I really enjoyed this story!
Polly takes on a job trying to help individuals create an interesting profile to be matched up with others. She does very well for someone who has not done this before that her boss asks her to spy on a competitive company and this happens to belong to Olly. What happens between the two is hilarious, sweet and a feel good relationship establishes. Of course they have their misunderstandings but for a new author this was an enjoyable read. Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this ARC.

“When Polly Met Olly” is a sweet, contemporary romantic comedy book that sticks to predictable romance genre tropes but is, nonetheless, a fun book.

The main character was a bit bland at first, but she seemed to grown on me as the story progressed. I loved some of the secondary characters, such as Polly’s drag queen roommate and her amazing boss.

Polly’s annoying habit of explaining every little detail through her thoughts got to me after awhile. I prefer books that show rather than tell. The laugh out loud moments and the interesting secondary characters saved this book for me.

I recommend this charming book for anyone needing a light, fun, romantic comedy book as a form of escapism.

There were a lot of things I liked about this book - I connected with the heroine and thought the dialogue was witty. The pacing was a little slow and I didn’t connect with some of the secondary characters. There were a lot of issues with NYC geography and American phrasing that was really distracting and took me out of the story.

The review will be published on the publication day. The review is going to be a three star review.

Liebesroman mit einem interessanten Konzept

Seitdem ich vor Jahren "Match me if you can" von Susan Elizabeth Phillips gelesen habe, schaue ich gerne in Bücher rein, die mit Partnervermittlung zu tun haben, auch wenn ich das ganze privat sehr skeptisch sehe.

"When Polly met Olly" dreht sich um zwei Partnervermittler, die privat in Beziehungen nicht so viel Glück haben. Die beiden gehören zu unterschiedlichen Agenturen, sind also eigentlich Kontrahenten.

Die Grundidee der Geschichte ist durchaus frisch und nicht die Norm auf dem Gebiet der Liebesromane. Der lockere Schreibstil der Autorin macht es einem leicht den Geschehnissen zu folgen und in das Leben von Polly einzutauchen. Der Humor des Buches hat meinen nicht immer perfekt getroffen und leider sind mir in der Liebesgeschichte nicht genug funken versprüht worden. Hier und da waren meine Emotionen beim Lesen involviert, dies geschah aber leider nicht oft genug.

Von mir bekommt das Buch glatte drei Sterne.

This was a sweet, quick, light read. It follows Polly an amateur photographer and Olly a successful businessman who are running rival online dating agencies.
I can't quite put my finger on what I didn't like about this book but I can only describe my feeling towards it as kinda of Ugh. I wasn't a fan of the romance between Polly and Olly or how Polly seemed to be slightly in love with any good-looking male character she met.
This book was slow and very drawn out, I thought I was getting to the end of the book only to find out I was 60-70% through.
That being said there were some really cute moments, I loved Polly going after what she really wanted to do and incorporating more of her photography skills. The main twist was a little predictable but still sweet.

While it gets off to a slow start, When Polly Met Olly is definitely worth sticking with. Although there a several different sub-plots, they all blend together while simultaneously holding your interest in each of them to keep you wondering what’s going to happen with them.

Polly is a struggling Brit living in New York City whose first love is photography. Knowing she can’t live on the money she isn’t making from that, she accepts a job at a dating service. Derek, her boss, takes Polly under his wing and becomes a father figure to her as she finds her way, ultimately to where she really wants to be.

Olly owns a PR firm and is a New York native. He also happens to own the main competitor to Derek, another dating service that has been named the best of NYC. Some hijinks occur when Polly is sent to check out Olly’s business as a favor to Derek.

Throughout the book we are introduced to other characters like Polly’s roommate, Gabe, who sings in drag on the weekends while working in HR during the week. We also meet some of Derek’s best clients and enjoy Polly’s adventures in finding them the perfect partner on Match.com.

I gave this book 5 stars because I didn’t want to put it down. There were a few parts where I kind of skimmed it but they were short (just a few paragraphs that I felt were non-essential to the story), but otherwise, I loved Polly and reading about her evolution over time. The ending was brilliant and worth taking the journey with them.

This is a cute book, a little quirky, and a light, quick read..

Polly is an out-of-work photographer that takes a job at a matchmaker to make ends meet. Her boss asks her to scope out the competition by signing up for a rival service, which is how she meets Olly.

Polly is a bit unsure of herself and what her next steps are in live. Olly is a bit of an oddball/misfit, but he seems like a good fit for Polly.

