This was one of the most delightfully fun books I have read all year! Christy Swift wrote such a deeply funny and personable FMC and captivated my attention and heart from the moment we met Emmy until the final page. Her wit and humor had me cracking up, and it felt so natural and honest, never cliché or forced. I also adored Jason, both the celebrity side of his world and the kind, personable man he was behind the scenes. This was also such a nice take on a common trope (actor and fan) that made it feel very fresh and loveable. I seriously was kicking my feet and grinning from the sheer adorableness of this couple and story! This book had some of my absolute favorite narrative voices, by both Emmy and Jason, and the most fun romantic chemistry that I have read in a long while, and I was truly so sad to say goodbye at the end!

I also loved the pop culture references sprinkled all throughout this book. Whether it was celebrity sightings or a TikTok trend, I love how it made me feel like it was truly happening in my world. It felt like collecting Easter Eggs every time I recognized a reference, and it was so much fun! Speaking of fun, the whole cast of characters was delightful, and the settings and side plots were just as enjoyable as the main couple. The way the author meshed our real world with her created one was made all the more seamless with the inclusion of podcast transcripts by super fans and social media posts by the characters and fictional world, all of which fleshed out both the world and the characters themselves even more.

Overall, I genuinely loved every second of this book and had a blast reading it. Thank you to Christy Swift and NetGalley for the opportunity!

4.5 stars

Celebrity Crush by Christy Swift was a lot of fun.

Emmy has just published "Hashtag Celebrity Crush," a book that's based on her real-life celebrity crush. There is a poll on the internet between 4 heartthrobs trying to figure out who the book is based on.. While she's doing promo for the book she is invited on a talk show and SURPRISE so are the 4 heartthrobs. She's confronted with revealing who her celebrity crush is.... and lucky for her the two seem to hit it off.

Jason O'Connor is a hot mess .... self sabotaging and making one bad decision after another. He missed the birth of his child, got arrested fighting over a married woman... the guy is just bad news. However, celebrity crushes aren't logical and when he gets cast to play the lead in the film adaptation of Emmy's book the two begin to start spending more time together as Emmy helps him with his social media presence.

The TikTok's, vlogs, podcasts, etc are super fun. This book is pretty hilarious. I would absolutely encourage rom-com lovers to jump into this one, you won't be disappointed.

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for the honest review. I hope to read more from Christy Swift in the future.

I had a lot of fun reading this! Emmy is living everyone’s dream when she connects with her celebrity crush after writing a romance novel based on him. There were a lot of silly moments with Emmy also being social media influencer who posts things like “dolphin reads your fortune” and “angry yoga” along with TikTok dances with her teenage daughter. Jason is an actor with a problematic past but is trying to do better for his son and his career by being less of a playboy. When they start to develop real feelings for each other, things become a bit of a mess.

There were a lot of fun pop culture and sci-fi references along with things like interviews and podcast excerpts which made it a really easy read. Emmy and Jason’s romance certainly had its fair share of drama but I thought they were really cute together. Emmy did start to grate on me a little bit with her obsession with being famous, but of course things turned out well in the end. I’m hoping the author continues the series with some of the side characters!

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for the honest review.

this is not a romance. the flirting was fine and cute at first, but then she got all upset that he didn’t follow her back on social media after meeting once on a talk show. jason and emmy hung out maybe six times total including work events, and they hooked up once. then they didn’t speak for months, and then suddenly love each other after a really public meltdown from the guy that’d been drinking from a flask and acting like a train wreck two pages prior. i actually found myself actively rooting against this couple. jason and emmy were both wildly annoying and in need of therapy.

the story had potential, but the plot was simultaneously rushed and dragging. there was so much internal chatter, talk of creating content for social media, unironically doing tiktok dances, excerpts from podcasts talking about the characters, and very little relationship development or anything actually driving the plot. it was chaotic, and not in the good way.

don’t expect any cute kid moments either. emmy had her kid with her best friend for most of the book, and jason’s son was off with the babysitter or margarita.

the whole thing on the yacht made no sense. it was too rushed. margarita announced a baby and emmy is passed off to sean without a word from jason. sean is the one that tells her about the photos that were leaked, and then suddenly it’s three months later.

i don’t think people constantly say “hashtag” anymore either. it cheapened some moments even more than the mediocre plot had already accomplished.

Write a book about your celebrity crush and then get to meet your actual celebrity crush. The main characters in this book were so relatable being in their 30s and parents. I absolutely loved the mixed media used in the book to add to the story. This is one of the best romances I have read in a while.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the advanced reader copy.

