Title: The Girl Most Likely To
Author: Julie Tieu
ISBN: 0063245248
Retail Price: $18.99
Pages: 320
Publication date: February 18th, 2025
Genre: Romance
Read📕: Kindle (Netgally)
Rating🌟: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tropes: Second chance, Enemies to lovers

Twenty year high school reunion.... Second chance love, enemies to frenemies to lovers! These two had a hard time in high school with problems between each of their families and misunderstandings.

Rachel in high school was voted most likely to succeed and comes back feeling embarrassed after getting laid off from her job she held for a long time that she gave her all with absolutely nothing coming out of it. On top of that blow she also split with her fiancé three years prior.. She is a planner and has had everything planned out to have it all fall apart and life is nothing as she had hoped.

She returns to her High school for closure.

I Enjoyed this book but there wasn't something that sucked me in and made me feel like I couldn't put it down. Wasn't a fan of the needed and I kinda really didn't like Rachel.

Thank you to the publisher Avon and Harper Voyager, Julie Tieu & netGalley for Advance Copy Read (ACR) IN EXCHANGE FOR MY HONEST REVIEW🤍

As a elder millennial rounding the corner on her 20th anniversary of high school this book both hurt and healed. It was a cute and fun quick read. Listened to Dashboard Confessional to make it feel real.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were well developed and lovable. The pacing was perfect and left you wanting to read more. I can't wait to read more by this author!

The Girl Most Likely To was ok. It was quick read. I think I read it in a day. Not a must read when it comes out next year but something to read when you don’t really have anything else. Really predictable.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I liked this one in general! I LOVED the flashback to high school and AIM chat room situation, the nostalgia was *chefs kiss* for this millennial. The present day part of the book pales a bit in comparison. The ending was also a little abrupt. But overall another entertaining read from this author!

I loved the premise! It's a second chance romance about a super driven and ambitious young woman who is laid off at the age of 38, and wonders why she put so much into work, foregoing relationships, just to lose it all at the whim of a corporate takeover. The AIM conversation flashbacks of her high school crush were so cute; it was surprisingly pleasant to read about someone almost the same age as me, and a story that actually addresses the Internet relationships we formed in the early 2000s!

All that said, there was a little trouble with the pacing. The events of one night, at their high school reunion, took up most of the book. I was starting to wonder if the whole book was just taking place over this one night, like movies often do. But then the plot advanced and we skipped days and sometimes weeks! The ending was very fast and a little abrupt. I would've liked more time with the couple actually being together and finding out what each other was like in the present day, and talking about plans for the future instead of just springing the ending on the reader.

I love this author's books (she's an auto-buy for me) and each one seems like it would make a perfect movie! This one just needs some more tweaking on the last act, I think.

Rachel never expected to be laid off after working so hard in her professional career. And she never expected to say yes to her high school reunion. It’s been so many years since she last saw her classmates, especially her former frenemy Danny.

Rachel has always thought about Danny, just like an afterthought. With nothing to do anymore, Rachel keeps thinking about their time together in high school. And Rachel still misses Danny. The high school reunion is the perfect chance to reunite their friendship again.

Did I enjoy this book? Yes, I did. Did I feel like it’s more women's fiction than romance? Definitely yes. 

I truly think this book is more women's fiction than romance. The main character, Rachel, is a bit messier as a main character. We focus more on her journey about being laid off after putting so many years into her career and what she is going to do next. Being laid off will open Rachel's eyes about her life and what she will do next. 

What she thinks about more is her nonexistent friendship with Danny Phan. She still misses him after so many years. Danny meant so much to her during their high school years that she still regrets her actions. She is more than willing to fix their friendship (romance) again.

read if you like:
👩‍❤️‍👨 friends turned lovers
🏫 high school reunions
🥈 second chance romances

summary:
This book is about Rachel Lang, a woman in her late 30’s, who was voted “Most Likely To Succeed” in high school and finds her life far from a success. She is single, recently laid off from her job, and is working as the personal assistant to her best friend, Nat, a TV actress. As if things couldn’t get worse, she gets a message from her ex-friend, Danny, inviting her to their 20 year high school reunion. The two had met online back when they were younger, only to find out they were classmates and Danny was one of the most popular kids in school. They continued their friendship until a misunderstanding led to their falling out. Can they reunite and move past their history?