This book is really more women's fiction than straight romance, since the focus is really on Polly's development more than Polly and Olly coming together as a couple.

There are some grammatical issues that detract from the story, as does a little bit of the dialog. It is set in NY with American characters except for Polly, but it reads as if a London setting, to be honest. Phraseology, idioms, etc. don't really fit the setting. As long as you mentally change the setting while you're reading, it's not distracting.

One thing I loved about this book where the characters. They were 100% relatable in this readers eyes, which just added to the amazing story. I mean take our main lady Polly, she knows her mind and what she wants to do with her life but that isn't necessarily what she ends up doing. I know a few people in real life exactly like this. Whereas main man Olly has found what works for him and he enjoys it.

So along with the amazing characters you have the problems they experience, which are very real and relatable. With characters and problems that you can relate to, Zoe has made it easy to fall in love with this book. The whole dating story is intriguing and it pulls you in. You want to see who ends up with who,and whether or not your guesses where correct. This leads to a book you simply don't want to put down.

I completely adored this book, to the point that I picked it up at Chapter 7 one morning and that evening I completed the book. The 30 Chapters of this book really flew by and I found myself wanting more.

When Polly Met Olly by Zoe May is a romantic comedy that takes Tinder and all things online dating to the for front. This is an adorable novel for sure and really shows you what some people go through when dating. This also shows how Polly pushes through everything that is thrown at her even when she feels like she can't. The novel shows you that not all love comes in the simplest of ways and sometimes you really have to fight for it. Polly and Olly are two hilarious characters that drive the story along with the side characters. You fall in love with them all in the littlest of time. If you love a good romance novel this one is for you.

Chicklits work best if you like the main characters. The girl should be someone your recognise yourself in (to some degree) and the guy should be someone you could be attracted too.

I liked Polly until about the third chapter. Then she took a job to photograph food for an instagrammer's cookbook for free. What? She wants to make money as a photographer. She should not be giving her work away. An instagrammer's cookbook is likely to become an insta-hit. The instagrammer can afford to pay for the photos. And this turns out not to be the first time Polly is offering her services for free or very little on the promise that actual paying work will come out of it for her.

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Favours you do for friends; not for people you barely know.

So it's probably a good thing Polly gets offered the job as a matchmaker. She clearly doesn't have a very good commercial head. Which is further evidenced by the fact that her first job as a matchmaker is to find some good photos for a clients dating profile. How is it not the first thing (okay, maybe after a short scroll through the client's Facebook page) she tells her new boss: I'm a photographer! I can take very good professional pictures of this client. I can make him look desirable. (I don't know whether she can, but that's probably how she has to sell this thing to her new boss.)

Alas, no such action from Polly and my mind starts wandering to writing my own chicklit. One where the heroine is more kick-ass and in control (and still makes a mess of her love-life).

As for the love-interest: sorry, not for me. Not even for his age or the age-difference with Polly, but because he is a businessman that meets his clients with rolled up shirt-sleeves showing off his artwork. To me, that doesn't look very professional - neither the tattoos nor the rolled up sleeves. In business it's better to overdress (and I say that working for a company where the dress-code is very relaxed. Still, we roll down our sleeves when meeting clients.)

But aside from not liking the main characters much, there was also barely any romance between them. They meet a few times and Polly for some reason fancies Olly. The forth time they meet, Olly tells her he was chatting with her on behalf of a client, while she was chatting on behalf of a client of hers, and they decide they like each other and should go on a date. A date that is spent the whole night talking and not making out (kind of hard to believe if she really fancied him). Then her boss tells her Olly is a cad and Polly decides to believe hear-say rather than hear the other side and ignores Olly for a week or so until she learns he's quitting his company.

Everything is happening too fast. There's no build up of the romance. I don't see the back and forth attraction and the big fall-out (there always should be a fall-out; I guess that's what makes the relationship stronger in the end) is something that could have been sorted about by replying to a text. What do you mean 'big' fall-out? Pretty much everything I like in a chicklit was lacking.

What was also lacking - and I never knew this was going to be something I was going to notice - Polly only has one heart-to-heart conversation with a female friend. One (1!) in the entire story.

And one final gripe: there is absolutely no reason for this story to be set in New York. It might as well have been set in Manchester for all that it showed of Manhattan. Nothing, save for some name dropping. The story didn't even remark on winter in New York, even tough it is set in February. There was a distinct lack of people being cold or wearing wintercoats and gloves when outside. It also would have saved the author getting the time difference wrong. England is ahead of New York time. So when it's 4 a.m. in England, it's 11 p.m. in New York. I doubt that would be regular office hours for Polly.