The premise of this novel--a romance writer gets a chance with her celebrity crush--sounded sweet and fun, but the jacket copy didn't convey how much sci-fi energy was in this book. Every paragraph had at least one sci-fi reference that had me a bit confused, since I'm not a fan of the genre. This is probably a great pick for someone who is interested in science fiction and might be trying to get into romance.

NOTE: the blurb is misleading. There is not a fake dating scheme in the book because the FMC resists it the entire book and the MMC is never made aware that it’s an option.

I wanted to like this book so badly. The concept was so cute (and would be so freaking creepy irl), the cover was cute, but everything else just fell a little flat. The voice behind this storytelling was great, but the actual plots were a little juvenile and not fully fleshed out and had some logic holes in them. I really enjoyed the author’s voice and the characters, even if their decisions were dumb and didn’t make sense from a characterization and plotting POV. The writing style is quick paced, fun and engaging in a true Rom Com kind of way.

Basics: Single mom, influencer, novelist Of (Hashtag Celebrity Crush), the book based on her actual (fictional) celebrity crush. Single dad. Most Likely to Seduce Your Mom at a Wedding. Insta love. Closed door.

The main plot takes place over three-ish days. Very insta-lusty. And then there’s a time jump of three months that the leads are apart due to what boils down to a miscommunication. The problem is, some of the plots would’ve worked better over a longer period of time. Cleaning up someone’s rep or image in three days is more than a little unrealistic, even with Hollywood’s short memory. Even their relationship wasn’t believable because of the short timeframe. Jason is known to like hookups, and Emmy has publicly said she thinks he’s hot, so that’s a huge ego stroke. Emmy has the chance to romp around with her celebrity crush. It’s the perfect recipe for a fling because the timeline is three days. If she’d been in town for the whole filming of the movie (which is only mentioned and only one scene do you see that happening), over the course of even a month, it would’ve been more believable.

But really, the book falls apart when it comes to plot continuity, motivations, and stakes. The characters’ motivations don’t usually align with their actions, making the plot confusing and the stakes weak. Again, this is the perfect recipe for a fling, so what are they risking to make it more? I’ve read the whole thing and I still don’t know. Everything felt very superficial and surface level.

It’s dual POV, which isn’t bad, but it’s confusing because each of them has their own strategy/motivation/plot in terms of each other, but because the story takes place in such a short amount of time, they don’t really commit to what they’re doing. She’s trying to get to #1 on the NYT Best Seller List by creating a fake relationship with him. Over three days. But she’s resistant to it the whole time because she “loves” what she knows of him from the screen. It really boils down to this: I don’t know what Emmy wants. We know what Jason wants: to keep his nose clean and clean up his image so he doesn’t get fired from him job. That’s why he has to stay away from Emmy. But why does Emmy have to stay away from him? She’s open to a fling; she says so. He’s also kind of open to fling, given his past, that she leaves after three total days, and how he knows how to keep things out of the public eye. But wanting to truly change and show the public and his bosses he’s changed, works as his motivation. But Emmy wants to be famous. And her agent’s advice to hookup with Jason would do that… but she hims and haws until she’s drunk at 70%, and then her action doesn’t make sense for her characterization. Not to mention what comes next. “I had to fight for my dream.” But like, you didn’t???? So she does end up getting what she wants (the number one spot, and by “selling out” Jason Connor) but she fights what she wants the whole time.

I don’t typically like single parent book. This one has no mention (that I remember) of it being single parent on either side, much less both. Except, this book is a huge example as to why I don’t like this trope. The Morning After, they are all over each other in front of Jason’s kid. But remember, Jason is worried about being a bad dad and having his custody taken away for being “reckless” as the judge said. And he’s trying to clean up his image by actually cleaning up his life. And none of this aligns with having a sleepover with Emmy like this.

There was a LOT of drama in the Third Act Conflict that I feel like kind of sums of the book in general: trying to do too much in too little. Some of it just wasn’t necessary, like Emmy’s daughter’s father storyline. It felt shoehorned in and not fully resolved, which then made it feel more shoehorned in in retrospect.

Small, nitpicks comments, but first, the FMC is a weirdo? She’s hungry at the photo shoot and just reaches for and eats his sandwich at the smallest “do you want some?” Like, literally ran away from him and around a pool, eating his sandwich. This is supposed to be cute??? I know he’s her celebrity crush, but like, boundaries? Normalcy? The scene almost turned me off to the entire book because of the cringe weirdness of it. She doesn’t know him. He doesn’t know her. And this is supposed to be some sort of flirting scene to draw them closer together.

Either I do not understand the definition of “memes” or this author doesn’t. I’m going with the author.

I think the author severely overestimates the amount of fame an author would get from one book blowing up.

