I love that the MCs are older (in their mid to late thirties) and this is their second chance at love. FMC lost her husband (the love of her life two plus years ago) and her office antagonist is the MMC. I was not expecting that spice - it was great. The twist was not unpredictable but it was irritating
The book is near and dear to my heart as I currently live in Boston and spent five years in Florida. My husband went to school in Gainesville.

Tropes: Enemies to lovers, Forced Proximity, Its Always Been You, Single Dad, Single Mom

This book has three tropes that I love: enemies to lovers, single parent, and office romance. I was so excited to start this book, but it really fell short for me. Juliana is a widowed single mother of two young daughters, and she goes back to work after being a stay at home parent for years. I was a stay at home parent for many years, and I could relate to Juliana's feelings. When she is at work, she meets Ben, her co-worker, and they don't get along from the beginning. She overhears him complaining about her having kids and it interfering with scheduling of a meeting. Because of this interaction, they hate each other and play immature pranks on each other for two years!

We are supposed to believe that all this time, he is really falling in love with her, but they don't know anything about each other. They never have a conversation! Something that really bothered me was the descriptions of Ben as being this breathtakingly gorgeous man- there are multiple times when women are speechless when they look at him. It was over the top.

When they go to hook up for the first time in his office, I was uncomfortable with the aggression that he used toward her. They didn't have a discussion about how rough to take things, and it felt out of place in the book. I also didn't like how he tried to make her feel like she owed him something because he waited so long for her.

When Ben's ex returns (she left him and their 5 year old daughter) , he decides to stay with her to work things out, for the benefit of their daughter. The daughter has abandonment issues.= why would he subject her to a false sense of hope that her parents woul be a 'happy family' again?

In the end, Juliana forgives him and they live happily ever after. I didn't root for Ben or Juliana. They are both immature and selfish. I don't understand how a relationship between the two of them would be healthy at all. The book frustrated me so much.

There's some major miscommunication going on that didn't have to happen. But there's fun banter and sexy times. Still worth reading.

Juliana and Ben’s story was a cute and quick read that I enjoyed.

While there were a few things that occurred that I didn’t love, I still would recommend this to others.

Newly widowed single mom Juliana has hated Ben since the day she met him, when she overheard him badmouthing her to a mutual colleague. When they’re forced to work together on a major project, they discover there’s a thin line between love and hate.

This one wasn’t for me overall. I found Juliana to be truly infuriating. I really didn’t understand why Ben kept trying with her when she was so often rude and even sometimes downright mean to him. Their third act conflict made me really angry because it was avoidable but no one was acting like a reasonable adult to me.

I did love the blended family aspects and thought that all three kid characters were really cute and sweet. I loved that Juliana loved Paris so well and so quickly, giving her another adult to count on. I thought that the village that Ben and Juliana built around themselves was a lovely example of found family. The grand gesture at the end was really sweet, even if I wasn’t totally sold on them as a couple.

One thing I love about being an arc reviewer is that it draws my attention to debut authors! It was so fun to kick off Let’s Call A Truce as a traveling arc and I really enjoyed this fun romance!

I love a forced proximity situation, and there’s no proximity more forced than someone you loathe and have to work with anyway. Let’s Call A Truce is office romance meets rivals to lovers (or one sided feud to lovers?) and the banter and desk-clearing kisses were top tier.

I also really loved Juliana’s relationship with her kids! I love when kids are utilized well in a single parent story, and Amy did a great job making the kids an essential part of the story instead of an accessory or afterthought.

Definitely pick this one up after it comes out later this month!

Thank you to SMP Romance for the traveling arc copy and eARC. All thoughts are my own.

4.5/5 - Julianna and Ben don’t hit it off on her first day at work. Julianna is back to work after the loss of her husband. She is now a single parent to two girls and an incident at the school causes her to cancel a meeting she had with Ben. She overhears Ben complaining about her and is angry he would do that. Flash forward two years and the two have been trading barbs since that day (in (mostly) fun). Forced to work together on a project they start to enjoy each other’s company, but Julianna struggles with if there could be two loves in her lifetime.

