This review is part of Rom-Com-a-Thon! (stay tuned through the month for even more romantic comedy reviews!) Did this British rom com about meet cutes do it for me? Check out my review of Would Like To Meet below!

Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters. To be published on December 3, 2019 by G.P. Putnam. Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.

Synopsis: After seven years as an assistant, Evie Summers is ready to finally get the promotion she deserves. But now Evie will lose her job unless she can convince the agency’s biggest and most arrogant client, Ezra Chester, to finish writing the script for a Hollywood romantic comedy. The catch? Ezra is suffering from writer’s block–and he’ll only put pen to paper if singleton Evie can prove to him that you can fall in love like they do in the movies. With the future of the agency in jeopardy, Evie embarks on a mission to meet a man the way Sally met Harry or Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts. 

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Review: Would Like To Meet

I’m going to start putting a disclaimer on all my romance reviews that says romance is so reader-specific. I hope my reviews will help you decide whether a book will melt your heart …. or not.

What I Loved About Would Like to Meet

Would Like to Meet is an homage to the romantic comedy. Classic rom com films like Sleepless in Seattle and Notting Hill are referred to throughout the book. They’re analyzed and categorized, even used for chapter titles. I absolutely loved this fun aspect of the story.

The plot focuses mainly on the “meet cute,” a rom com staple. The success of the agency that employs main character Evie is dependent upon a fickle and cynical screenwriter turning in a romantic comedy script. Evie has to convince him that the meet cute can actually work. So she sets up a lot of them and sends him reports.

All that sounds really good, I think.

What I Liked Less About the Book

There was a LOT going on in Would Like to Meet – so much that I think it detracted from the reason I was reading: the romance. There’s a screenwriting element, in which each scene is introduced with stage directions. There’s a subplot about Evie’s friend group and a wedding. There’s a bunch of meet cutes, one of which (I hoped) was with the eventual love interest. But Evie spent so much time with the arrogant screenwriter that the romance was really, really, really slow. All this spending time together also got me worried that the arrogant screenwriter was going to turn into the love interest.

Evie was shy and awkward, which I appreciate in a character. But the romance was so tentative that (as mentioned above) I wasn’t even 100% positive that the guy I was rooting for would be the love interest. And the romance between them was all at the very, very end and (for me) overshadowed by the wedding subplot.

I like a more focused story and so for me, this book needed some streamlining. But it definitely did have its charms. So if you are fine with a very slow paced romance and if you love wacky, slapstick humor (like vomiting scenes, being stuck in a bathroom stall, crashing into tables of food) then I would definitely try this. (Interestingly, it reminded me a lot of Bridget Jones Diary, with the hapless heroine, the jerky Hugh Grant character, and the friend group.)

If you like a romantic pairing that crackles on the page, sexual tension, a lot of interaction between the couple, this rom com might not be for you.

Tell me in comments about a favorite rom com book you’ve read recently!

Find all my romantic comedy reviews on my Rom-Com-a-Thon page!

Welcome to Rom-Com-a-Thon, in which I review all the romantic comedies so that you can find one that is perfect for you! Check out my review of The Bromance Book Club.

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Published on November 5, 2019 by Berkley.

Synopsis: The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club. Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency, the guys coach Gavin. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

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Review: The Bromance Book Club

I love a good second chance at love romance so I was excited to try this. I saw some remarks on social media about the likability of some of the characters, so I was worried.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Bromance Book Club. It had a good balance of humor, romance, and reality and I found it a lot of fun to read.

As a mom, I appreciated a storyline that showed a mother realizing that she’d lost herself through marriage and motherhood. Being a parent is hard, and being a parent of twins with a partner who travels constantly is even harder. (The book does sort of gloss over the fact that Gavin and Thea are also, uh…. super rich and could hire an army of staff.) But the real problems in their marriage are caused by their own insecurities. I liked the fact that the book addressed the ways our past relationships can really trip us up in our future ones.

I liked the characters. I had no problem with Thea, because a) I actually like angry characters and b) the book did a good job of explaining the reasons for her feelings. Liv was a little harder to take – she was pretty uniformly snappish and often pretty rude. She’s the main character of book two, which is a romantic thriller (?!) and I’m curious to see how I feel about her there.

The guys were hilarious, if perhaps unrealistically in touch with their feelings. But romance novel guys have to be better than real life guys, right? Also, I love reading male friendships, and these guys were really there for each other.

Overall: fun, funny, sweet, and romantic. This is definitely a real rom com!

Have you read this? Tell me your thoughts in comments!

Find details on ALL my romantic comedy reviews on my main Rom-Com-a-Thon page!

What did I think of my first Christina Lauren book? Find out below in my review of Twice in a Blue Moon! If you love romantic stories, check out my Rom-Com-a-Thon page – link is below!

Twice in A Blue Moon by Christina Lauren

Published on October 22, 2019 by Gallery Books. Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review. Links are affiliate links and I may receive a small percentage of qualifying purchases – please see more details here!

Blurb adapted from Goodreads, edited for spoilers: Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak. During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do. Sam was the first, and only, person to whom Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her true identity. But then Sam unexpectedly vanishes. Years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Tate must ask herself whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice.

Review of Twice in a Blue Moon

I’d never read a Christina Lauren book before and I’m not sure how typical this was, but this was a second-chance-at-love romance that felt a bit like a hybrid YA/romance book and was chock full of tropes: love with a celebrity, love on holiday, second chance at love, celebrity in disguise, forbidden love….

The story begins as teenage Tate and Sam meet in London – she’s the daughter of a famous film star, but has a difficult relationship with her father and been living with her mom under a different last name in a small town. Sam is also on holiday and staying at the same London hotel. When these two meet, they fall hard for each other, and Tate decides to trust Sam with her secret. But then he abruptly disappears, breaking her heart, and reporters show up, revealing her identity. Years later, Tate is an actress in her first starring film role when she sees someone on set who looks startlingly familiar. Could it be Sam, was he the one who betrayed her, and can she trust him a second time?

In a way this felt like two separate stories: teenage Sam and Tate and their drama, and adult Sam and Tate. Maybe I’ve been reading YA too long, but I preferred the first half and I’m trying to figure out why.

I liked all the themes and tropes in here – some of my favorites! I love second chance at love stories. And I liked the family aspects of the story – Tate’s relationship with her father, her mother and her grandmother. But I also felt like there was something about the second half of the story that didn’t quite work as well for me as the first half. I felt like Tate always had the stronger half of the power dynamic (in part one, she’s the daughter of the famous actor, and in part two, she’s suddenly the up-and-coming young actress now working with her famous father.) She always felt sort of perfect and untouchable to me. Also, the second pat of the book spent a long time having Tate and Sam avoid each other (and a long time of Sam insisting that he did try to warn Tate that he’d be on set) and I felt the magic of their romance in the first part of the story was never quite reproduced in the second.

But there was also a lot here to like, and I will definitely try more Christina Lauren books!

Have you read this, or do you have other Christina Lauren books to recommend? Tell me in comments!

I wouldn’t exactly call this a rom com, but if you love romantic stories, please be sure to check out my Rom-Com-a-Thon page, with many more reviews!