The Love Hack by Sophie Ranald

"The Love Hack" by Sophie Ranald is a contemporary workplace romantic comedy. Lucy Masters, in dire need of a job, concocts a plan to save her career. She decides to masquerade as a man in her advice column, "Ask Adam," offering men guidance on dating, life, and relationships.

The idea for this book is great, however the delivery failed in some instances. I love Lucy's development during the story and the way she develops Adam. I disliked the way the story centered around her failed "relationship," if you could call it that. It felt more like a booty call then a relationship. I also disliked the heavy use of AI. While I thought the book was cute, it was missing something for me.

I listened to the audible narration, and I enjoyed the narrator's voice. Harrie Dobby did a great job on the characters and is probably a large reason for me finishing the book. The story itself drug in the middle, feeling blah. I almost stopped at that point but am glad I finished. The end is sweet. The book would have been better with a lot of the middle pulled out. I would have liked the book had it centered on Ross and Lucys relationship, and development, but instead Ross was involved with another woman for a large portion of the book.

Overall the book was okay. It isn't one I would reread but it did have potential.

3.5⭐️⭐️⭐️




✨ Funny
✨ office vibes romance



✨Lucy is the main character in this book, getting fired again is the main issue she is having. She always has the ‘issues’. But this time she want the job and would love to keep the job but how?!!🤔

As the company is merging with a men’s magazine but one editor should be in that position . She is coming up to a plan for only 3 days.
She plan to lie! As men always take advice to a fellow men she came up with a pen name ‘ADAM..


✨ chaos and abit of office turns into romance. Similar to meet cute but different vibe .
The only thing I’m not really up for the book is because of the characters. They were unlikeable.
It’s funny yes but it’s lack of what should I say ‘ engagement with the audience ‘.
But it was a ‘okay’book.

✨ Thankyou @dreamscape media for the arc copy of this book for a honest review.

🫶🏼shaye.reads

Thank you Netgalley, Sophie Ranald and Dreamscape Select for the audiobook. A great narration done by Harrie Dobby for this quirky and swoony romcom! This book had me laughing and crying any pulling my hair out! Such a great listen!

Cute concept that misses the mark. Deals with work and family relationships and dynamics, use of AI in writing/advising, and trying to find your own voice.

I wouldn’t say specifically that this book is a romcom, and the narrator does not help. Unfortunately I did not find the book enjoyable and DNF’d.

This book has plenty of laughs and is a nice listen but I was hoping for for a little more romance. Also, the narrator just did not seem to fit very well with the characters.

Narrated by Harrie Dobby ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
by Sophie Ranald ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don't understand how this book has such terrible reviews on goodreads because quite frankly I loved it.

I liked that this was a slow friends to lovers story and I loved the relationship between the sisters because it felt more real to me than most other books in this trope.

I really struggled to get through this audio book. I'm not sure if it was the narrator, or the book itself. It was just okay. The main character kept flashing back to a failed relationship, but I couldn't see how that had anything to do with what was going on in her current life.

Mostly this wasn't for me, I can't tell what the author wanted to say or teach us or convince us of when it came to AI, and the romance was challenging

I have a couple of different takeaways from <i>The Love Hack</i>. This is about a girl trying to find her stride in her career and love life after massively tanking it at her first job and have a terrible interoffice relationship.
When Lucie starts writing a love column for men, disguised as a man, I still wasn't put off. Until they introduced the column's name "Ask Adam". I keep asking myself why a more unisex name wasn't chosen. Especially when the men's magazine was called Max. Wouldn't "Ask Max" sound like a more logical column name...
The use of AI to help write a published column also seemed really controversial and yet there were no real issues about it. Lucie had the lowest of low self-confidence and needed the assistance of her sisters and others around her in order to manage every day tasks.
There were also tons of british lingo, along with american counterparts. Most of which were interesting and educational. But others just felt like fillers to add more words to the book.
All in all, Lucie finds her way and I'm happy for her. But the bits in between were a little eye rolling.

I struggled with the first 25-30% to really get into it, but I ended up quite enjoying this book! I don’t feel like it fit the stereotype of most workplace Romance books. It came at the setting from a new angle, and I found the “Ask Adam” column quite charming.

4 stars.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is not without it's problems, but was still an enjoyable romance read. The writing style is good and while Lucy is a bit too in her head, and it's kind of a mess in there, I was pulled in by the plotline. Ross is funny and I loved the Seinfeld references. I imagined the characters as younger than they were and could see much of the story as an early twenties crisis of maturity and that worked for me. This is my first book by this author and I'm looking forward to reading more from her.

