Better Than Friends by Jill Shalvis is another winner from this prolific and beloved author.

Olive returns to her hometown and ends up needing the help of the man she left behind all those years ago, Noah. It's a second chance at love/frenemies type of book that I know I will love from Ms. Shalvis because she always has the banter going between the main characters and this doesn't disappoint. She makes her characters dialogue realistic and it sucks me in every time.

The secondary characters are always great and the sprinkling of other characters from this series, make it feel like catching up with old friends.

This can be read as a stand alone, but it's better if you read the others in the Sunrise Cove series. I hope there are many more books in the series.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this book, all opinions are my own.

Olive Porter owns and runs her own PR firm in the UK. She returns to Sunrise Cove, California to help her childhood best friend. Being home again brings a tumult of memories, especially ones about Noah Turner – her high-school crush. When Olive cannot contact her eccentric parents, she needs to rely on Noah to help locate them. Can Olive let go of the past to start anew with Noah? Or did they both miss their chance to be together?

Noah Turner works as a special investigative agent for the National Park Service. When his brother-in-law is severely injured, he decides to return home and help his sister. Noah never expected to run across Olive there. He cannot forget their past nor his dormant feelings for her. Noah feels he cannot offer Olive what she desires most: stability and security. Will Noah be forced to let Olive go again? Or will he grasp his chance with her?
Both Olive and Noah are haunted by their shared past and regrets. However, they both drop everything to help Katie through her ordeal. Even if it meant being around the other. I love that about them!

What I like the most about Noah is how he looked after Olive in high school. He may have been the “golden boy”, but he did not behave pretentiously like most do. I adore Olive’s patience with Katie’s neurodivergent tendencies. Other people would not be so understanding or patient. Instead, Olive loved that about her best friend, often teasing her about hugs or sense-of-humor things.

BETTER THAN FRIENDS is the seventh book in Jill Shalvis’ contemporary-romance series, SUNRISE COVE. This story, like its predecessors, can easily stand alone. It is not necessary to read the series in order. The only aspect each book shares is the setting: a charming small town on/near Lake Tahoe in California. Sometimes I do wish the author would allow characters from past books to make a small cameo or honorary mention.
I am not a fan of second-chance romances. They always leave me dissatisfied. However, I adore Shalvis’ approach with Olive and Noah. Certain chapters start with a flashback to their high school day. Those passages satisfied my need to “experience” the start of their feelings.

Shalvis never disappoints me. I love the humor she weaves in each book, especially the dialogue between the characters. And the animals – they always add a great (and sometimes personal) touch to the story.

Better than Friends is a second-chance romance with lots of heart. The friendships and family relationships in this have such depth. It has extra cute characters with Holmes, the heartbroken Hound, and Pepper, the kitten who helped piece his heart back together. Little Joey is a hilarious kid, catching his "Aunt" Olive and Uncle Noah kissing on more than one occasion and remembering conversations word for word.
It took Noah a REALLY long time to get his head out of his a$$ but we do get our HEA.

Thank you to Jill Shalvis, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Netgalley for this ARC

Better Than Friends is Jill Shalvis’s latest work. She is one of my favorite authors and I was not surprised that I loved this book. I must read.

Better Than Friends is a really great second chance romance! I found this book very entertaining and overall a really enjoyable read! I had high expectations because this is a Jill Shalvis book and I found this book definitely delivered. I'm not sure I would quite call the main relationship in this book enemies to lovers but mostly because to me it seemed that their history left them with more complicated feelings than can be summed up by saying they're enemies. But perhaps that's just my opinion. I did think that Better Than Friends did really well with being a second chance romance, as I said. If that's a trope you like, I think this book is a must read!

The characters are great and Olive & Noah are definitely characters I could root for, and I thought their relationship was well-developed. Shalvis always seems to excel at writing believable and fun characters, so that was definitely a treat in this book!

This book is obviously for fans of Jill Shalvis and for readers of her Sunrise Cove series. That being said, you do not need to have read this series in order to love this book, and I do think a lot of romance readers will be pleased if they pick up a copy of Better Than Friends! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I never fell in love or had sympathy for the two main characters. They started out being jerks to each other, while at the same time lusting after each other, which was a bit too big of a pull and a push. Let me have my characters hate each other than grow into liking them, rather then having them both pine after each other from the get-go.

This book had so many good tropes. Second chance romance, best friends' brother, single bed, just to name a few.

Olive returns to Sunrise Cove to help her best friend after her husband is in an accident. She does not have the best track record there, known as the girl who ran over the town's golden boy, her best friends bother Noah. When she was 18, she left town without a backwards glance and made a life for herself. Now that she is back, she will have to face everyone that she left behind including Noah.

Noah was driving when his best friend was hurt. Seeing Olive after all this time just adds to his problems. Now that she is back the last thing, he wants is to be around her. The problem is that he has always had a problem staying away from her. He thinks that she left him of her own accord. What he finds out will change everything.

This was a cute second chance romance. There was great character development. There were times that I wanted to shake Noah to make him get with the picture. Little Joey was one of my favorite parts of the book. He added such a cute character to the mix.

Thank you Avon Harper Voyager and NetGalley for this title. This is my very honest review.

Not a bad story for Olive and Noah. However, and I say this with love, it was too repetitive. I liked the back story as an explanation but the current part was always the same.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Avon for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Oh my goodness, this was SO GOOD! It had all the elements that I love about a Jill Shalvis story: snarky dialogue, wonderful main and supporting characters, a wonderful love story, cute animals and kids, and a very satisfying HEA. There was a sweetness to this book similar to that of "The Sweetheart List" even though the story itself is very different.

This is definitely a "buy when it's published" book and audiobook!

A smattering of profanity and R-rated love scenes.

First, I have to say that Joey made me laugh out loud multiple times, like loud snotty laugh out loud! Loved the interactions between characters. Katie took me a little to get used to due to her neurodivergent personality. Sometimes her lack of emotion was a bit jarring like when her husband was in a coma. She didn’t seem to be all that affected by it. As the book went on you got see delve much more into her emotions. Nick and Olive were friends way back in HS and find their way back to each other in this book. Overall, a good read

Quirky family, both found and actual, with long history and long held secrets and feelings, that brew and bubble over only for more to brew up again. Fear of feelings and rampant miscommunication abound, with a solid story and diverse and interesting characters. Will definitely keep you entertained to the end.

The queen of small town rom com is back with a delightful addition to The Sunrise Cove Series. This second chance, best friends brother, friends to lovers rom com will fill your heart with engaging characters and off beat humor. I absolutely loved Olive and Noah.

This friends to exes to lovers just didn't work for me. And I usually love a good second chance romance. This could be because this was an early arc, and some things will get fixed later on. There were just too many of them. So take my review with a grain of salt.

I never fell in love or had sympathy for the two main characters. They started out being jerks to each other, while at the same time lusting after each other, which was a bit too big of a pull and a push. Let me have my characters hate each other than grow into liking them, rather then having them both pine after each other from the get-go.

There was also too much backstory delivered, but it could be because this is the 7th book in the series, and this was told in other books, Hard to say. This is the first one I've read.

And hopefully handing a phone over to a kid with chocolate on their hands, or letting the same six-year-old into the ICU will be fixed in the editing process.

So, if you love this author, and have read this series, then this is probably something you would continue to love.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for making this book available for an honest review. This book will be coming out the 21st of January 2025.