The tension between these two could be cut with a knife. With that tension comes sparks. Julianna struggles with the death of her husband while managing grief and helping her daughters. She is also dealing with the guilt that comes with being attracted to someone else after losing the love of her life, struggling to understand if she could have another different love with Ben.

Ben initially comes off as the bad guy, but we come to understand his story and the reasons for what he said that first day. He is kind and compassionate, allowing Julianna to move things at her pace while being there for her even as a friend. I loved that Ben was so understanding of the love Julianna had for her husband and openly accepted, and talked about him, while Julianna processed her grief and growing feelings.

I will admit that I didn’t love how some things between Ben and Julianna were handled, but even then, it felt so raw and real that I felt it. There is a third-act break-up that I felt didn’t need to happen and took away from some of the great emotions we saw.

I felt that Julianna’s kids were added so well to the story and were important in the story progression. When her husband died, Julianna had a group of people who surrounded and supported her. The friendships she made, and her parents, helped her manage the job of being a single parent while working through grief. I loved that she had her group of people to help and support her.

Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable read filled with love and emotion. There were many times I found myself crying throughout the book because I could feel those emotions Julianna was going through. I could not believe this was Amy’s first book and I look forward to seeing what she writes in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for a copy of this novel. Opinions are 100% mine.

Of the many, many sub-genres in romance, an office-set rom-com with the enemies-to-lovers trope mixed in is just *chef’s kiss* for me. Maybe it’s the result of imprinting on Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game and Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis so young (*cough* 29-years-old *cough*). Whatever it is, that specific brand of book is like catnip to me, and Amy Buchanan’s Let’s Call a Truce seemed right up my sexual-tension-filled-conference-rooms-and-eyes-locking-across-office-kitchens alley.

The debut novel from Buchanan is a spicy contemporary romance about embracing second chances in life, in love, and in your career, while weaving in humor and a hell of a lot of yearning as the long-simmering feud between two warring colleagues, Juliana and Ben, eventually boils over.

In real life I’m sure office romances are already an Human Resources nightmare, but the ones I’ve encountered in fiction? Good god are they a lawsuit waiting to happen. Juliana and Ben’s situation is no exception, with their rocky courtship dotted with unprofessional, antagonistic, and borderline discriminatory behavior going on over the course of the two years they’re at odds. And Juliana’s habit of keeping a running document of all the fights she’s “won” against him on her company-issued laptop? Girl. Girl. (Though I guess that pales in comparison to what she and Ben end up doing practically on top of said laptop . . . el oh el.)

OK, anyway — now that I’ve gotten that very cool and glamorous HR complaint out of the way, let’s get into what worked for me, what didn’t, and my thoughts overall.

What I liked in Let’s Call a Truce by Amy Buchanan:
The chemistry! It’s there in spades, and abundantly obvious from their very first moment together. With these kind of books you kinda go in knowing how it’ll end, and all the usual beats that’ll happen along the way. What makes it worth reading is a pair of people worth rooting for, who keep things interesting. And despite this book’s faults, they do keep things interesting.

The ~spice~ (if you’re into that) is . . . OK! Nothing wild, but Ben is hot. Let’s celebrate that.

Juliana’s relationship with her group of friends — it’s grounded and sweet, with plenty of realistic interactions between them all. I think the book sometimes gets too much in the weeds with her friendships vs. focusing on the book’s romance, but for the most part it’s a nice handful of supporting characters who are witty, supportive, and honest with Juliana when she acts like an idiot.

What I wasn’t crazy about in Let’s Call a Truce by Amy Buchanan:
The dialogue has a tendency be stilted and unrealistic, and a glaring lack of contractions in the text really emphasizes this. I know this is nit-picky, but one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is refusing to let your characters use contractions when speaking — people use them in real life! All the time! Constantly! Maybe if this was set in the Victorian era it would make more sense to keep the language more rigid, but in a contemporary romance that creative choice makes everything seem unnatural.

