each other after their shared “incident” in school as children.
Everything that happened in the plotted payback scheme was fun and had me laughing at times, gritting my teeth in one spot, and at one point I whooped for joy.

Narration: Fiona Hardingham and Steve West did a fantastic job narrating their respective characters. I enjoyed listening to both MCs voices and the narrators both embodied their characters and sucked me into the story every time I pressed play. Perfect recording, IMO.

Thank you NetGalley, HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and Melissa Ferguson for the ALC of How to Plot a Payback!!!

I listened to the audio version of this book and I think I might need to try reading it instead. I found it extremely difficult to follow the storyline, especially during the sections the male narrator takes over. I didn’t dislike the bits of the story I was able to grasp, I just really struggled with the audio production on this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Christian Publishing for gifting me this ALC of the audiobook to review.

This is an enemies-to-lovers romance and actually one of the few books that I have read with this trope where the reasons for the tension between the characters and the resolution/ becoming lovers seemed very natural to me.

Nonetheless, I had a bit of a hard time connecting to the characters and therefore rooting for their love story.

The characters, especially Finn seemed a bit "faceless", as in just putting him in a situation and his reaction to the situation will just be whatever makes sense for the story. If the situation doesn't have a clear indication of what that reaction should be, then choices about writers and British people are used. For example, in one of the scenes, Finn is represented as being straight-laced, so he says that he goes to bed at 9. But throughout the story, he stays up late to write and there's not a single scene where he goes to bed early and wakes up early. Lavender, the ditzy, well-meaning Hollywood star, was unfortunately equally one dimension and made it hard to connect to her as well.

A thing that I thoroughly enjoyed, was the Hollywood/ sitcom atmosphere. I like reading Hollywood romances, but the fact that it was less focused on paparazzi or the imbalance between a Hollywood star and someone who is not famous, but rather on the shooting and writing of a sitcom, added a nice twist to it.

"How to Plot a Payback" by Melissa Ferguson is an entertaining rom-com. It's the enemies to lovers trope. In this case, it's the guy, Finn, who is enemies with the girl, Lavender Rhodes, and thinks she is out to get him at every turn. They are both from England and went to the same school, but ended up working in the US near LA on a TV show. He is a writer/ producer. She is a lead actress of a sit-com called Neighbors, which sounds similar to long-running TV show, Friends. Both of them have dogs, and the scenes with the dogs were great! If you like romantic comedy stories, you may like this one.

Characters - 4/5
Writing - 4/5
Plot - 4/5
Pacing - 3/5
Unputdownability - 3/5
Enjoyment - 4/5
Cover - 4/5
Narration - 4/5

The audiobook is narrated by Fiona Hardingham, who reads the Lavender chapters, and Steve West, who reads the Finn chapters. Steve didn't read the female dialogue very well, but he had a great voice for Finn.

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Collins Christian Publishing, Thomas Nelson Fiction, and author Melissa Ferguson for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Ferguson crafts a fun, quick romance with a bit of farce in How to Plot a Payback. The main characters are surprisingly likable, there is an excellent supporting cast and a tidy HEA. There are some holes of past wrongs alluded to but not explained well, but nothing that prevents this from being an enjoyable read. Additionally this is a HEA with no sex without any airs. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The narrators were cast perfectly for the main characters. The tone and specific emphasis they used at different times fit the personalities to a tee.

The story was cute and fluffy. I loved Lavender and how she was so optimistic. The grumpy sunshine dynamics were perfect. I loved the found family and the ending was perfectly wrapped in a bow! Super sweet rom com!