Annabel Monaghan is a must read author for me. Her characters and location are always so vivid and real. I enjoyed Dan’s family, and the elements of forced proximity bringing Dan and Jane together. I wished this book had an alternate element where Jack is redeemed that didn’t require Jane to be so self sabotaging.

I expect this to be a best selling summer book, and it would make for the perfect vacation read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing access to a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was fortunate enough to receive the ARC for ‘It’s a Love Story” by Annabel Monaghan and I was soo happy. I’ve added about 3 of her books to my TBR, but you know the whole so many books so little time. I have heard nothing but amazing things about her writing so I dove in blind into this and I am soooo happy I did. I love everything about this book. But what I love most is all the complicated emotions that are described, in such simple words, exactly as they happen. This story is *everything*. Tears were shed, reflection on some relationships in my personal life were had. And I sincerely wish I was part of ‘The Mob’ group chat!

First off, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to read this. I love Annabel and all her work! Next, let me just say this book was hilarious! It had me laughing at page 2. Dan and Jane cracked me up with the banter and their enemies to lovers relationship. I truly ate this up and adored it as a whole.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the digital copy of this gem in exchange for my honest review!

What a gem of a book! I adore Annabel Monaghan's writing. I loved all of her books but this might be my favorite.
If you love enemies to lovers and forced proximity, this is your book!!
Having lived in LA for 12 years with friends and family in the entertainment business, the Hollywood references hit home and were on point.

Jane and Dan were incredibly relatable and likable! Their story was sweet, natural, and moving. Jane's journey, working through her hurts and insecurities touched me deeply. Dan, although tough and straight to the point in business, was such a golden retriever.....his family was everything.

Annable Monaghan is an auto-buy/read author for me now!!

Some favorite quotes:

"This. This is the thing they write love stories about. Something in my heart told me this was forever...."

"I like the sound of his laugh and the way his eyes dance around my face before settling on my eyes."

"His laugh has fingers that wrap around my heart."

"There's something about the way he's looking at me that makes me think an impossible thing: I am interesting and true and beautiful. I like this thought so much that I have to look away."

"When you smile at me, I feel like I want to capture it. But it's not the regular way like when I see something beautiful and I want to photograph it. When you smile, it does something to me, I feel it in my chest, and I just want to figure out how to get you to do it again."

"I didn't know you could be starving for someone to touch your cheek, but I must have been."

"I am so beautiful. I am so wanted. Inside this kiss I am all the things I have believed I am not"

"Love happens over breakfast."
There are many things to love about Annabel Monaghan's It's a Love Story, but for me, where the story shined was the big family element. I loved Dan's family so much and totally felt like I was sitting at the farmhouse table with them. The romance itself was sweet, if predictable. I was annoyed by Jane for the first third of the book, but was happy to see real growth on her part. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this one and will be recommending it to my audience.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and Annabel Monaghan for sending me this advanced copy of It’s A Love Story in exchange for my honest thoughts.

This book was cute! I loved Dan - he and his family were all green flags. I loved the family dynamic we got to see, especially his sweet dad and the teasing from his brothers. I liked watching Jane try to figure out her own confidence and get over her past insecurities. She was definitely a bit unhinged, and I laughed when she threw the cup at Jack’s car. I started to get a little bit annoyed with her by the end but I was happy with her growth and how it ended! The conflict felt a little bit forced but with how dreamy Dan was I’m not sure how they’d have any other conflict!

Overall I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to friends and family!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. I credit Nora goes off script as the book that got me back into reading after a decade long slump. I have read all of Annabel’s books and preordered It’s a love story when it was announced last year. My expectations were quite high for this one!

Jane is a former child actor turned studio exec trying to get a movie green lit. She oversells her connection to Jack, a musician she used to work with. She needs to reconnect with him to write a song for the movie. It does not help that Dan, her nemesis and the cinematographer, has a different vision for the project. She takes a trip with Dan to convince Jack while he will be playing at a music festival in Dan’s hometown. They stay at Dan’s family’s home and she finds he is not as awful as she initial thought.

I loved Dan and his wonderful family. The banter and conversation felt so real and had me laughing the whole way through. The chemistry between Jane and Dan was perfect and I had butterflies in every scene they were together. Days have passed since I finished it and I keep thinking about it. This is an absolute five star read.

I think this is going to be THE beach read of summer 2025. This is a love letter to family, huge breakfasts around farm tables, and little beach towns. It’s a love story (duh), but it also had a lot to say about growing up and rewriting the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives.

On a personal note, I couldn’t help but laugh at the parallels to my own parents—also named Jane and Dan, who also met at work and lived on Long Island. I can’t wait to gift a copy to my mom. Is this a movie about us?

