Gallery Books – Review: 5 Stars

I knew before I even started this book that I was going to love it. I mean, it’s Christina Lauren. What’s not to love, right? Well little did I know that it would still exceed the already high expectations that I had for it! I have read a good number of Christina Lauren’s books, but this ended up being one of their tops for me! I only wish I hadn’t let it sit on my backlist-TBR for as long as I did.

Lets talk about the characters. Josh is cool, calm, and collected, and a perfect straight-man in this romantic comedy. He has this delightfully sarcastic and sometimes dry humor that just really tickled me while I was reading it. I mean it, this book had me in giggle fits almost the entire time reading through it! And now let’s talk about Hazel. Oh, Hazel. Hazel is now absolutely, 200% a favorite female lead in a book for me! She is so silly, and sassy, and wild, and I just want to be more like Hazel Bradford in my day to day life! She is a character that really knows how to have fun and get the most out of life, and I just really admired that in her as a character, and it made everything about this duo and their story just so enjoyable to read!

I love a friends-to-lovers romance as much as the next guy, but every once in a while it can feel like the stories can tend to blend together. There’s only so many versions of the same type of story, right? Well, sometimes that is true. And don’t get me wrong, that will not even remotely stop me from reading them! But this story went above and beyond the trope and added in some really fun details and twists that I hadn’t seen in the books that I’ve read before.
Josh and Hazel are friends that start living together while Hazel’s apartment is being fixed and updated, and soon after they start setting each other up and going on these (sometimes hilariously terrible) double dates. And that, to me, was just a really fun way to set up their story and transition into the next chapter in their relationship!

I don’t want to get into too many details on the plot, because I really don’t want to spoil any bit of this delight for anyone else who hasn’t read it yet. But let me say this – I finished this book in only a couple of days because I absolutely did not want to put it down. Hazel is forever my #WCW. This is one of the very top Christina Lauren books, in my opinion. And I would very highly recommend it to anybody who enjoys friends-to-lovers with a little bit of steam, and a whole lot of joy.