Lucy Masters is about to be fired. Again. The first time, she thought she probably deserved it. She’d made bad choices. But this time, she really loves her job and wants to fight for it. Being the Technology Editor for magazine Fab! had been so much fun. But now that they’re shuttering the magazine, to combine with the men’s magazine Max! and go online only, there’s only room for one technology editor. And Max!’s Ross has been in his job longer than Lucy was. It’s only fair that he get offered the job.

Lucy has three days to come up with an idea for a column that would allow her to write for Max! She goes over to her sister Amelie’s place to talk to her, and Amelie comes up with the idea Lucy should pitch—a dating advice column for men. But she can’t do it under her own name. Men will only take advice from other men, so Lucy comes up with the pen name Adam.

When she goes in and pitches it to her editors, they love it. And just lie that, Lucy is working for Max! She takes her desk across from Ross, the tech editor, and starts trying to figure out how to advise men on dating, when she knows very little about dating and even less about men. But she reads their emails carefully and does her research, and with a little help from her little sister, Lucy is able to write the Adam column with intelligence and compassion.

Lucy feels a little out of place at Max!, as all her coworkers are men. But Ross is kind and generous with help, and he makes Lucy feel like she belongs there. In fact, he makes her feel even more than that, but the last time she had an office romance, it did not go well. And when he turns up at the same club as Amelie’s bachelorette party and starts making out with one of Amelie’s friends, Lucy is disappointed. She certainly doesn’t want to come between Ross and happiness, and she can’t do anything behind Amelie’s friend’s back.

But when Lucy gets an Adam email that sounds like it could have come from Ross, a man asking how to let the girl he’s dating know that he’s not as into the relationship as much as she is, Lucy has hope again. But it’s not that easy. The magazine wants more data on the Adam column to decide whether to keep it or cut it, so they ask Lucy to go from 2 letters a week to 5. To keep up with the demand, she starts asking a bot to help her come up with advice. And her sister, who had also been helping her, gets married and moves to New York from London.

Amalie is on the other side of the world from Lucy, but when Lucy can manage to get her sister on the phone, Amalie just doesn’t seem like herself. Lucy is worried, but her concerns get worse when Adam gets a letter asking for advice from a newly married man. He and his wife had moved to a new country and he feels like she’s not the same woman he married. But he’s reconnected with his ex-girlfriend at work, and he’s thinking about starting a relationship with her. Lucy isn’t sure what to do, but she knows she needs to go to New York to find out if Zack really is cheating on Amelie, and then Lucy will have to decide what to tell her sister.

While Lucy is in New York, she’s trying to keep up with the Adam column while spying on Zack and trying to figure out how to talk to Amelie about her new marriage. And then Ross shows up in New York for reasons of his own, and things get even crazier for her. Now, Lucy’s job is on the line, but so is her family and her work crush. As it all comes to a head, Lucy has to figure out what’s most important to her and just whose advice to take on her future.

The Love Hack is the latest rom com from Sophie Ranald, and it’s a lot of fun. Lucy’s attempts to give advice to men, aside from the obvious “don’t be a jerk,” is a journey to understanding and acceptance. And the more Lucy learns to meet men where they are and help them improve their relationships, the more she finds understanding and grace for herself and the mistakes of her past. And as she fights for the future she wants for herself and for her sister, Lucy comes to see just how full her life can be. And she has a cat named Astro who tends to steal all the scenes he’s in, always an added bonus.

I listened to this one audio, narrated by Harrie Dobby, and she does a fantastic job of bringing Lucy’s voice to life. Dobby adds life and humor to this book, bringing Lucy’s thoughts and feelings to the forefront and adding so much texture to the story. The Love Hack is a delightful light-hearted rom com with sweet moments and lots of heart. It’s a great book for the pool, the airplane ride, or just spending the day on the sofa with your own cat.

A copy of the audio boo for The Love Hack were provided by Dreamscape Select and Storm Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.

So from the blurb I assumed that this book was a romantic comedy, but it turned out to be women’s fiction with only a pinch of romance or comedy.

