In this rockstar romance, we have Micah, who is a bisexual thirty something who lives in L.A. She gets contacted about going on a cruise with her ex bandmates from when she was a teenager and jumps at the opportunity simply to resolve everything that went wrong in the past, with John especially but also with the other band members.

The love interest is John, who was her childhood best friend and also in the band at the time. They fell out of touch when Micah blew up the band and left then they were no longer a band.

This is such a 6 star read for me. It was simply better than 5 stars. I loved the romance, the friendships, the setting, the humor, the diversity, and the mental illness representation. Micah has anxiety and gets panic attacks sometimes.

This novel felt so REAL and I absolutely adored all of the characters (except Ryder he can go f himself lol). I liked that the other bandmates, such as Frankie and Steve, got some time in this novel without it being all about them because it was a romance at the end of the day.

The longing and tension that Micah and John had was written so well. The way John was absolutely down bad for her from day one just made me so giddy.

I would just like to say the explicit scenes were SO HOT! Hot with a capital H! Some of the things Micah said had me melting into a puddle on the floor. I need a word stronger than mother for her.

John was gone for her and that just made him so much hotter. He was like her little puppy dog, the way that he would do anything she asked but I also liked that there were times where she would have to beg lol.

The cruise being the setting of all this was so fun! I liked the aspect of them being performers and having to get together and perform their old songs for this specific group of people who were fans. It was just so fun.

I also liked that there were other famous people on the cruise, such as the cast of that popular show. Tatiana was a nice character and I loved her with both John and Micah.

Micah’s initial reaction to her makes me laugh so bad still. But I love where they ended up and their friendship.

The ending with Ryder was SO satisfying. If Micah wouldn’t have done that which prompted the others to do what they did, I probably would’ve reached through the book and done it myself.

This is my first Alicia book but obviously I need to go read Lauren and Asas story in her previous book. I’m obsessed with her writing. It’s so captivating.

I also loved the connected playlist. It felt good to have music go with the book and picture specific moments that went with the songs. 11/10 experience.

Thank you to Berkley for the eARC through the Under Represented Voices Program. <3

Thank you NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts ( a sentence I never thought I’d say!!).

As a Paramore fan first and foremost, forever and always, I was transported back to my time on the Parahoy cruises and missing every single second. Knowing that Alicia is also a Paramore fan forever and always, I felt a kinship throughout the entire book.

(Hayley and Taylor forever……….. oh jk this is a story about Micah and John)

Oh, John and Micah, how I love you both so dearly. My little bisexual heart was thump, thump, thumping for the two of them the entire time I was reading. Messy and a little bit lost, these two found their way back to each other on a cruise ship and I ate every second of it up. Give me childhood friends to strangers to lovers any day of the week and I am SEATED, ready to fall in love with them.

I had a blast reading this one. That’s basically what it comes down to and I am here for vibes at all times.

This is a former best friends to lovers romance and also somewhat of a second chance romance, though our main characters were never really actually dating.
Micah and John were best friends. They also were in a band together but things change and when they end up breaking up instead of releasing a second album together. and Micah, our FMC, goes solo instead. Now years later the band is back together for a 5 day cruise where they are to perform.
While enemies to lovers is a favorite trope of mine I can never say no to a friends, or former friends to lovers trope as well. I really enjoyed Alicia Thompson's pros and though I own the rest of her backlog this is my first time finally reading one I will say I plan on reading the rest expeditiously. I really liked how she goes back and forth and how we, the readers, get the information from the past and how she develops the backstory so we know why Micah made the decisions she did back then. I enjoyed the spicy moments when they came and thought they were just enough and really liked the musical aspect and how it was incorporated into the book. I am interested to reread this again in the future with the audiobook when it releases.
Thank you so much to Berkley for the complementary copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This started out so promising, I’m a little bummed.

This is a story about two former friends turned strangers who were a part of a band together and reunite on a cruise ship to preform once again. The band had broken up, leaving some unanswered questions and zero closure.

A lot of this book focused on closure which I appreciated. Lots of feelings between the two MC’s and the three other members of their band. Some positive, some negative, but it all was written well!

The MC’s hit so good in the beginning of this story of unrequited love. As teenagers there was always SOMETHING there (so we are told), but it was never acted on until this cruise.

Now, the burn was not my taste. To fast in my opinion, but I still liked the romance for the most part. A couple of majorly cheesy lines were thrown in, but whatever.

What I really wish this book had were proper flashbacks. We’re being told over and over how these two were so close and there are small tidbits of flashbacks (a couple paragraphs maybe?) but they just didn’t do the story justice.