4.5 stars! I had a wonderful time reading this book; it truly healed my inner child. The story felt so real and wholesome, it warmed my heart. The connection between the 2 main characters was *chef's kiss* and their ability to be so vulnerable with each other.

I absolutely loved this spin on an "enemies" to lovers romance! The witty banter and slow burn is perfect for fans of Emily Henry looking for a great romance book - I have a feeling this will be a summer hit!!! I will definitely include it on my summer recommendations. I liked that it felt like I was watching a movie - it was a nice easy read, but with so many subtleties it made the characters feel really well-developed. They each had things to work through that then contributed to their relationship being the way that it was (I don't want to spoil anything there) - but it felt really real, not insta-lovey like some. I had so much fun with it, and I love Annabel Monaghan's writing style!

Cute little romance! I wasn’t huge on the plot but it was still really well written. The big family thing was kinda confusing with all of the names to remember

I requested this book because it's Annabel Monaghan, and I almost didn't request it because it falls into the Taylor Swift Song Lyrics As Titles category that I am bugged by so far. But ohmygoodness am I so glad I requested it! 5 very well deserved stars.

Have you ever started a book you knew from the beginning you were going to love? This book. Unlike the last AM book I read, this one doesn't take 13% to get into the story. This one is like the waves in the ocean, it draws you in, pulls back ever so slightly, and brings you in further. Perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Katherine Center.

This has a former actor FMC who works in the production side of things now. Introverted MMC who comes from a big, loud family. Tension, pining, self-discovery and learning to be comfortable in your own skin. AM knowssss how to write MMCs. Oh my god, does she know how to write MMCs. Dan is no exception. Dan is quite, introverted, reserved, and sure of himself at the same time. It's so refreshing to read a realistic MMC but then to also read one who isn't the BMOC, head QB, sarcastic but everyone loves his banter kind of character is also just so ahhhhh! Dan is now up there with Charlie Lastra as far as MMCs go. He’s quieter, he’s in his head, he sees the understated beauty all around. He’s perceptive and attentive. I loved his little moments of jealousy with his brothers. I loved how small some of his movements towards love were.

Jane was so fun. I know that’s a weird thing to say with her personality being so try-hard to be what she thought was perfect, but she was fun to see when she wasn’t wearing her mask, so to speak.

The cast of characters was stellar. It’s a large cast, and I did get some of their names confused (there was never an explanation about how they actually named a child Finn Finnegan?!), but they were all like what I imagine coming home to a big family reunion must be.

It’s quick paced. Super fast read. Snappy dialogue that’s more realistic than what I think “banter” has really become. It’s funny because the romance is small; like, the romance unfolds in the story; and yet it was done so subtly and done so well that again, just the ocean as the tide is coming in, suddenly it’s all around you, beautifully and comfortably.

It’s a devour of a read. It’s so engaging you just want to get back (or skip ahead cringe not me or anything…) It’s such a joy, a wonderful way to spend your reading time, all the positive things. I can't wait to buy this one and reread it!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

Angst. Romance. Self sabotage. Professional identity and recognition.. Highly relatable themes brightly packed in an easy-breezy, smart & sassy page-turner, heroine wins, book.

As the title suggests, this is a love story. I hesitate to even categorize it as a romance because the meat is in the tenderness and vulnerability of the romantic connection, not in the smut. Sure, there’s some sexy chemistr and a couple of really great kisses, but what I loved about this story were the small moments of discovering a new relationship. “Love happens over breakfast,” one character says in a scene near the end, and I love how that encompasses the simplicity of falling in love. Jane wanted to bring him home to her house not to show it to him but to see him exist within her home, do dishes at the sink together, watch him look at her bookshelves.

It’s an enemies-to-lovers trope with a bit of a missed-connections spin and another story-within-a-story narrative arc (seems like I’ve read a lot of those lately…). Both protagonists are in the film industry and they’re working to get a script for a love story green lit; they spend a lot of time arguing about The Notebook.

Ultimately, I loved how the characters uncovered their own complicated layers as they fell in love – Jane was getting to know herself while she was letting others in and the required vulnerability was so real (if a little rushed, at times). I connected with Dan’s story of needing to flee from his family and hometown to not lose his own unique truth, and apprecaited that it wasn’t only the woman who was on a quest of self discovery and preservation.

There were some choppy elements that didn’t totally work for me, though.I thought the goal of tracking down a celebrity was not a compelling enough task for the whole plot to revolve around it. And then his role in the near-end conflict felt forced and overblown. I also would have liked a little more backstory on Jane’s relationship with her mother, father, and childhood. As the story spends so much time talking about her adolescent acting, it seems like there shouldn’t be gaps there but I want more than her celebrity backstory.

[Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!]

This was my first Annabel Monaghan book and I wasn't sure what to expect but I adored this. I knew after a few chapters that this would be a five star read for me. I really enjoyed the humor in this but more so the vulnerability and earnestness from all of the characters. I love when romance authors can capture the small feelings that go along with the big ones.

I am a Annabel Monaghan fan. But I keep chasing the brilliance of her first book, Nora Goes Off Script. Love Story was good, but just wasn't that.

Jane Jackson, a former child star, and talented singer, played the awkward geek in a successful sitcom. However this experience does not leave her with a sense of confidence, in fact just the opposite. Her character, Janey Jakes, is currently a social media meme. Her vocal ability is never acknowledged, she is never given credit for the songs used on the show, because Jane is deemed not "compelling" enough for viewers. Cut to present day, where Jane is a Creative Director trying to get her first movie greenlight. However, the deal is almost tanked, until Jane tells a small lie and promises she can get one of her former co stars, Jack Quinlan, currently a pop sensation, to perform a song on the movie soundtrack. Nothing is further from the truth, she hasn't seen or spoken to Jack since he broke her heart when she was 14. Enter Dan Finnegan, cinematographer, and current work nemesis. He offers to let her stay with him at his family's place in Long Island, where Jack Finnegan will be doing a concert, and conveniently Dan's brother will be working at. Enemies turns to lovers, and the slow burn connection is believable. But up until this point the story is kind of slow. It starts to pick up and the ending is satisfying. 3.5Stars.

It’s a Love Story is an absolute hit! This story was warm and cozy. Jane, the MC was observant and clever and Dan was thoughtfully developed. The writing is so lovely and the world that is build is enviable. I wanted to be on Long Island with them. My only gripe is that the ending felt rushed.

I recommend this for lovers of the slow-burn, poetic writing and witty banter.

As a reader of this author's other books, I was expecting great things but unfortunately I thought it was boring and the characters were annoying and DNF around 15%

It's a Love Story is a combination of contemporary romance mixed with women's fiction. Although the beautiful cover art looks similar to her previous books, this is a stand alone novel, not an interconnected series. This is the fourth book of hers I have read, and I enjoy her writing style and down to earth characters and observations about real life.

Summary: Set in both Los Angeles and Long Island, New York, main character and former actress Jane works in the movie industry and has a meet-cute with colleague and cinematographer Dan. Tasked by their mutual boss to find a way to salvage an almost-good-enough movie script, Dan and Jane fly to Long Island to track down the person who could help them save the movie. Conveniently, Dan's family is from Long Island so the two stay with his parents and extended family. The family eagerly accepts Jane into their clan, and I could feel their loving warmth all the way through my Kindle. With a little forced proximity and a shared work project, Dan and Jane begin to develop feelings for one another. But, before Jane can move forward with a relationship, she has to face several issues from her past.

My Thoughts: Although Monaghan's previous books have been emotionally heavy hitters, this one had a lighter feel until the last 10%. I appreciated that we got a new type of character who was younger and less experienced in love in this book, versus the older divorcee characters in the previous books. I loved all the references to The Notebook, and the Dan's family was wonderful. I felt like Jane's relationship with Clem was self-centered, but I know the focus was on Jane working on her issues. Jane's mom's personality also bothered me personally. I enjoyed this story until the final conflict occurs around 85%, which felt more like filler than authentic conflict. Additionally, my personal preference would have been for Jane and Dan to have gotten married before sleeping together.

Content Considerations: Moderate use of strong language. One mostly vague / mild open door scene at about 70% (focus was on emotion but also a few physical descriptions), and a couple fade to black scenes after that.

Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and NetGalley for the complementary copy of this book. My review is my own opinion and is in no way influenced by the author or the publisher.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I honestly wasn't sure I was going to like this story, the FMC was a bit too flighty for me in chapter one. But I am so glad I kept going, I loved this book.

Poor Jane, she's just trying to have a career as a “creative executive” (Find scripts to make into films) and cancel her child actor youth, and she thinks she has finally done it. Unfortunately her boss isn't convinced and in an ill advised stunt, Jane claims to have a famous singer willing to write a song for the soundtrack, too bad that's a lie.

Dan loves this script too, and he's been chosen as the cinematographer, too bad he and Jane have a tumultuous past (friends to enemies) and he doesn’t agree with the direction Jane's boss wants to take the script.

What follows is a caper to get to the singer, get him to agree to write a song and get Jane’s boss to allow them to make the film they want to make.

I love this book! Hilarious banter, a road trip, an epic anniversary party shenanigans, a wacky group of secondary characters, and the HEA is well deserved by the main characters.