Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Select | Storm Publishing for this ALC.

Cute story. Characters that are relatable.

Abigail Hardiman was a decent narrator.

My issue is, when you have dual POV of male and female characters, have two readers. At times I found it difficult picking back up in the chapters.

I am not sure if it was the story line or the narrator, but I really struggled with this one. I was not invested in the characters, their story, or really most of the book. I continued to listen, mainly because I was hoping it would get better, but it just fell flat for me. I will say, there were some sweet moments, some senses that made me laugh out loud and some that made me cry. I think I just did not love the characters. I also struggled with the obsession over the age difference. And unfortunately I found the narrator to make the book confusing. The book is told in a male and female perspective, the narrator is a female and she barely changed her voice between perspectives, making for some confusion at the beginning of each chapter. I seem to be in the minority with my review - so if on your TBR give it a try and let us know your thoughts!
Thank you netgalley for my audio copy.

This was a DNF for me because I didn't care much for the characters. I wasn't hooked from the beginning, and once I put it down, I didn't pick it back up. The premise had promise, but overall the book wasn't engaging.

Textbook Romance was ok. It had a slow start. My favorite character was probably, the daughter, Lottie. She was spunky and sassy.

I am a divorced woman and I absolutely adore love after divorce stories. This one just fell a little flat. she immediately found love from the first guy who saw her after the betrayal and he was her puppy dog, doting on her every step of the way. It felt unrealistic with how "perfect" he was.

I also struggled with the end, where in the epilogue it still felt unfinished because they were still dating long distance.

I think my favorite parts of this story were more about the dynamics between parents and kids as well as the parents meeting the new significant others.

I will share this story on my instagram on August 6th.

Textbook Romance by Kristen Bailey is a heartwarming, age-gap romance that follows Zoe and Jack.

Zoe Swift is a married math teacher when she meets Jack Dmon at a friend’s wedding. It is at that same wedding that Zoe discovers her husband’s betrayal. Jack helps Zoe get home to her children after the wedding. 

When Zoe returns to school after summer break, she finds none other than Jack Damon at her school. He is the new supply teacher. They find their connection growing even though life while doing so is not easy. 

This was a heartwarming story about the difficulties of life and the end of one relationship, along with the beginning of another. 

The communication and banter between Zoe and Jack was delightful. The pacing of this story is slower, but it fits the story. There is great character development as the characters adjust to their new lives after change. 

If you are in the mood for a tender romance featuring teachers, age gap, and tension, this is the book for you!

Thank you, NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

4/5 Stars! Thank you, NetGalley and Dreamscape Select/Storm Publishing for this audiobook of Textbook Romance by Kristen Bailey narrated by Abigail Hardiman.

Very cute romcom and I was hooked from page 1. I haven't read any other books by this author but I'm definitely a fan! She also picked a great name for her main male character (same as the hubby) and I just fell in love with her characters. It was adorable and beautifully done. I love the character build up and just how great of a mother Zoe is to her children and her parenting style.

The narrator did a fantastic job with this and playing the different characters. Really enjoyed this book and look forward for her future novels!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this arc!

What a great book!! I loved the story and the writing style. Such a good romcom! It was exciting from page 1! I enjoyed this more than I thought I would! My first for this author but will not be my last!

This is my first book by Kristen Bailey, but it will not be my last. I really loved this book! I listened to the audio and I found I couldn't stop listening. Jack is the best golden retriever character ever and I adored him. I also loved Zoe (and inner monologue) and the relationship between her and her children. It had it all! This book was adorable, had me laughing out loud, and had some steamy scenes too! I highly recommend this book!

This is a age gap romance. The story starts out at a wedding where Zoe meets Jack since they have mutual friends and she gets a call that will turn her world upside down.

Fast forward a few months she is now going through a divorce and she re meets Jack at school he is coming in as a sub. She now has to navigate a new life wit her kids and dating.

I wanted to like it more than I did I didn't connect with her I wanted her to stand up more against her soon to be ex husband and I dint like how she always hid Jack like I get she was nervous with the age gap but I just wis it was handled different.

Thank you Netgalley for this Audio Arc in exchange for my honest review.

Quick Notes:
Age gap romance Zoe (44) and Jack (29)
Slow burn
Instant connection
Workplace romance
Healthy relationship
Supportive FMC/MMC
Gentle parenting
Dual POV
Open door scenes throughout

I was excited for this romcom! The title and description quickly pulled me in as I can’t say no to a good age reversal romance with teacher and math jokes.

