Thank you @netgalley and @bookouture for the eARC of The Near Miss by @lilyjosephwriter in exchange for an honest review!

📖📖 Book Review 📖📖 Have you ever met someone and realized you’ve been at the same place, same time and had no idea? Life has a funny way of making things happen, even when we don’t plan or expect it. Wren and Nick are individuals going about their pretty mundane lives, and their paths keep crossing peripherally and they have no idea. In a strange and beautiful twist of fate, they finally meet in Capri. The Near Miss is a lighthearted rom-com with the slightest dose of existentialism that results in what can only be called kismet.

Review is posted on Goodreads and will be on Instagram ahead of the publication date!

This was such a fun, easy read. The pacing was great - I really loved how it throws you straight into the concept.

One of my favourite things about this book was the characters. Not only their likability, but the fact that they were older which is something you don't see that often in this genre. Love interests always seem to be 18-21 so their problems always seem a little trivial to me. It was incredibly refreshing to read a romance about people around my age with real adult issues like single parenthood and losing long-term partners.

The nature of the near misses meant the book was very predictable but I think that made it more enjoyable in the long run. I enjoyed the dramatic irony as a reader. The romance was very sweet with enough sexual tension to make it exciting but not 'too adult'.

Overall, a fantastic debut. I think fans of Beth O'Leary will love this because it felt quite reminiscent of her work.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own and entirely honest.

I’m a massive fan of slowburn romance but this one was a little too slow for me. I didn’t really get much chemistry from our fmc and mmc but I think it has to do with them only meeting at the half way mark, maybe if they met sooner they could have established more of a relationship.


the constant “near misses” when it came to accidents were getting kind of tiresome to the point where I wished that the book would move along and actually become a romance

The secondary characters are great, to be honest they stand out a lot more to me than our main couple and I kind of wanted to see more of Libby and her life.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for sending me this arc

The Near Miss
Are Wren and Nick meant to be or are they a disaster waiting to happen? The near misses throughout the book indicate they could be bad for each other until they meet in Italy.

A few days in Italy enjoying a near miss, and recovering with a meal and drinks leads to them unsuspectingly falling in love.

At the beginning of this book I struggled to see how some of the characters fitted into the story as a whole but as you come close to the end you see how they all play a vital part in Nick and Wrens relationship. Whether it’s Edie being a match maker, Alex cheating and showing his true colours or Libby, getting her windows fixed. Each little near miss makes you wonder how it’s going to bring Wren and Nick closer to meeting.

Wren and Nick are both loveable characters, they’ve some sort of hardship that they’re getting over but come together and create a new, loving relationship despite their bad experiences with other people.

The setting in their home town and then to Italy is idillic, I mean who wouldn’t want to fall in love in Italy?

Such a light hearted and enjoyable romance, nice to read something that isn’t a typical enemies to lovers or a typical falling in love story.

Maybe fate is real? And who knows how many times you miss someone before you actually meet them?

Thank you for letting me review via NetGalley!

What a sweet rom-com this was and I love a great rom-com. Nick and Wren are so likable and adorable and how can two soulmates miss each other so often. Just as one morning Wren is leaving her best friends bookstore and a pane of glass falls and narrowly misses her, The person who accidentally dropped is was Nick. Nick and Wrens lives are interconnected but the can't figure it out. This goes on for quite awhile and then they eventually meet up when they both happen to be on vacation in Italy, The secondary characters were also wonderful. I just wish that Nick and Wren had met a bit sooner in the book so the reader could see their relationship develop more. I did enjoy this book.

it was just not a book i liked at all, i couldn’t understand where it was going and it made me loose interest in even trying by the 3rd chapter, i barely made it through this just bc it was an ARC but i honestly didn’t like it

Thank you so much for a copy of The Near Miss! I was super excited to read it since it seemed like it was going to be a very interesting plot. All of the near misses in this book connected to perfectly and really wrapped up in a nice bow at the end. I liked seeing how everything was related and how their lives were so close without them knowing.

The issues I had with this book were the pacing and the relationship. I think that we could have seen all the near misses for 50-75% of the book. Instead, it was nearly the whole thing. I did not believe in the romance and I simply did not care. We needed more scenes of the couple together, getting to know each other, and falling in love. Instead, I feel that they fell in love with the idea of the other person without actually knowing them.

The Near Miss is a dual POV following Wren and Nick as fate nearly kills them in a myriad of ways in an attempt to drive them together. It would be a great final destination film if not for the "meant to be" romance (and no death). Their lives, unbeknownst to the future couple; are entangled, and they each help the other find answers to life long questions.

This was an easy read, however felt slightly long and drawn out, especially when reading the same scene twice to cover both perspectives. After a few times, I was getting impatient. The book also focuses on their lives, families, and jobs, so the pacing became a bit too slow for me here. Once they had finally met, life got in the way to keep them apart, and again I felt impatient.

Overall, it was a nice read and different to the typical romance formula, but I prefer a faster pace/the plot to get on with it. Thank you to netgalley for the arc.

Initially I was super intrigued by this story. I loved the first few chapters and found it so exciting that they kept missing each other! However, these characters didn’t meet for the first 50% of the book, which unfortunately made it drag in the middle. There was way too many ‘near misses’ and I just needed the characters to connect!

Wren and Nick were meant to be once they finally met and I’m always a sucker for the romance!

I do love a slow burn romance and this was an enjoyable read, but I was still left feeling like I wanted more at the end.

