An adorable and charming love story.

Anna hasn’t ever really dated as she met her ex-husband while at university. Her sister and even her children are ready for her to find love again, or at least go on dates. While trying to come up with an exciting pitch for her column, Anna agrees to go on dates with men her children select for her…

I’m a big fan of the author’s previous novels and I very much enjoyed this one as well. It has the author’s signature charm and humor and a lighthearted feel. Overall, this is a cute, fun read. 4.5 stars.

Thank you very much to Putnam and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

This was a fun rom-com with tropes including enemies to lovers, office romance & age gap. Anna is divorced with two tween-ish kids and while she kept mis-reading cues & situations, I thought in her case it was reflective of her post-divorce vulnerability. Normally the mis-cues drive me nuts, but I think it works here. I was in Anna’s corner the whole time. Her progression comes through as genuine and realistic. Overall, this story had all the feels- some laugh out loud moments, lots of heart, & a brave, hopeful romance.

Hilariously heartwarming! This love story is an absolute gem, centered around a single mom who reluctantly lets her children play matchmaker. The result? A charming, angsty and a witty romance that sparkles with humor and chemistry. The writing is sharp and engaging, perfectly capturing the blossoming relationship between the leads. Their banter is delightful, and the romantic moments are swoon-worthy. In short, an endearing and laugh-out-loud read that will leave you smiling long after the last page.

I am a huge sucker for a Sophie Cousens book! I have read them all and have enjoyed every single one. I am happy to report, Is She Really Going Out With Him? is just as amazing as all her other works!



Anna Appleby is a recent divorcee and mom of two just trying to make it through life. When her job as a journalist at the local newspaper is put in jeopardy, Anna pitches a wild idea for a column: dating 10 men chosen by her children. Her work nemesis, Will, pitches the opposite: dating 10 women from a dating app. As the two battle it out for the best column, they find that maybe they’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.



Is She Really Going Out With Him? was chock-full with the specific brand of heart and humor I’ve come to expect from a Sophie Cousens book. I had the best time laughing out loud while reading it! The high jinks Anna gets in to on each date were hilarious! I also really loved Anna’s personal growth and her relationship with her kids. Will’s family was so precious and Loretta was a hoot. But the best parts of the book were the tension and banter between Anna and Will. It leaped off the page!



Please do yourself a favor and preorder this one or request from your library. I promise, you won’t regret it!



Thank you to Netgalley and Putnam for the ARC!

Romance lovers, fiction readers, people who just like joy: put this on your TBR list immediately!! This book was seriously SO DELIGHTFUL and uplifting that I devoured it in 2 days. The story was funny and witty and I could not stop laughing out loud. The main character, Anna, is a divorced mom who is incredibly relatable (even though I'm not a divorced mom??) and I couldn't help but root for her in all of her shenanigans. The main love interest, Will, is a **swoonworthy** rival at work who turns out to be a big softy with a surprising amount of depth. Seriously the author could not have written a funnier, sweeter, or more heartwarming man. And their chemistry was off the charts!! Highly recommend if you want an easy read with some fun British banter and an uplifting rediscover-yourself storyline.

Now to the author - please write a sequel featuring Noah the neighbor!!

Thanks to Putnam Books and NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC of this book.

Sophie Cousens can do no wrong in my book (pun intended). I really loved watching Anna find love and find herself. The banter was perfection, and Will was a dreamy hero. This one was super fun!

I have read all of Sophie Cousens’ books and this is by far my favorite. It was so engaging and I wanted to read it in one sitting. I appreciate that her fmcs are starting to be a little older (mid to late 30’s) and have lived life. It gets tiring with a lot of romcoms thinking the characters need to be 25-30. In this book, Anna is 37, recently divorced, full-time working mom. Along the way, she forgot herself and her focus became the kids and work. This story shows her coming into her own via an article series at her paper where her kids pick out her dates. Her coworker, who she has a contentious relationship with, worms his way onto the article and they have to learn to work together. This story has some really funny moments and you genuinely root for main characters. This is a book buy.

Thank you Penguin Group PUTNAM for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Cute, but on the slower side of happenings. The story kept me engaged just enough so I continued it, but it wasn't a "OMG, I can't put it down!" Kind of boo

This entertaining but insightful novel cements Cousens as a must-read for me.