The story starts off right out the gate with the fall of Zoe’s marriage. The author does a fantastic job painting the picture of the relationship, the divorce, and the hurt that is felt all around. In the moment of discovering her husband's deceit, she meets Jack who becomes her knight and helps her in her crisis. Jack is all green flags! He is a cinnamon roll of a man that has so much love and wants others to succeed. You can’t help but quickly fall in love with him as he patiently loves Zoe while she learns to love herself again.

What I loved most about this book was how real it felt. The characters had their own baggage, like we all do, and worked together to support and encourage one another as they built their relationship on real friendship and trust. They truly wanted the best for one another. It was a fantastic balance between some great steamy scenes, the thrill of falling in love, and building a real lasting relationship.

Another quick note, Zoe is a fantastic mother and I appreciated that Kristen included her parenting through a divorce. The scenes with her listening and validating her children as they struggle with their fathers relationship, and hers, is top tier parenting.

Thank you Netgalley and Storm Publishing for this audiobook arc!

Release date: July 29, 2024

Audio format. Plot in a nutshell: Zoe's husband Brian betrays her by having an affair with one of their friends. As a now single mom to two teenagers, Zoe meets supply teacher Zack (who's many years her junior) and a romance ensues.

What I liked
-There were a few laugh out loud enjoyable moments in the book.
-Character development was good; I found the author wrote in a way to make you like or hate the character which I enjoyed
-I liked the message the book delivered on moving on past betrayal
-I liked the rom-com theme of a woman with children and the co-parenting aspect as this is not something you see very often.

What I didn't like:
-This is a big one.....One single narrator for the voice of both Zoe and Jack did not work at all. It was very difficult to distinguish between the characters and took away from my enjoyment of the book. There was little to no attempt to do even different tones in the narration.

Overall the plot and story of this book were fine (nothing special) but the audio narration was a big fail for me. I am giving this an average 3/5 for the book itself but subtracting a start for the narration for an overall rating of 2/5. I do not recommend this book at all in audio format. The book itself did give me Sophie Kinsella vibes and I would recommend trying to read this book in book format if you enjoy this style but 100% skip the audio!

Thank you to Dreamscape Select | Storm Publishing for an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for a review.

"We grieve those lives we'll never have with people we once loved."

"And I really loved putting my hands on your lower back and feeling the waves of your hips, the movement over me...being inside you...feeling you tighten over me...I love all of it, all of you."

The above quotes are just a small sample of the variety of raw emotions that are thoroughly felt throughout the winning Textbook Romance by renowned RomCom author Kristen Bailey.

Zoe, 44, meets Jack, 29, on one of the worst days of her life. At a mutual friend's wedding she gets a call and photo proving her husband's affair with a close friend. Zoe's shocked and Jack quickly takes control and quietly brings her home.

A few months later they reconnect when he starts teaching at the same school. Through flirty banter, hilarious misconstrued emoji texts, and side eye glances it's getting harder to ignore the attraction.

"...sometimes it's hard to ignore a spark. Sometimes there's a person who shines so brightly in the corner of your eye that your attention keeps moving towards them."

As Zoe navigates an obliviously insensitive ex husband, society's frown on older women with younger men, and her own fragility as a wife and mom, Jack not only falls in love with her but loves her through it.

Reading and listening to Zoe and Jack's love journey voice actress Abigail Hardiman built up Zoe's journey with her cadence getting stronger as she overcame her heartaches. Dual narrators would have enhanced the audiobook to better distinguish Zoe and Jack.

This love story really is a textbook for how to write an enjoyable RomCom. It's first person dual POVs, it has heart, emotions, sexy encounters and leaves you with a smile.

I received a free copy of this book/audiobook from the publishers via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

3.5⭐
Genre ~ contemporary romance
Setting ~ England
Publication date ~ July 29, 2024
Publisher ~ Dreamscape Select
Est Page Count ~ 344 (p+ 18 chapters +e)
Audio length ~ 10 hours 41 minutes
Narrator ~ Abigail Hardiman
POV ~ dual 1st, present tense
Featuring ~ long chapters, workplace romance, age gap, single parent, slow burn, some steamage

Zoe (44) & Jack (29) meet on the night she learns her hub, who she's been with since she was 20, has been cheating with her best friend. Then it turns out he's the new teacher at her school.

Zoe was a great mother and I liked the relationship she had with her 2 kids, as well as with her students. The divorce took up a bit more of the plot then I would have liked. I know it's the whole point of the book and why the main characters get together, but I could have went for more focus on the new relationship. Since there's an age gap that's talked about a lot and that got to be overdone.