The premise of this story is really cute and unique. Boy and girl meet online (a chat room!), find out they connect but run in different circles, boy and girl have a falling out and reunite as adults. The plot went a little slow for me though, as it focuses on the reunion itself and stretches out a day over the course of the book. I also couldn’t really get attached to their chemistry —I’m not sure if it was just me or I just didn’t love their personalities, but I wanted to like their reunion more than I did. It felt like a lot of will-they-won’t-they while Rachel sulked about how miserable her life was. However, I did LOVE the flashbacks to them in high school, and their cute story of meeting and coming together. I just felt like the jump from those two high school students to adults was tough and not as realistic feeling as I wanted it to be.

The ending was a little bit of a letdown. There was hardly any conflict and I wanted it to feel more monumental, but instead it just felt like it fizzled into the end.

This wasn’t for me, but if you like a good romcom with a high school reunion theme, check this book out when it releases on February 15! Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager and Net galley for this ARC.

As someone who just had a high school reunion this book felt incredibly relatable! It was a breath of fresh air to have a FMC in the form of Rachel who was struggling with coming to terms with her career falling apart and feeling like she was missing out on all the milestones in life. This book felt like the perfect combo of real life with a romance you dream about!

If Julie Tieu wrote a sequel focuse don Nat and Bo I would absolutely read it!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon publishing for the Arc.

This story had great bones but ultimately I found it a bit lacking. I really wanted to care about the main characters, and at times I did, but there wasn’t enough development up front to make some of the big moments later pay off the way the author intended. In the first half, I want to care that the main characters are fighting and clearly there is a tense history there but there’s not enough built up to have me invested by 50% in. It feels like I’m getting a cliffs notes version of the story.

That said, the flashbacks are great, as is the banter, and Danny in general is really well written.

I think with a little more focus on what the goal of the plot is and a little more development up front, this could be a great romcom.

Rachel Dang has always been a hard-worker with big goals in mind. When she finds herself laid-off from her job, Rachel tries to enjoy this time of unemployment and goes to her high school reunion where she reunites with her frenemy, Daniel Phan. Danny and Rachel get a second chance to rehash why their friendship ended so many years ago, while tip-toeing around the romance they never fully got to explore as teenagers.

I LOVED this novel. I sped through it and enjoyed every minute. Danny Phan was PERFECT and so sweet. Rachel was hilarious and relateable. I appreciate Julie Tieu's writing so much. She gets right to the point while still giving the reader meaningful quotes, beautiful analogies and quippy dialogue. This is one of my favorite Julie Tieu's book and a MUST-READ for any romance lover and former over-achiever.

I really wish I could rate this higher because I don’t want to dissuade anyone from reading it because you might love it! There were some aspects I really liked: the representation of Asian-American protagonists and the early 2000s nostalgia were two highlights. All the family moments felt really grounded and enigmatic. But the parts I didn’t like outweighed that. The pacing was way off — about 80% of the book takes places over the course of the same evening and so much happens that is just rushed past and then a lot of time is spent on less eventful moments. The banter between the two main characters fell flat and the inner-dialogue of the FMC detracted from any tension building between them. The flashback scenes didn’t add anything by way of character development or plot progress. Overall, I found this one a bit of a slog to get through.

Rachel, both the adult and teenage version, will remind many readers of themselves. As a teenager, Rachel feels unseen unless she is the perfect student and daughter. As an adult, she finds herself laid off after giving ten years to an entertainment production company--just in time for her 20 year high school reunion where she will be recognized as the classes Most Likely to Succeed and come face to face with the boy that she ghosted her senior year.

I liked lots of parts of this story, but I feel like I missed the big reason why Rachel and Danny drifted apart and stayed apart. I read this in multiple sittings over a week, so maybe I've forgotten something.

I thought this book was okay, however it felt like things just kept happening to the MC for like no reason. There was no build up for anything, stuff just started happening. The whole conflict could have been resolved by a sit down chat for like 30 mins.

I also do wish that Rachel had a bigger breakdown/breakthrough. I loved the premise of this and I think that if there had been more build up or more direct consequences of actions that took place, this book could've been great.

