Pandora Fyffe is underappreciated and overworked. Ozzy Wylde is unable to do the one thing he's always done: surf. When Pandora's genius idea pulls her company together under a matching app for single travelers, she accidentally matches herself to Ozzy, her annoying(ly hot) neighbor, bringing their prank wars from home into a too-small camper van to drive across Mexico. A PR stunt or a match made in heaven?
Pandora and Ozzy are not going to last. Their literal first encounter was clothed sex on the beach. They have no chemistry, it's typical nerd x jock, and they hate each other. Sure, passion is often mistaken for other feelings, but the transition from "he's stealing my job" to "I want to kiss him" was too stark. Also, what's up with the job stealing? Pandora coded this whole app. Sure, she's pretty unbearable as a person, but they can't be like "okay toss these two people on a van, one of whom can't even code, and whoever we like best personality-wise will have the job by the end." They didn't even know Ozzy?? He just has abs??? By the way, Ozzy shows that he's "smart" ONE TIME to Pandora. Privately. He is by no means qualified. He might be a stakeholder in the company, but this made no sense. His personality is extremely inconsistent; he's passionate about Pandora, but it's all tell-no-show. This whole relationship, which was never really a relationship, was driven on lust. There's no way they're making it in the long term.
Where was Pandora's character arc? The author spent the entire book talking about how undervalued she was, how she ran the whole company and they laid her off, or she coded this whole new app and they chose someone else for the job, prepping us for some grand success story at the end. What did we get? Nothing satisfactory. Pandora's gonna "try something new". Okay, and will she still be undervalued? Will she still be stuck where she's always been, except now she has some hot ex-surfer dude? Nothing felt fleshed out in the novel, which made it hard to love. I maybe only enjoyed some of the bits and pieces of Pandora and Rosie's friendship, or Ozzy's nicknames for Pandora. And the cover. I adore the cover. This book should have been a quick read, but it dragged mentally.

The Code for Love was a cute read with the fmc who is a software engineer. While I found this book cute, at times I wasn’t enjoying it too much. Thank you Netgalley for the arc!

This book was just not my cup of tea. The cover and the premise was cute, but lacked in several areas. It lacked structure and dragged on, even though this is a short read. The characters lacked depth to them and I found that the ending was predictable.

This is an enemies to lovers, workplace romance. It is about a software engineer named Pandora and a surfer boy named Ozzy. Pandora wants to make an app that predicts the user’s ideal travel partner. Come to find out, the demo of this app says that Ozzy is the perfect match to Pandora. This is a forced proximity and a fake dating romance as they go on a road trip together. They start to get to know each other more and sparks between these two opposites begin to happen. Overall, I give this a 2 out of 5 stars rating.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Anne Marsh and Afterglow Books by Harlequin for this digital advanced reader’s copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book is expected to be published on July 29, 2025.

Pandora for President! Love her cactus-y style when really she is a sweetheart. Super smart and witty! I loved Ozzy too for bringing out the best in Pandora. This book is a fun time but also so powerful modern women

This one was too real for me.

The FMC works for a tech company that happens to be a startup run by 20 year olds.

Of course there’s a layoff and they let go of her.

The issue is, I was also laid off due to lack of work at a tech job, so this hit reallly close and was not fun for me basically immediately. Why I give it 5 stars? I didn't read enough of the book to have any genuine criticisms and the weirdness of the surfer dude made me laugh, so points for that. It was also formatted properly.

Also love that she lives in a van, but if you have no done van life full time and don’t understand the logistics of it, it takes away from the story and romanticizes it instead (you have to pay for rent space, gas, utilities, etc, or else you are “boondocking” which is not being connected to any electricity or water, and you have to prepare for this. The cover made it seem like they lived in the van and boondocked, so I hope that there is more details on the logistics of that, or else it’s going to make it unrealistic).

I plan to pick this one up in a year or so from now once I am more recovered from that traumatic event, but this isn’t going to be a fun romance for me for that reason. I really wish they didn’t have to lose their job?

Thank you for allowing me to sample this eARC. I appreciate the opportunity to provide honest feedback voluntarily.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As a software engineer who enjoys romance, I was very excited to read The Code for Love. But I quickly found myself disappointed by the technical inaccuracies and the misuse of jargon. Many of the IT references felt out of place and were inconsistent with how things are actually done and called in the industry. The code snippet* on page 22, for example, was wrong in so many ways. It showed that Anne Marsh did not have a solid understanding of what she was writing about.

This constantly pulled me out of the story, so I couldn't connect with the characters or immerse myself in the narrative. As a "STEMinist" romance, I expected a more genuine representation of women in tech, but these missteps only perpetuate stereotypes and misrepresent the reality of women working in the industry. I understand that it's an attempt of celebrating women in the field, but these inaccuracies can do more harm than good, reinforcing misconceptions...

Sadly, I had to mark this as a DNF due to these issues. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to like this book.

* Here's two possible ways to correct the Java code:
1) Fix the loop, which prints the message 11 times
for (burglarCount = 0; burglarCount <= 10; burglarCount++){
System.out.println("Panic later!");
}
2) Write it as an if statement, which I believe is closer to the author's intent
if (burglarCount > 0 && burglarCount <= 10){
System.out.println("Panic later!");
}