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

📚Is She Really Going Out with Him? by Sophie Cousens.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🫑

🩷 Is She Really Going Out with Him? is now my THE most favorite book by Sophie Cousens. I have always loved her stories, humor, and voice, but this novel is incredible. It is hilarious, tender, and sexy, and so many moments in MC's life were relatable. The MC and MCC relationship development was incredibly well done, and their dialogue & banters are perfect. I giggled and laughed out loud (and yes, even snorted) so many times. I stayed past my bedtime just so I could read one more chapter; I made my bed while my eyes were entirely glued to my screen just so I could read a bit more in the morning. 💕

🩷 Truly, the best novel Sophie Cousens wrote. It goes to my 2024 top reads. Everyone should pre-order it now! You'll not regret it. I promise. I can't wait to read Sophie Cousens' next book!

🫑 this means there is no sex but a hint (in a very sexy way) that it happened. Multiple timessssssss. 😏


⚠️ TW: loss of a parent
⚠️ TW: loss of a pet

Thank you, NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam | G.P. Putnam’s Sons, for the opportunity to read the adventure reader copy eBook!

📖📖 Book Review 📖📖 Is there life after divorce? When Anna gets a simple email with her divorce decree, the question certainly crosses her mind. But then her job as columnist depends on getting back in the dating game,she really has no choice but to jump back in head first and hope for the best. Heartfelt and humorous, Is She Really Going Out With Him is a delightful journey through single parent dating.

Review is on Goodreads and will be posted on instagram closer to publication date and on Amazon when published!

4.5 this was another banger from ms sophie. i really enjoyed the dynamic between will and anna. the fighting, work place rivals if you will, but the entire time (basically) he’s so smitten with her and she doesn’t even realize it. i ate it up. the age gap isn’t even a big deal (8 years, anna is 38 and will is 30.) overall, i really enjoyed this one! it’s definitely a cute and quick read, with a hint of more seriousness to it.

thank you so much to NetGalley and publishers for this arc!

This book had me hooked from the title and I had so much fun with it. The premise is that Anna needs to up the ante with her job, even though she doesn't want to step outside her safety net after her divorce. Enter her children, who will select men for her to go on dates with and Anna will write about and analyze this. Along the way, she finds herself back on the path to love. Great characters, great writing, great idea. This was my second Sophie Cousens book that I requested to read, and I am really glad I have found this author and that the publishers have been so generous with allowing me to read these books. I really enjoyed this reading experience!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam/G.P. Putnam's Sons for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Loved this and didn’t want it to end! It’s a solid 4.5+ ⭐️. Cute premise, well developed characters and cheeky British humor- say no more!

Anna is a divorced mum of two kids and magazine journalist trying to keep her life together. At work she seems to keep getting paired up with her cocksure coworker, Will, for assignments. Does he really always have to point out her typos and grammatical errors?? Their latest assignment is a dating column for which she dates men chosen offline by her children while Will is strictly online dating. They end up at a no phones couples nature retreat and start to really get to know and like each other, but things get tricky as the magazine goes downhill and Will is up for a job in another country.

As a fellow Googler, Anna’s Google search lists at the top of each chapter also gave me some good chuckles. Such a cute touch. I can’t wait to get my hands on more of Sophie Cousen’s novels!

Grab your copy on November 19th! Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is my favorite Sophie Cousens book so far! It probably landed with me because Anna, the main character, is close to my age. I LOVE seeing women on the page finding love (and themselves) again as their kids get a bit older.

The premise is clever, and in trademark Sophie Cousens style, the dialogue is downright hilarious. Anna’s experience with dating after divorce is so relatable! I like the age gap twist too.

Even though it’s closed door, there’s still great sexual tension and intimacy. Fans of Annabel Monaghan’s Summer Romance will LOVE this book!