Lots of telling, now showing which is such a gripe for me. I was told they had this history, but I never got to see it.

I will say I appreciate the trigger warnings at the beginning of the book. Anyone who reads this should know they exist, and take care.

This was astoundingly meh to me. Hopefully someone else finds it amazing.

Alicia Thompson has been a consistently enjoyable author for me and I was really excited for Never Been Shipped. We met the main character John in Thompson’s previous book, With Love from Cold World. When John’s band agrees to reunite for a four day cruise, he’s also reunited with his once best friend Micah. John’s been pining after Micah for years but it’s unclear whether those feelings were/are reciprocated. The forced proximity of the cruise brings up lots of old baggage for these two to work through.

I wanted to love this one because Thompson usually packs an emotional punch. However I didn’t really get that from these characters. There wasn’t enough backstory to set them up in a way that justified their actions or motivated their falling in love on a four night cruise. We start to see glimpses toward the end, but by then I wasn’t invested enough to really find the pay off satisfactory. The elements of nostalgia were really fun, and generally the message of the vulnerability of creating and pursuing one’s passion were well done. Overall this was 3.5 stars for me.

I voluntarily read a gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

I have never read a book that was simultaneously so boring and so horny. Like, the characters sure were getting action but the plot itself was not and it often dragged. I never quite felt the yearning that Micah and John were supposedly feeling for each other and for me their emotional connection fell flat for lack of development. The side characters are decent and the premise is fun, this just didn't quite achieve liftoff for me.

I LOVE ALICIA THOMPSON I LOVE THIS BOOK I LOVE ROMACE!!!! Okay now that I'm done screaming I might just have to put this at the top of my Alicia Thompson favorites. I will read anything this woman writes. I was swooning, I was crying, I was screaming, I was giggling.

“Never Been Shipped” is “Titanic” (with a happy ending) meets “Daisy Jones and the Six.” Thompson crafts a fun and sexy story with a swoon-worthy, Harry Styles coded, love interest. It’s a second chance romance, which I’m usually not a fan of, but it was really more of a first time romance with someone that you used to have a crush on in the past that you experimented kissing on. I loved the flashbacks and learning what exactly happened between the two of them, and the band they’re in, back in the past. I really loved the main character and her growth throughout the novel. 10/10 smut scenes

I just love Alicia Thompson, and I have since the first chapter of Love In the Time of Serial Killers. This was a really great premise - a former teen band that broke up more than a decade ago is reuniting for a short stint on a themed cruise. ElectricOh! was famous in its own right, but got particular cult status after performing as a prom band on an episode of a CW-type show called Nightshifters, and they're back together again for a Nightshifters cruise. Frontwoman Micah and lead guitarist Ryder had an on again, off again relationship in their band days, and the end of their relationship was all wrapped up in the end of the band, and Micah made some pretty questionable choices before going out on her own. Her biggest regret in all that had nothing to do with Ryder (who is awful) or even bandmates Frankie and Steve (who are not), but everything to do with her childhood best friend John, to whom she hasn't spoken since the breakup. They tentatively try to rekindle their friendship during the cruise, but they've really always both been secretly interested in being more than friends, so things heat up pretty quickly. I love the setup here, and I really liked both Micah and John and was rooting for them to deal with their issues and get it together. As usual, Thompson's writing was funny but also heartfelt, and I absolutely loved that John was one of Asa's housemates from With Love from Cold World. Another winner from Alicia Thompson. Content warning for (off page) child abuse and alcoholism of a parent, and threat of image based sexual abuse.

This was absolutely amazing!! I think this will absolutely blow up in the book community when it gets released. This was my first book by this author, but it will definitely not be my last

I dived right into this story with Alicia Thompson's writing style. I enjoyed the reunion on a cruise ship vibe of this book. It provided an isolated setting for the characters to rediscover each other but was interspersed with fun cruise ship activities. Micah and John reconnected early on in the story which I appreciated but it may not be for all readers.

I adore Alicia Thompson. At first, I wasn't so sure about the premise of this one. A band reuniting to play on cruise? Didn't really feel like my kind of love story. I was so wrong. This was perfect. And I also adore that she tied this in to With Love, from Cold World. That is one of my favorite books and I also just love when authors connect their stand alone titles together by intertwining their characters in each others' lives. Cannot say enough good things. Cannot recommend highly enough. LOVED.

⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Gah! I have mixed feelings about this one. I thought the cruise ship setting was fun. I LOVED John! I haven't read With Love, From a Cold World yet but now I am going to have to so I can get a glimpse of him in that book.