1.5*, but rounding it down because of the last chapter. That was too much lessons learned.

When Polly met Olly is the love story between Polly who works in a dating agency and Olly who is the owner of a rival dating agency. The book started off quite good, but it was not able to maintain that good start. The two main characters were not that likeable. Olly was more like a supporting character. And the book is more women's fiction than a romance. I also felt the romance was quite juvenile and that Polly was quite shallow. I give it 3 stars. Thanks to Net Galley, HQ Digital and Zoe May for approving me for an ARC of this book.

Guys. This book is just...BAD. Like, this book is downright bad. It starts off super cute and fun, and Polly is a wonderful character at first but then it just goes downhill from there.

First of all, the story is based in New York but everyone talks like a Brit! I know the author is British but goddamn! Measurements are described in centimeters, people use British slang left and right, and the syntax of how people speak is British. It’s totally plausible for our MC to do this as she is British but no one else is and it was so glaringly obvious that it became annoying as the book went on.

The structure of this book was atrocious. I’m hoping it was just because this was an arc copy, but I’m honestly not sure. The paragraphs went on for FOREVER; they felt like just one long run on sentence in paragraph form. Not to mention it was littered with typos, words that should have been there, words that shouldn’t have been there, etc. Not to mention there was a lot of duplicate scenes. Case in point, on two separate occasions, Polly goes to a cafe, orders a sandwich and coffee, sits at a bar by the window to people watch, and reads a newspaper left behind by a stranger. THE EXACT SAME SCENE...just reworded a bit. It was weird.

There was also a lot of things I felt like were problematic with characters thoughts/feelings. Polly was an all around likable character but she said/thought some really messed up things. She describes less feminine dresses as ‘kinda butch’, she agrees with her boss when he makes an offhand comment about a client’s date looking like a hooker because his client is a plain guy and the date is just ‘too hot to be there for free’, and then there was a joke later on made between Polly and her roommate about how drinking instant coffee makes them ‘ghetto’.

For this to be shelved as a romance novel and to be centered around ‘rival dating agencies’, there really wasn’t a lot of romance. Polly doesn’t meet her HEA until you’re pretty far into the story, the romance itself doesn’t happen until three-quarters of the way through, and the build up of the romance is done through some less than ideal means. I’m not going to spoil it but the way they connected just irked me.

Honestly, I could go on and on about how weird of a book this was, but I did enjoy a good amount of it. I wouldn’t purchase this at all and I’ll never reread it. This was just a time filler, tbh.

When Polly Met Olly is a refreshing, lighthearted read. This book is based around Polly who goes for an interview at a dating agency To The Moon and Back, although she really wants to pursue her love of photography.
Polly Lives with flat mate Gabe, who also isn't pursuing his dream vocation. It's through her new job, Polly meets the handsome Olly, whose running the rival dating agency....

I enjoyed reading this book, it's well written, romance with humour. Loved the characters, especially Polly and Gabe's friendship, often made you chuckle.
I've not read any books by Zoe May before, but definitely would do again.

Fans of Anna Bell, you'll enjoy this also.

3.5 ★

Well Zoe May is one talented author thats flying well under the radar. Her writing was fast paced, relevant, witty and humorous. Im a huge fan of English writing so even though the setting was America it worked well for me. Not only did I adore Polly as our heroine, her independent character development and the side cast really shone in this (more so than our hero). This had a really great plot, but the execution let it down (just slightly).

Polly, an aspiring photographer from the UK is in New York and due to lack of work and adequate funds for living, she finds herself taking a job at a dating agency. After only a couple of hours on the job she is sent undercover as a client 'looking for love' to a rival agency. Usually unlucky in love, Polly hasn't been near the market for a while but little does she know said rival might be just the man she didn't know she was looking for.

<i>‘Hit it?’ I scoff. ‘I can’t hit it. He’s Olly Corrigan. Super cool businessman. Dating entrepreneur of the year. PR boss. I can’t just hit him up on Tinder and invite him over for some Netflix and chill.’</i>

May’s physical description of Olly drew me to him instantly (WOW). He was 20 years older than Polly and although I’m quite partial to the 'older man' trope it didn’t really seem necessary in this. These two were good together, just not great and I think that’s because they didn’t get much screen-time to shine (and I know May can write good banter). It was all heading in a winning direction for me but there was a huge hole in the development of their connection. I don’t know if I ever truly warmed up to Olly. He had so much potential, what a painful word to put in a review, because it can never really be rectified.