I wanted to scream, “JUST ASK BEN ABOUT HIS PAST ALREADY, JULIANA!!!!” She’s been through a lot, sure, but you only get so many passes before your bizarrely avoidant behavior becomes pathological. Also rude and hurtful?! The way she was dedicated to causing so many issues because she refused to ask a simple question . . . annoying as hell.

On that note, I’m not sure Ben or Juliana had ever communicated with another human being before ending up at the same architectural firm. In that sense I guess they really are meant for each other.

This book majorly suffers from ‘let’s all pretend the main characters have never looked each other up on social media’ syndrome. Come on.

There are a few specific plot beats that seemed eeeeerily similar to the storyline in The Love Hypothesis, on top of the miscommunication trope — both pairs travel to Boston for work, both heroines are hit on by an older man while there, etc. etc. Just a thought.

As far as Ben and Juliana’s relationship evolution goes, it felt like a pretty sizable step was missing, one where they start to thaw from ice-cold enemies into the possibility of something else entirely — a scene where he helps her through one of her panic attacks, maybe? Or a moment of her getting him through a tough meeting when she doesn’t have to? Something to bridge that gap. Sexual tension bubbles under all that arguing, of course, but due to the harshness of Ben’s verbal misstep that sets their conflict off to begin with, the narrative needed the presence of something more to sand down the sharp edges of their relationship.

So, the TL;DR of it all? This wasn’t a perfect read for me, but I still had a good time with it. (Mostly.) It’s entertaining and angsty, if you’re looking for an easy weekend read to warm you up this winter.

(2.5 stars, but rounding up!)

Let’s Call a Truce hits shelves on Jan. 14, 2025. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Griffin for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Rating: 4/5

Loved this book a lot. Juliana and Ben are a perfect example of why we need more romance books with characters who are a little older, in their 30s or 40s. I'm so glad I was able to read an ARC of this book. More books from Amy Buchanan now, please!

One of my favorite things about this story was how open and vulnerable Ben was. When the shift in their relationship happens, it's Ben who puts himself out there most directly first, and he really remains open and vulnerable for the rest of the book, even when he's conflicted about how to manage his responsibility to his daughter and his feelings for Juliana. Ben is unapologetic in his want for Juliana and it really make this book excellent.

The way Juliana handles the complicated emotions that come with moving on as a widow is beautiful. I really love the internal dialogue the author provides for this aspect of the story. I think it's so refreshing how the issue of grief is handled in this book about a young widow. Juliana feels sadness and love for her late husband, but she's also still a young woman, albeit older than most female main characters in romance books, with desire, both physical and emotional, for a new guy in her life. Just a really beautiful book.

The love story in this is so different from most books and is done so well. The spice is great, as well.
A really wonderful book and I can't wait to read more from this author.

ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for honest review

A fun rom-com with "The Hating Game" vibes! Workplace romance, single mom- all the romantic tension we love!

Juliana is a single mom trying her best to juggle her dream career and life at home. But enter too sexy for his own good Ben, the co-worker who gets on her last nerve.
Banter, banter, banter with this one. Absolutely loved the dialogue! Talk about angst!

Brief thoughts- a little too spicy for my usual reads and I'm not a fan of the third act piece. Overall a fun romance!

3.5 stars. Thanks to St. Martin's for the widget. Overall I really enjoyed this story and the banter between the MMC and the FMC and the kids. There were some instances when the FMC was over the top her wishy washy was not for me in some of the chapters but I kept reading and it got more enjoyable as the book progressed and finished really good.

This book started off really strong for me which made the rest of it feel like that much more of a letdown. I felt so much for Juliana and her situation but by 42% I was so frustrated with her and ready to dnf. I was only just interested enough in Ben's explanation for things he said in the beginning to keep going. Which we did get, but it still didn't really add up to me.