Loves a good romance comedy like this
thank you netgalley and lily joseph for the e-arc
totally in love

6/5 ✨for creativity!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVED THIS BOOK! Truly, Lily Jones hit it out of the park for me. The creativity and SEAMLESS flow of the story was a treasure to read! I fell in love with all of the characters I was meant to fall in love with and strongly disliked the characters who deserved it!! (Cough* cough* Alex) It was such a fun read for me! I would strongly recommend reading it if you like near death experiences and fate trying to work its butt off to get you to be with your person. It also was hilarious, fun, and quirky too! Such a good book!

'I feel like you're my lighthouse'

Wren and Nick may have just set the highest bar ever in terms of meet cute.

The Near Miss by Lily Joseph focuses on Wren and Nick, the most unfortunate soulmates the universe has ever thrown together. When Wren leaves her best friends bookstore one morning, and narrowly avoids being crushed by a pane of glass, she can't help but think 'what if I had left the store seconds earlier'. From then on her life seems like a someone's bad idea of a prank, falling from one bad luck scenario to the next, and barley leaving each one unscathed. Nick feels awful, after nearly flattening a woman with a pane of glass, he hopes to put it behind him, but fate seems to have other plans, throwing him into multiple unfortunate happenings. They seem to be careening towards each other, but narrowly avoiding disaster each time, when they finally meet, will it be love at first sight, or does the universe have other plans for them?

I loved this book, the characetrs, all of it! Wren and Nick are so sweetly oblivious to each other but it made me so happy reading each chapter, and finding the little things that I guessed would be the thing in the next chapter that would connect them, (I was wrong more times than I cared to admit). There were so many times where I would be like 'they're both in the same place surely they have to run into each other' or 'ahh so thats why that was mentioned', and it just made the book so much more enjoyable each time. The sort of things that they got themselves into, (being trapped under a bookshelf, and nearly falling from a stair lift spring to mind) were so comical that I was laughing out loud for a lot of this book.

My favourite character by far was Edie, the most grandmotherly nanna to ever be. Her constant use of 'pardon my french' made me smile every time, and the way she was with everyone she came into contact with was the sort of woman I would hope to be when I'm older. I think we could do with having an Edie in our lives. She reminded me a lot of my nanny.

I was hooked on the book from the first 'near miss', and it never let up. I found myself rooting for them both to get what they wanted, found myself laughing at this a lot more than I thought I would, and when they finally met in person, I found myself nearly cheering with excitement. The chemistry that they had when they were in person was so good. I was so incredibly frustrated at how close they came to meeting each other after Italy, but the lightbulb moment was so satisfying that I could forgive it, even if it meant me shedding a few tears.

Overall I really enjoyed this read, and couldn't quite believe it was a debut novel, and I hope to read more by Lily Joseph in the future. I give it 4.5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley, Lily Joseph, and Bookouture, for the opportunity to read this early copy. All thoughts are my own

A really exciting debut novel from Lily Joseph that is all about fate and following your heart. I really enjoyed getting to know Wren and Nick in particular, and their trip to the Amalfi Coast really took me back to my time there!

I would have liked a bit more of Wren and Nick's relationship as I think the build up to them getting together was a bit too long. However, overall, I really enjoyed this one!

ARC Review: This is a 3/5 🌟 book for me. Cute, fluffy closed door romance. 🥰 The cover is really cute - i personally prefer a little more spice in my books. But it was a sweet book about star crossed lovers. I enjoyed it but I would like to see a little more angst, spice and chemistry. But sometimes you need something simple and fluffy to cheer you up. ˙ᵕ˙ Super excited to see what she decides to put out next!!

Also leaving a review on IG @my_bookish_diaries_ 3k followers and on GoodReads @lunaslibrary

Nick and Wren are meant to be. But Nick and Wren have never met. And now, fate is about to change everything. Could true love be just a catastrophe away?
I would highly recommend this book to… anyone and everyone! This book will stay with you long after you've finished it, and in the most fabulous way! Wow…!… I caught myself holding my breath more than once, genuinely worried about what would happen next… a breathless read! It’s definitely an unforgettable story and it just gets more beautiful and moving as it goes on until it reaches its conclusion which is a perfect ending. I absolutely loved it.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

What a gorgeous feel-good story! This reminded me of a 90s rom-com when everything is just a little bit over the top, in the best way possible. The book starts off with a bang -almost literally- and doesn't stop from there.

I loved how Wren and Nick were in each other's lives for the entire book, even though they didn't actually meet until halfway through. It was so much fun realizing how the closest people in their lives were actually connected. The Italy portion of the book was so picturesque and perfectly fitting.

This is the perfect book to pick up when you want something light, fun, and feel-good. The setting, the characters, the community- it was such a fun read and would make a great summer book- perfect for reading on the beach on holiday.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I loved this story of two people who keep being pulled together and yet just missing each other. Nick and Wren are both great characters and the author really brings to life these near misses.

Rounded up, you could say a 3.5!! There were certain portions of the book that I felt moved slowly. I loved the premise of the book and the near miss concept but at points it became almost frustrating!! I was rooting for Nick and Wren all along but wished we could have seen more of them actually together. A quick and relatively easy romance, it was a fun one! Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC!

I found "The Near Miss" by Lily Joseph to be a somewhat disappointing read. The characters, incidents, and subplots made the storyline feel convoluted. Despite the promising premise of Wren and Nick's destined connection, the execution felt disjointed, with the narrative thread struggling to weave them together seamlessly. Frankly, I almost gave up on finishing the book due to its scattered focus. Overall, it's a 2 star rating from me.

The elements in this book that deal with the fate of meeting people along the way to find romance are written pretty well. I liked both main characters; the fact that they are trying to fix some problems in their lives and always crossing paths with each other in the process was so interesting to read. Overall, I finished reading this in one sitting and enjoyed it.