While it had a plot based solely on Romance, I classify this as Chick-lit because the relationship took a bit of a back seat. This genre works for me because I love a slow-burn and I am happy to wait for the pay off but I wouldn’t recommend it to Romance readers because it was very mild. All in all, I really enjoyed this, a testament to the good writing thats for sure.

(ARC kindly provided by Netgalley for an honest review)

The story was a bit slow for my taste. Although the concept had great merit, the overall interactions between Olly and Polly were a bit dry. It did have a few super cute interactions but had to push myself to finish as the story wasn’t all in my wheelhouse.

I really fancied an easy-going romantic comedy. So I trudged through NetGalley to find a book that took my fancy and this one jumped out at me straight away. Yes, I judged a book by its cover, but sometimes that’s the only way!
I’m always a bit trepidatious when trying a new author and one that isn’t for ‘request’ but ‘read now’ on NetGalley, but this book ticked all my boxes. It was fun, light, romantic and well-written.
Polly is having to sell-out and get an office job when her dreams of becoming a photographer are falling flat. However, this isn’t just a typical office job in a GP’s office that would fry her brains; this is a crazy no day is the same matchmaking service job. Her first assignment? Infiltrate the opposition!
Lots of high jinx, close encounters and love matching ensues. Polly goes on a journey of self-discovery while at the same time helping others find their soulmate. Can she too find happiness and the love of her life at the same time?
I did think the book could have been a little shorter. A lot of the smaller storylines are tied up with a neat bow at around 50%. Polly’s storyline is still to conclude; however, the ending did feel a little drawn out compared to the beginning. It wasn’t bad it just lost pace a little.
I saw the ‘twist’ coming a mile away, but that didn’t stop it being sweet and me hoping that I was right.
Even though this was a fun and easy read and I did enjoy it, there was a lot wrong with it also. I couldn’t quite get on board with the 20 year age gap between Polly and Olly, did that make her really young or him really old? I don’t think it actually specified ages. The morals of the dating agency seemed a bit questionable. I always thought you were matched at these things with other clients, not the staff pretending to be you while chatting to potential random matches online. This means every relationship they match is starting off on a lie as one half of the couple doesn’t know they weren’t talking to their match but some office worker.
I do hope that this book went through a final proofreading and copy-editing process before publication as there was a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. I do usually try and ignore these when reading an ARC copy, but there were a lot!
So overall, it ticked the boxes for the kind of mood I was in. It wasn’t the perfect book, but it was a pleasant, amusing and light read.

Thanks to Netgalley and HQDigital for a copy in return for an honest review.

Dating just became more fun for perspective clients as Polly's arrival brightens up Derek's dating agency.

This funny, feel good read has a bucketful of charm and a cast of well thought out players, each bringing their own wonderfully amusing stories to life.
Fans of Sophie Kinsella and anyone who enjoys a romantic afternoon movie will love this warm, easy going rom com of a book.

I stumbled upon #whenpollymetolly on #netgalley and thought the premise of the story seemed like a fun rom-com read.

Polly works at a dating agency and was never supposed to meet Olly whose dating agency is a competitor to the one where Polly works.

While the story and characters are a bit quirky as it is written by a British author but takes places in NYC, I didn’t want to DNF the book because I felt engaged enough to want to find out what happened ‘when Polly met Olly’.

This book came out earlier this year and is currently only available in an e-book format.

If you are looking for something out of the box from a typical contemporary romance that reads like a fairy tale, this may be a story for you.

Cute, funny...solid chick lit

**OMG! I cannot believe that these reviews haven't been done! I am so sorry they are so late!!!**

When Polly met Olly by Zoe May a five-star read you will love to the Moon and Back. I will be honest, this nearly got four-stars, but it pulled it out of the bag at the last moment, its not just Polly and Olly that I fell in love with, I love Derek, in fact I almost didn’t like Olly for chunks of the story and found him a little contrite and overbearing and was a little sad that Derek was happily married. This was a great story for the most part of it, the descriptions were brilliant, the characters were funny and real (see Olly, flawed in places, but still dreamy, more real). But the pacing lacked a little, its all or nothing in places and that irritated me so much. I also think I missed a little something at the beginning as I didn’t realise that Polly was British until she mentioned her mum, Cornwall and a GP, not usually mentioned in story about New York, so it could be me that I missed that bit, or just that it’s not mentioned.