An actual quote from the MMC’s POV: “I think I grew an ovary just looking at that cover art” of the FMC’s book. In a Romance book. What the actual f—

I liked the authors voice—it’s what kept me reading, even if I skimmed some of the filler, inner monologue stuff. This is her debut, so I’d be interested in reading her again in the future, but hesitantly so given the issues that I had with the plotting of this one. I’m guessing some of those issues have to do with the author admitting in her notes that this is her first Romance book after spending time trying to be published in YA Sci-Fi.

All-in-all, it’s a 3.5 easily rounded to a 4 because I enjoyed her voice so much. That being said, if you’re interested in Real Person Dating Celebrity as a trope with better, more rounded plots, read # Starstruck by Sariah Wilson instead.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for a review!

This book was so fun. I love books set in Hollywood and this book was just what I wanted! The romance was very fun and banter filled!

The concept of Celebrity Crush was very cute, but I found the actual story to lack the substance to take the bubblegum idea into a fully formed romance. Part of the issue for me was that I never got on board with Jason as the hero - he said something along the lines of "nearly grew an ovary" early on when looking at the cover of Emmy's book and I knew he was not the MMC for me.

This book also seemed to be for a younger audience and someone coming for something less serious - totally fine, but I like a little meat on my romance bones. With all that said, I did find the book compulsively readable and I liked the chapter breaks with the mixed media/interviews thrown in.

Thank you to Forever and NetGalley for the ARC!

I was really excited about the premise of this book. I mean, who hasn’t thought about dating their celebrity crush? However, I really struggled with finishing this book for some reason. I think the writing style and character development wasn’t my cup of tea.

Everything felt superficial, and I didn’t really understand why or how their relationship formed, so I wasn’t sucked into the book the way I usually am. Things felt very rushed and very insta-love, which I am not a fan of. However, if you like those types of stories, you would enjoy this book because the overall premise is a cute one.

This book was not for my demographic. Or I’m probably just a senile, judgy old fart.

I think this was meant for younger audiences. Maybe for the new generation of rom-com lovers. There was just too much cheese and corny vibes for my liking. The writing felt more like YA, but in an adult setting.

FMC was a very strong character, but MMC doesn’t seem to use his head a lot. Dude needs to grow up.

Despite the cringe, the plot was solid.

The podcasts and vlogging in between chapters were a nice touch. I also liked the quotes in the beginning of every chapter.

The book mostly revolved around Tik Tok, influencers, social media, and many, many, MANY dancing (the Duran Duran dance hurt, tbh), so if you’re into that, then this one’s definitely for you.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley. Much appreciated.

3.5 stars

There are few things I love more than a celebrity romance. This premise felt like the best answer to the "what would happen if these fanfiction authors actually got caught by their muses?" question. While it leaned very heavily on the com side of rom-com, it was a fun read that I have no doubt will find its audience. There were a lot of pop culture references, dare I say too many pop culture references, but it made sense due to the nature of the plot.

This was a silly fun time, very enjoyable but not the most perfect book ever - which is totally okay if you in the mood for a silly fun time!!

I had the pleasure of reading this ARC offered through Netgalley.

This book is such a warm hug. Between Jason and Emmy being so earnest (and nerdy) and the fake-dating plot, I couldn’t put it down! For the pop culture nerds out there, there’s something for everyone from sci-fi shows to Duran Duran. This one definitely earned a few chuckles. ❤️

4.5/5⭐️ I LOVED this book. Emmy writes a book inspired by her celebrity crush. In all the publicity surrounding her book she ends up meeting her celebrity crush! Emmy and Jason’s love story blooms from there. I loved the mix of blogs, youtube videos and interviews scattered throughout the novel. It made the story line more intriguing to read. The only reason it wasn’t a five star read for me was because the ending felt rushed!

An aspiring screenwriter pens a romance novel that is an homage to her celebrity crush, and when the socially media savvy Emmy Ellison teases that it’s based on one of the four stars of a popular superhero television series where the characters regularly break into dance moves, a daytime TV host invites all four possible crushes to face off with the Emmy in the hopes of revealing who the crush really is. Jason #2 is as surprised as anybody else that he’s Emmy’s pick, and even more surprised at their instant chemistry when he wins the hug contest designed to help winnow out her less-favorites.

They ride the media wave and develop a fun and friendly relationship, but there’s a lot going on. Emmy is a single mom and her out-of-wedlock daughter, an impressionable tween, is the child of the casting couch producer who told Emmy years ago she had no talent and wouldn’t amount to anything in Hollywood. Jason is a single dad still in an on-again, off-again, relationship with a costar, who seems to want to get her hooks back into him. His bad-boy behavior has him on thin ice at work, and he has some other issues to work out.