There is no other woman drama so to say, but the love interest, Ross, hooks up with and continues to date someone else that the FMC knows and has to spend time with (she is one of her sister's best friends and bridesmaids) right in the beginning (around the 15% mark) when they had already kind of flirted and Lucy, our protagonist, had developed a crush on him. But rather than saying something or shooting her shot, Lucy decides to put in a good word for this female acquaintance to be a “girl's girl” and it seems Ross starts a relationship with her instead of Lucy because of that. We actually don’t know how Ross feels about Lucy for the majority of the book, because Lucy just assumes a lot of things instead of communicating with Ross. This means that instead of cute flirtations between Ross and Lucy, we see Lucy lusting after Ross while he is lacklusterly dating someone else. That just turned me off. I get that that's how dating sometimes goes, but this is not what I'm looking for in a romance.

So the main focus of this book is actually Lucy's work as a columnist giving men life advice. The only problem with that is that she literally cannot do her job. She mentions that she does not understand men at least one time per page and having had one “relationship” that failed drastically, she also doesn’t really like men. While I totally understand the sentiment, why pitch this to your boss, if you are not able to follow through? Lucy has to go on this journey answering men’s queries to come to the conclusion that men are essentially also human. But it's not only that she doesn’t understand men, Lucy is such a hot mess that she probably shouldn’t give advice to anyone. But as a tech geek, Lucy knows how to help herself by priming an AI to answer the questions for her. This felt so on the nose. She later even admits to using the AI and not only gets to keep this job she is not qualified for, but also get a promotion. What?!

This book slightly reminded me of Bridget Jones (Lucy is also a hot mess, not good at dating, and there is a lot of second hand embarrassment) just without the laugh out loud moments, so maybe if you enjoyed that and don’t mind if a book only has about 5% romance in it, this might be the book for you.

This was a 2,5 stars read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Select for gifting me this ALC of the audiobook to review. All opinions are my own. I was not paid to leave this review.

I can’t say this one was my favorite for a cute rom com. I really loved the narration and I think the narrator did a wonderful job of expressing the characters.

What I struggled with was figuring out what the main topic of this book was supposed to be. Was it about the FMC finding herself, building a relationship with her sister, proving her career abilities, getting over her ex, starting a new love life? The book was cute and short but there were so many “topics” in the book that I felt we couldn’t focus on the one. It’s almost like the author tried to shove most tropes or genres into this one book.

The potential is there for some great stories so I will be reading the author again but this book overall didn’t deliver for me. I can’t wait to see if the author focuses more on specific topics and then gives us more details.

Rating 2.5 rounded up to a 3.

This book had great potential and I love an office romance, but it was not the best for me. The Ask Adam column just had some weird things with it and they did not interest me. Parts of the relationships shown were cringy and I was not a fan of AI answering most of the questions. Just felt deceptive.

I loved this into I loved that the FMC was a columnist for a site where men could ask for relationship advise, and I adored that the MMC ended up sending in to the site to ask her anonymous advice about her even though they worked together! I loved the slow burn and loved the coworker romance! I would 200% recommend!

This book had great potential for me. I love office romances and envisioned some great scenarios. It didn't quite live up to my "mental hype," but was still a cute book.

Lucy takes on a column called "Ask Adam" in an attempt to keep her job. What starts out as an uncomfortable position for her answering questions for men on relationships as if she herself is a man ends up becoming something she takes very seriously and feels quite invested in. Of course, sometimes she finds herself distracted by her co-worker, Ross. She believes there are sparks between them but then things happen to make her doubt it. Also, she's had a bad experience in the past with an office romance and is a bit hesitant to entertain one again - - actually she's downright petrified to risk it. But Ross is so nice and then she gets a "Dear Adam" letter that feels like it might be from him.....but she can't be sure.

There was a lot to like in this book. But unfortunately, there were several things that made me a little crazy. Honestly some of the Ask Adam letters felt unnecessary and redundant. I understood the importance of several of them to the plot. It just felt unnecessary to me. Also, I understood the necessity of the relationship with Ali's sister and her husband to the storyline but it also felt a bit drawn out. I don't know - - maybe it was a me thing but I felt like I could never settle into a flow with the book and it was always jumping around.

I listened to the audiobook and the narration wasn't bad. The narration was actually fairly well done and kept me pulled into the storyline.

Thank you to NetGalley for this early listening copy.

I picked up this book because it was an audiobook title on NetGalley and I didn't have anything else that I was listening to. It said for fans of Emily Henry. Not so much. I found a lot of the book rather cringy and the relationships felt off. This is the second time recently that I found the cover image deceiving. I was expecting upbeat and light and it was not.

I really enjoyed this book! The audiobook narrator was so pleasant to listen to. I loved the different ways Lucy cared about the people and cat around her and the ways she discovered herself. There was conflict, but it was believable and relatable. Fun story.