After a somewhat messy divorce from her husband Anna Appleby, in order to save her career, sets out on a new feat. Letting her children pick out her dates in order to write a weekly column.
I unfortunately, feel very middle of the road about this book. It definitely feels like an it’s not you it’s me situation for the most part. I think a lot of it comes down to that fact that I’m not a divorcee pushing 40 but a 21 year old college student. Also, as a child of divorce whose mom days questionable characters some of the bad dates hit a little too close to home haha.
However, it wasn’t as if I didn’t enjoy a single thing from this novel. For example, the window scene between Anna and Will definitely had me giggling and kicking my feet. I also just thought in general that Anna and Will had good chemistry.
Another aspect I quite enjoyed was how real the ex husband of Anna seems to be. Although we see character development from him throughout the novel he’s still not perfect. I appreciate that from everyone in this book honestly. Every just seems very real and three dimensional and I can definitely appreciate that!
I also thought it was just very quick to get through which is always a big plus to me. (also the search engine at the top of every chapter was an amazing touch I found myself smiling at all of them).
Overall, I definitely think this is worth picking up even if it wasn’t an all time favorite of mine! Thank you NetGalley for the e-arc!

Oooh, who else loves a good enemies to lovers(when it's only a one sided enemy situation)? I've read a few other reviews and I noticed that one of the main characters being recently divorced seems to turn them off. Perhaps this book is steered towards a reader who has a bit more life experience. I REFUSE TO CALL MYSELF OLD(even if I am). I enjoyed the premise. I enjoyed the characters and their journey. I felt Annie's struggles about finding herself. I'm not divorced, but as a mom, yea, sometimes you lose who you are. I felt for Will's work crush and past heartbreak. Annie's kids are a good addition to any scene they're in. Lottie is Annie's rock and Loretta is a ray of light and mother figure all in one.

Sophie Cousens is one of my auto-buy authors that I always look forward to reading new work from. I always finish her novels loving the characters, laughing out loud, and feeling warm and gooey. Sophie’s latest work, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” absolutely did not disappoint!

<‘There is a whole new chapter waiting for you, all you need to do is keep turning the pages.’>

This is a story of Anna, a newly divorced Mom of two, trying to pick up the pieces and her new path forward in life. There’s so many laugh-out-loud moments in this novel that I couldn’t help but relate to. We also meet Will, who is Anna’s coworker who she believes is her enemy/competition for her journalist career.

Things I loved:
*** The chemistry between Anna and Will was off the charts good. The tension was electric from the beginning.
*** The newly divorced aspect from someone in their late 30s thats also a Mom and has a career. I feel like this is so uncommon for romance novels and I LOVE that this was explored.
*** Will Havers is dreamy. The end.
*** The family dynamic: how we got to meet and know Anna’s kids and her sister.

The only thing I was alittle bummed about was the closed door intimate scenes. There was a great deal of tension and slow burn built up, and when it finally happened, I felt slightly cheated having it all implied and not seen on the page.

Even with that minor glitch, I truly loved this story. I highly recommend this book; all of Sophie’s catalog is excellent if you haven’t picked up one of her works yet. Add this to your shelf in November; I know I will be!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the ARC of this novel; all opinions are my own.

Sophie Cousens has done it again! I always love the way that her books weave swoony romance with real-life struggles and relationships, and this one did not disappoint.

Anna is a mid-thirties mom of two kids trying her best to navigate her life post-divorce, with all the messy life-rearranging that comes with it. The one thing that feels stable about her life, her job as a writer for her local magazine, is suddenly threatened when the threat of redundancy begins looming. In a tale as old as rom-coms, Anna is forced into a column-writing collaboration with her rival, Will, as they end up comparing dating stories for their columns - Anna's potential suitors are all chosen by her hilarious kids, while Will pursues the online equivalents.

Things I loved: each of the dates picked by the kids is truly ridiculous and hilarious, and I loved the way that Anna is able to find the beauty in each of the scenarios. Will has such a wonderful relationship with his family and I love getting to see him slowly open up throughout the book.

I'm recommending this to anyone who loves a classic rom-com setup and a messy, learning-to-love-herself heroine!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

This review contains spoilers.

Sophie Cousens always hits. Her books are always enjoyable with great characters and plenty of swoon romance.
I thought that the concept of this story was a lot of fun - Anna's kids get to pick her dates for her. I also appreciated that there were plenty of opportunities for Anna to discover friendship with her dates rather than everything leading directly back to romance.
While Anna's relationship with Will was entirely predictable, it was still fun to watch them fall for one another. I appreciated the epilogue but wished for more of a conclusive happily ever after for the characters.

An easy one to pass along to readers looking for contemporary romance. A definite purchase for the library's collection.