As Emmy’s novel approaches number one on the best seller list and the two become more intimate, she’s tormented with the fact that she used Jason’s personal life in an exploitative way to write her story. He hasn’t gotten to that part of the book yet, but discovering this betrayal is inevitable. When the book is option for film and goes right into production, starring Jason and his ex the director drastically changes the troubling scene so drastically and dramatically it’s unrecognizable, and Jason is a busy and a slow reader, so Emmy never has to face actually telling him the truth. At the back of all of this is the possibility that Jason‘s just stringing her along, Emmy’s fear that she really isn’t cut out for Hollywood, and Jason’s concern that she might be using him to get ahead.

All this is delivered fast clip in a bubblegum pop, sugary, shallow sunshiny kind of way, with a layer of wonderfully nerdy fandom. While Celebrity Crush wasn’t my favorite of the year, this Mary Sue situation is sure to find an audience. It was hard to put down and I did care about the characters and want to see what happened, but more in a train wreck kind of way and actually being vested in them.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #CelebrityCrush via #NetGalley courtesy of #Forever; a review will publish on HLBB on 2/11/2025.

This was a cute rom-com with sci-fi rep that I adored. A modern day romance between a celebrity and social media influencer/author. I loved that both of the main characters had faults that they were aware of but were also able to see the good in each other even if they didn’t always see it about themselves. I think the only thing I didn’t love was the ending as it felt a bit rushed.

Emmy Ellison wanted to be a famous screen play writer but settled for social media manager turned romance author (for now). Her novel Hashtag Celebrity Crush blows up, thanks to a viral poll where the internet guesses which real-life celebrity the book’s character is based on.

When the celebrity crush is revealed, and he is casted as the leading man in the movie adaptation, Emmy decides to use the momentum to sell more books and maybe get her shot at Hollywood after all. All she has to do is make it seem like she’s dating her celebrity crush…


What to expect….
- bookish book
- wish/fantasy fulfillment
- single mom/single dad
- 30+ age MCs
- a touch of nerdy
- great banter
- no spice/closed door

What I didn’t love…
- a bit too insta-lust for me.
- honestly didn’t really like our MMC munch….
- The banter in the book was great but there was not nearly enough of it. I found myself uninterested in scenes where both characters weren’t present.
- This is a me problem I think, but I find it hard to connect with social media/pop culture references and this book had a TON. Which to be fair was somewhat appropriate for the book’s plot/themes, but I would have preferred a lot less.
- I could have done without the very LONG pre-chapter interview/vlogs/etc. I don’t mind a short one sprinkled throughout but it became cumbersome quickly.

Thank you NetGalley and Forever for sending this book (eARC) for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I was immediately hooked with the story of Emmy Ellison, romance writer whose viral survey about the celebrity crush who inspired a character in her newly-released book nets her a unique opportunity to be interviewed on a Hollywood talk show.

With imperfect characters you will instantly fall for, a spiraling plot with a few unexpected turns, and a good chuckle on every page, Swift's writing is delightful and kept me turning pages.

A fun Hollywood Cinderella story that will leave you wanting more from this author.

I loved this book. Clean romance, would personally have liked a more open-door romance, more smut but this was still a fantastic and fun read. I laughed out loud, I was kicking my feet and I absolutely lost some sleep so I could finish.

An author meets, fangirls and flirts over her celebrity crush in front of millions and because they have on screen chemistry the network is like let’s see MORE of them together for more views. The two of them meet up for several interactions that truthfully don’t seem ridiculously concocted as typically happens in these books. Drama happens and I’m so pleased to say that it’s not your everyday miscommunication in a romance but an actual set of problems.

I love the escapism of a celebrity romance, and this had a fantastic premise about celebrity crushes. I’m afraid this was not my cup of tea and I DNF at 39% (though I jumped to the last few chapters to see if it would warrant persisting and it confirmed I would be wasting my time). I just couldn’t get into the characters and the way the plot was developing felt too bonkers even for Hollywood. Emmy came off as a stalker who had the temerity to be upset because Jason didn’t follow her back on social media. Especially when she used real life incidents from his life in her book, such as his past arrest. Then she plots to just use him, without really getting his permission for publicity. I also found the scenes of her Tik Tok dancing with her kid just cringe. To be fair, I find TT dancing cringe anyway, but didn’t really need descriptions of her and her daughter filming TT dances. I also couldn’t get into Jason either, especially the whole business with his on/off girlfriend and co-star.

For anyone who loves celebrity romance, I still say give this a go. I want this debut author to be successful, even though it wasn’t for me. I will try this author again though because I do think she’s talented. Hence I am leaving three stars because its easy for me to write this pithy review, but I very much doubt I could even write a book like Christy.

Thanks to Forever (Grand Central Publishing) and NetGalley for the ARC.