Jack was really sweet and a great uncle to his twin nephews. I like when uncle's are supportive and show up to sporting events when they can. He's a bit quick with his feelings for Zoe, though.

While I wasn't a fan on the 3rd act, I can see why it was done based on the ages of the characters. But still I do like when characters are able to make their own decisions and they're not made for what the other thinks is best for them.

Overall, I did enjoy it well enough, but I quite possibly would have enjoyed it more had I read it and not listened (see my notes below). The chapters were really long which gave me a slow moving vibe, and I'm not too sure how I feel about the ending.

Narration notes:
Why in the ever loving ever was there only 1 female narrator when it as dual 1st?? I've grown accustomed to it when it's in the 3rd, but 1st!?!?! Come on. She did not even try to do a male voice at all, which I guess maybe was just as well, but it was very distracting. If I didn't catch who was talking then it would take me a minute to figure out who it was. (Just realized I said the same thing in my review for Kristen's other book Sex Ed.)

Series notes:
It's not tagged as a series, but the characters from Sex Ed are involved for a good bit here.

What a sweet, feel good story. There were so many real life elements woven into this to make it feel real but not forced. I loved the conflicting emotions surrounding protecting your family and still making time for your happiness and hating a choice while still doing what’s best for the ones you love. It’s rare to find a book that doesn’t have a happy ending that forces someone to give up a dream and this one absolutely nailed it.

(4.5 stars) Many thanks to the author, @NetGalley and @dreamscape_media for the advanced listening copy of the book!

James meets Zoe at a mutual friend’s wedding on the day her life falls apart. Months later, Zoe is reeling from her recent divorce, trying to keep her fragile new family dynamic, with two heartbroken children, from falling apart when James appears as a substitute teacher at the school where she teaches math. He’s young - too young for her. She’s in her 40s, he’s 29 - but they have an undeniable connection. Where Zoe feels the weight of obligations keeping her in one place, James is content to try different careers without a long-term plan other than his brother, nephews, and friends. As they begin to give in to their physical and emotional attraction, they struggle with figuring out how two people who seem so different could find a way to fit together without sacrificing themselves.

There are several things I love about Kristen as an author. First, her wit is unmatched. Second, she takes tropes that I usually find cringe and puts a spin on them, making me love the story and feel profoundly connected to the sweet, complicated characters she creates. In Sex Ed, she took the “teach me” trope and turned it into something extraordinary. Here, she takes an age gap trope and makes you root for what the characters bring out in each other while truly addressing the complications of a ~15-year age gap. The messy, complicated relationship between Zoe and James is fantastic, as is how Kristen creates raw emotion between Zoe, her ex, and their children as they navigate their father’s destruction of their marriage. James is an epic golden retriever, constantly thinking of others (sometimes to his detriment), but he teaches Zoe much about embracing joy.

Abigail Hardiman narrates the audiobook and she is one of my favorite British narrators.

Sex Ed by the same author was my favourite book of 2023. So it’s no surprise that I snatched Textbook Romance on #netgalley as soon as I saw it. I got both ebook and audiobook. I loved the narration but just had to have the text with me because I highlighted like 30% the book 😅

Textbook Romance is a story of a newly divorced Zoe and Jack — a (much) younger substitute teacher at the school where Zoe works. Jack and Zoe meet at the wedding of their mutual friends (and my favourite people in the fictional universe iykyk), and Jack happens to witness the exact moment when Zoe’s marriage collapses. He offers his help and support to Zoe and her kids, and from there, their relationship grows to adorable friendship and then to something more, effortlessly and beautifully.

The author somehow managed to make Jack perfect and flawed at the same time — I don’t know how, but I’m convinced he’s a real person. He’s compassionate with everyone in his life, he falls in love with Zoe easily and doesn’t see their age gap or her family as obstacles. I loved that in a lot of situations it was Zoe taking that first step, and not just Jack relentlessly pursuing her. He gave her time and space and gave her all his attention when she needed it 🫠 When he genuinely wondered whether Zoe will let him be a part of the family because he’d really like that, I almost cried.