I do wish we had gotten to see more of Danny, more when they were kids and more of the romance when they were adults.

Overall I think this book was just okay, but I did still like it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Wow, this book just brought me back so hard to my childhood in LA, in a good way. As someone who no longer lives in California, this book created all the nostalgia for me to live in - from DMing boys all night to that second chance romance anxiety over a high school reunion. The way our FMC is driven and college focused? Yep, realistic, if a bit cheesy. I think of all the amazing Asian representation I've read, this one feels the most authentically SoCal Asian girl just growing up in Monterey Park. I appreciated, too, the representation of lesser-known Asian culture here. It just made me so happy to feel that nostalgia and pull in a novel - thank you to the author and publishers for making this book happen, and I'm excited to read more of Julie Tieu's books in the future!

3.5 stars rounded up! I liked this book and resonated with Rachel’s character. I’m typically not a huge fan of books where a large amount of the plot happens in a single day, but Tieu executed it well. I liked the interludes of memories from the two main characters’ high school friendship as they’re reconnecting. The ending was a little quick, I could’ve spent much more time with the characters!

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for providing this book, with my honest review below.

The Girl Most Likely To was a great romance, just nostalgic enough for me with a great plot. Rachel and Danny were friends on AIM and then in person in high school before Rachel’s cutthroat ambition put distance between them. Now at their high school reunion (with Rachel at a disadvantage in her work life compared to Danny) they have a crazy night that brings them back together, with some realizations for Rachel about life to boot.

Incredibly sweet, this one went just beyond the surface enough to keep engaging but was easy to follow. If you lived in the height of AIM you’ll especially appreciate some of the references.

I thoroughly enjoyed this second chance romance, friends to lovers read by Julie Tieu! The Girl Most Likely To has elements of a 90’s movie romcom starring two Asian American leads. It is so rare to have full Asian character representations in media and I appreciated the author’s choice of identity and setting the location in the 626! This story felt nostalgic for those who grew up in the 90’s and depended on AIM before cellphone culture. I felt like the dissolution of their friendship during adolescence could have been more developed. But what I loved the most is the direct communication between Danny and Rachel when they find themselves in each other’s orbit once again. There were no games or dilly dallying, which I think accurately reflects where they are at in their stage of life. Their conversations felt vulnerable, honest, and mature. The banter and escapades had me both giggling and swooning. And the spice was so satisfying!

I'm between 3.5 and 4 stars.

I'm not sure how to rate this book because some things were four stars for me (the cultural representation), but some things, were ehhhhhhhh.... (pacing, story building).

warning: ramble-y review ahead.

-Plot-
The Girl Most Likely To centers around Rachel Dang, a girl who was voted the superlative of "Most Likely To Succeed" in high school; however, the story starts with her getting laid off from her job despite how hard she worked to build her career. She had her whole life planned out since high school: get good grades, get into an Ivy League, get her dream job, get married, have children... and yet, her life is quite the opposite.

She is then reunited with her high school crush, Danny Pham, at her 20th high school reunion. Danny, who was really her opposite in high school, is now a successful life coach. At the reunion they reconnect and then begins a night of CRAZY (seriously...) adventures and an old flame is reignited...

-What I loved-
Honestly, this book was so, so relatable! I loved the Asian representation in this book - from actual Chinese phrases (I believe the author is Chinese-Cambodian American) to the expectations we create for ourselves from being second generation from immigrant parents. I could see parts of myself in Rachel, for sure. The book was also amusing and comedic at points.

-What I didn't like-
The pacing was weird - when I felt there was romantic tension building between Rachel and Danny, it would just, stop. And then jump to the next scene :\ The cut scenes from present day to their old convo's via AIM weren't confusing but I think they could have been leveraged in a better way? Like the banter & chemistry between the two wasn't quite.. there.

Overall, it was a really fun story but I do think I liked it more since I could relate as an Asian-American; however, as a rom-com novel, I thought it was ok. If you like second chance romance with light steam, as a quick read this may be for you!

Huge thanks to NetGalley & the Publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I tried to get through this book completely but I did end up DNFing it. I failed to grab my attention. If it was to grab my attention i would have liked the book a lot. But it failed to do so.