The relationship between the two just never worked. I understood the rivalry to an extent, but Ben loving her that fiercely? Made no sense. Juliana is one of the most selfish FMCs I have ever read. Ben made his fair share of mistakes, but he never deserved to be treated the way he was after his explanation to Juliana. She strung him along and then made him grovel and plan a grand gesture? No thanks. I was so over it.

The only really lovable characters in this book were the children, who showed more emotional maturity than every adult in their lives. I loved them so much and wanted to see them be happy and if that meant a HEA between Juliana and Ben then so be it. Otherwise, I honestly wouldn't have wanted to see them end up together.

I wanted to love this. I wish more their relationship had developed on page so I could understand their connection. It didn't end up working for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

A briskly paced workplace romance full of lusty physical attraction and fan favourite tropes. While the hero falls madly in love at first sight, he blunders his way into saying something offensive the heroine overhears, and she holds a bitter grudge for two years about it, fending off his continued advances under the guise of hating him, despite her intense physical attraction and no further offences. The enemies-to-lovers marketing is a bit deceptive since the animosity is so one-sided, and the hero is so candid about his feelings, so this is more a story of a woman who pushes people away after her husband dies, afraid to get hurt again, balanced against a steamy workplace relationship and the complexities of dating as a single parent, all handled with a light touch, making this a breezy and joyful read.

I am blown away by this debut! I live for enemies-to-lovers, but most books fall short on the kind of hatred that really makes the trope great. This book reaches Hating Game levels of (hilarious antic-filled) animosity. It’s also really, really hot. (One desk scene in particular lives in my mind rent-free.) And incredibly emotional, exploring topics like grief and single parenthood with depth and nuance. Loved it and highly recommend!

It was a very intense book, with a lot of vulnerability from both characters. And when I say intense is INTENSE, both when they were enemies to when they were frienesmies to when they were lovers, but it is a romance story between two single parents that work together, so I can see how it is complicated just with the kids.

It was honestly an incredible enemies to lovers(and it was giving me The Spanish love deception vibes for a moment there), with a palpable sexual tension and character development. The MFM character was stressing me out and I wanted to slap her more than once, while I did get her perspective in doubting everything and being scare, at one point I wanted to scream, but even still there, I was too involved in the story to hate it 😂

📌enemies to lovers
📌work place romance
📌forced proximity
📌single parents
📌he fall first

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5

More books like this, please please please. I love the conflicts between these two and, more than anything, how they resolved them like rational adults *while still allowing for complications and tension.* Incredibly satisfying and I CANNOT wait for more from this author.

Let's Call a Truce by Amy Buchanan is a contemporary romance novel that explores the theme of second chances in both life and love. Filled with humor and a hint of angst, this touching and swoon-worthy debut is sure to captivate readers. Through realistic life situations, the author skillfully weaves a story that evokes both laughter and tears. A true treat for fans of the romance genre!

I’m currently in a romance kick and you can never go wrong with enemies to lovers. Add in a workplace romance and I’m sold.

What I liked: Every trope. Even the miscommunication trope was actually well done. The main characters had depth and were likeable, despite their faults. The storyline was great and the ending was satisfying. I was a little worried the HEA wasn’t gonna happen!

What I didn’t like: I would have liked to see a little more depth on the supporting characters.

Was really hoping to like this one more. I really liked the single mom/single dad trope and I thought the kids were adorable, however the writing felt shallow and at times cringey and like I had read the exact words before. I also thought the plot was at times illogical and overdramatic. This could be a me problem tho because I read too much romance and I do hope to read more of her work as she releases them because I did find some parts of the book enjoyable.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for an ARC of Let’s Call a Truce. I loved this idea of blended families, overcoming grief, and a work rival, but some plot points didn’t work as well for me. The hot and cold nature of their relationship and Juliana’s feelings, the somewhat crappy move from Ben later on, and Juliana’s inability to see his side for so long made for a frustrating second half. I adored the moments they were sneakily dating, though~totally adorable.