There’s this effortless charm that comes with Kristen’s writing, I truly couldn’t wait to go to/from work so I’d get an hour of uninterrupted listening. I spent my whole commute time with a silly smile on my face 😊😊

I am especially grateful for the gift that is Ed — to see him play a significant part in this story was an unexpected delight. And Mia with her no-nonsense s3x advice has become the official sponsor of my crows feet 🤣🤣

I would also greatly appreciate a happy ending for Dom and the twins sometime in the future books please and thank you. They deserve the world 💔

The narration was perfect, especially the children voices :)

Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
🌶️🌶️ (not as explicit but very effective, for me 🤭)
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Zoe Swift a married maths teacher meets funny and charming Jack Damon at a friends wedding and from there her life is never the same again.

Zoe finds out of her husbands betrayal at the wedding while talking / flirting with Jack, who then ensures that she gets home safely to her children.

When Zoe returns back to school after the summer holidays she finds out Jack has been hired as the new supply teacher, which leads to their connection growing, but as is always the case the course of love does not run smooth, with an ex-husband trying to co-parent their 2 children and uncertainty over the age gap.

This is a wonderful down to earth story of the complexities of life and the breakdown of one relationship and the start of a new one, especially when there are children involved.
I loved the banter between Zoe and Jack and Zoe's sassy teenage daughter is a delightful addition to the story.

This almost feels like a homage to great teachers and what a wonderful job they do despite having their own lives and difficulties to deal with.

This is a slow paced book, but with the wonderful character dynamics and the brilliant narration I was happy to immerse myself in this world.

An uplifting, yet emotional romantic comedy.

Once the review is accepted on Amazon I will add the link below

Zoe goes to a friend’s wedding where she meets Jack, a much younger man. They hit it off…as friends of course. Zoe is married with two kids, but discovers her husband had an affair. She struggles with single mom life while trying to be positive post divorce. While she’s teaching her math class she runs in to Jack, a substitute teacher at the school. With undeniable chemistry, they try the whole friends with benefits thing. Can they come up with a solution to the problem?

This was a cute audiobook! And I’ll be honest, it’s one hundred percent better with British accents.

Thank you to Net Galley, Kristen Bailey, Dreamscape media, and Storm Publishing for the ARC! Pub date 7/29/24!

Textbook Romance was a cute and uplifting novel. I appreciate the dashing young man taking an interest in an older woman. While I am not in the market, it is fun to read books where 40-somethings are desired! Enough of this older man, young gold-digger crap. haha!

I found the book entertaining and finished it quickly. Something I did not love was the fact that Jack gave up on Zoe so easily. Come on, man! This is not a case of if you love them, set them free.

Super cute book with a little spice. Love that these two had so much chemistry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Select for the advance listen in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Zoe's life takes an unexpected turn at the most ironic of settings—a wedding. A dedicated mathematics teacher (or "maths" teacher, as the British would say), Zoe finds herself celebrating the union of her colleagues, Ed and Mia. Among the guests is Jack, Ed's old college friend.
As the festivities unfold, the jovial atmosphere is shattered by a phone call from Zoe's daughter bearing devastating news that causes Zoe's marriage to implode. In a gesture of kindness, Jack ensures Zoe's safe return home before rejoining the wedding celebration.

Jack's backstory adds depth to the narrative. His college friends have long harbored concerns about his life trajectory. Following graduation, Jack made significant sacrifices to support his family, a decision that ultimately derailed his personal aspirations. Recognizing his potential, Ed and Mia persuade Jack to join their school as a substitute teacher, offering him a chance to reorient his life.

Upon reuniting with Zoe in this new setting, Jack feels an undeniable connection. However, he's acutely aware of her vulnerable state as she continues to grapple with the aftermath of her husband's betrayal. This creates a compelling tension between Jack's growing feelings and his respect for Zoe's need to heal.

As the story unfolds, Zoe finds herself grappling with an unexpected and growing attraction to Jack, despite their significant age difference. Initially resistant, she eventually yields to her feelings, leading to a deepening connection between them. The author skillfully portrays the evolution of their relationship, as both Zoe and Jack develop genuine care and affection for each other, but when Jack gets an opportunity to get back on track Zoe is worried she will only hold him back. She can’t even tell her kids about Jack so how can he give up everything for an uncertain future with her?

Kristen Bailey's novel proves to be an engaging and unpredictable read, keeping readers guessing until its surprising conclusion. The author masterfully balances humor with poignant moments, creating a narrative that is both entertaining and emotionally resonant.

This novel has certainly left a lasting impression, and I eagerly anticipate exploring more of Kristen Bailey's works in the future. Her skillful blend of wit, emotion, and compelling character development makes for a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience. The audiobook narrator, ​​Abigail Hardiman, was fabulous.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape for a chance to listen to an advance copy.