Two things I didn't like about this one:

- I disliked Micah for most of the book. I don't need my heroines to be perfect, but I need to like them and to care that they get an HEA. I kind of felt like she didn't deserve it in this one. Perhaps she needed more of a redemption journey than this book had.

- I was over the band drama by about half way through the book. Eliminating some of that might have made more room for building depth to the romance between Micah and John.

Overall, it was enjoyable. I think this would be a really great screen-adapted book!

This was cute! Not quite a hit for me, but still a charming second-chance friends to lovers story with some fun nostalgic vibes.

Micah and John reconnect on a cruise themed after a TV show they used to be obsessed with (and mildly internet-famous for). There's a lot to love in theory... fandom drama, unresolved tension, and a sweet slow burn. but something about the execution didn’t totally land for me.

Micah was quirky and layered, and I appreciated the exploration of her anxiety and vulnerability. John was soft and loyal in that quiet, cinnamon-roll way. But I never fully bought into their chemistry? It felt more lukewarm than longing, and the pacing dragged in parts. I kept waiting for a big emotional payoff that never quite came.

That said, I liked the themes around friendship, grief, and reconnecting with who you used to be. The writing is warm and witty, and Thompson always delivers a unique twist on familiar tropes.

If you like slow-burns, nerdy nostalgia, and second chances at love, this might work better for you than it did for me!

3 stars — sweet but didn’t sweep me off my feet.

DNF The writing was extremely repetitive with no differentiation in cadence or sentence structure. I could not get along with the writing style.

"Even before they'd had the band, it had always been them."

4.5* stars

This book was so much fun. I was initially hesitant to read a book both on a cruise ship (my worst nightmare) and also about a "famous band second chance" plotline, but everything fit together so perfectly. Even though they were only on the cruise ship for a handful of days, nothing felt rushed or out of place. The plot flowed so perfectly, and the development was superb.

I am obsessed with the relationship development between Micah and John. The development from "right person, wrong time" into what they became by the end of the story was so good. And the YEARNING. The TENSION. I had to keep fanning myself during their scenes, because it was just so HOT. Alicia Thompson writes a phenomenal sex scene.

The playlist for this novel was spectacular. Each song was so perfect for the events and the characters. Scott Street by Phoebe Bridgers is this book's anthem. I was listening to it as I was reading and actually getting kind of emotional about it.

All of the characters felt so real. Their struggles, their hopelessness, everything. Micah's journey to overcome the self-doubt she had been dealing with for so long was perfect. I never thought I would say it, but I really thought the "third act conflict" that wasn't really a "third act conflict" perfectly fit the characters, and actually felt realistic.

I bumped down a half star because the book did lose a little steam after the culmination of the conflict with Ryder, around the 75%-80% mark. However, it slowly built back up to lead into a perfect ending.

I am so obsessed with this book and these characters. I can't wait to see what else Alicia Thompson comes out with.

Best friends who haven't seen each other or spoken in fifteen years?? He's been in love with her the whole time??And they have to spend four nights together with their band that broke up on a cruise ship. . . When a band gets back together after 15 years to perform on a cruise ship, tensions are high and old flames (or a flame that never died out) come alive. As John and Micah reconnect, they finally spill the secrets that they have kept from one another since the band split and secrets they have kept since they were children. This is a medium-paced novel, focused on a mix of the plot and the characters. The characters are likable, although the cast of characters is small, and they undergo some serious character development. Never been shipped is an emotional, light-hearted, and funny contemporary romance.

I found this relaxing and sweet. I love the rep, the whole reunited band story and I LOVED that John wasn't the front man for the band as well. It felt like a more unique take on both the second chance romance trope (well, that and friends to lovers) and the rockstar romance too! This is a good one to pick up for a vacation!

Thank you so much to Berkley Publishing Group for my ARC!

3.75 / 5

Alicia has become an auto buy author, and to be able to get in the good graces of Berkeley and get an early copy was a dream come true. But even better was getting to read John and Micah’s story. The childhood friendship to band mates to estrangement to fully realizing it’s always been you, has unearth in me all the feels and excitement and wonder that goes along with words and the author’s wonderful gift to us. I loved the kindness John leads with, matching Micah’s profound distrust of the music industry with a kind of patience that values her choice and decision. It was also great to Micah slowly come in to her own, being more assertive and vocal about what she wants. The ingredients of a perfect romance was all there, but what brought it to rare air was the mouth on that man. John really had me blushing.

The premise of this book sounds fun but unfortunately for me it was just kind of boring... I feel like a book set on a cruise ship has so much potential to be SO fun but I feel like the setting was not really well used. Also, I still don't really know why John loves Micah other than they jsut grew up together, which isn't enough reason for me. They're cute as a couple but I didn't feel a big connection.