Romp Of A Romcom…
A veritable romp of a romcom. Ally Rivers courts disaster in pretty much most areas of her life. Will anything ever come right? With an eccentric cast of well drawn characters and a fun and frothy storyline this is an entertaining and enjoyable read.

What an interesting read this was! I felt this was a mash-up of a taboo age gap romance mixed with British chick lit humour. It was fantastic. 😀

I loved the main character, Ally. She is a hoot with her bubbly, colourful and positive personality. I laughed out loud at some of her oneliners.

I enjoyed the relationship between her and Marcus. I definitely felt the chemistry between the two of them for sure!

I did not like the side characters, especially Sam who I felt was a thirty year old man stuck with a child's mentality. It was bizarre and became very old very quickly.

The ending was rushed and I did not gel with how the conflict came about and then basically sorted itself out.

There were times in the story when it would jump from one scene to the next and I felt like I had missed something. So the flow of the story was a little rocky but overall a unique read for sure!

A great fun-filled novel of hilarious ups and downs, awkward moments galore and lovable characters! Just what a rom-com should be!

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

Here is a love story with a difference.
Ally and Sam are the best of friends and Sam asks Ally a huge favour and to pretend that she is his fiancée at a party hosted by his awful brother Gavin, once there Ally takes a shine to the good looking garden until she is introduced to him and the gardener is actually Sams Dad!!
A tale of love, loyalty, family, betrayal yet with plenty of humour and a tiny bit of sex,
A fantastic book
I read it in a day
Thank you so much NetGalley and Headline Books for gifting me a eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

What’s the worst that can happen when your gay best friend asks you to pose as his fiancée?
Ally gets a lot more than she bargained for after she agrees to help Sam at a family event. After mistaking his dad for the hot gardener, Ally finds herself caught up in a forbidden love situation.

I really enjoyed this book and couldn’t get through the chapters quick enough. Ally is a fun, late twenties lady who is still undecided about what she wants to do in life. The one thing she does know is that she has no time for a relationship and friends with benefits is the only option. When she meets Marcus her best friends dad sparks soon fly after painting a portrait of Debbie his elderly spaniel. However the more Marcus falls in love, Ally is adamant that going public would destroy everything around her.

A really satisfying, funny read that explores the challenges of falling in love. Although at times you will want to tear your hair out with exasperation! A fab debut novel!

A really easy enjoyable read that touched on many topical issues! I absolutely loved this book, the only slightly annoying thing was it’s format on my kindle with the sentences with huge gaps between the words, but I understand this a first few drafts!

I received a free ebook version of this from Netgalley. Thankyou to both the publisher and Netgalley fo allowing me to read this. My review is still honest.

Trigger warnings for this book-Death of a pet, domestic abuse allegations.

Not OK, Cupid is a romance book about Ally, a 28 year old woman struggling to make ends meet working multiple jobs. Her best friend Sam hasn't yet told his family he is gay, and shocks Ally when she discovers he's been telling his family they've been together for 3 years. Begrudgingly meeting his family to preserve his secret, Ally meets Sam's dad, Marcus, who's fairly sure he knows what's up and starts spending a lot of time with Ally...
So this wasn't the perfect romance book, but it certainly isn't a bad one. I really liked the light-hearted writing style, and Ally as a character was a good point of view to read from. She was different to other heroines I've read about-she's endlessly positive, ditzy, distracted, but why should all that mean she isn't intelligent or to be taken seriously as a businesswoman? I loved Ally's journey as she battled those very insecurities and gained the self confidence to take the success she wanted. I also love that so-called 'menial' jobs like being a waitress or a beautician aren't belittled in the process, but are shown as equally okay as a career for those who choose it.
The romance itself was pretty good, they got along really well and had a good laugh together and had the chemistry that I love reading about so much. I liked Marcus as a character, and I loved the friendship between Ally and Sam too. Ally is quite a promiscuous character as first, but this is shown to very much okay and I loved that aspect. This book actually also made me cry, which is why I included a trigger warning at the start and why I'm not going to add a spoiler tag now because I wasn't expecting a certain scene at the vets where tough decisions have to be made and it absolutely broke me. Many of us have personal experience with a situation like that, and this one was really hard-hitting.
However, I did have some issues. The age gap wasn't explored very well. I'm all for age is just a number and all, but I don't think it was very present in the story at all and to me, a 20 year age gap is something that should be explored a little more. I also think that while the friendship between Sam and Ally was good, it was neglected towards the end of the novel. I had a couple issues with plotting-a couple of times, I almost felt like I'd missed when a decision had been made and it just jumped straight into it. Right at the end, when certain accusations had been made, I don't feel it was necessary to include those and I'm not convinced they were handled particularly well.
For a debut novel though, this was good. It's fluffy but with depth, and a fun forbidden romance that I think a lot of people will relate to, despite the taboo.

3.5* The Ally of the first couple of chapters morphed into someone else in the rest of the tale...

This book was my intro to the author and it's not a bad tale, though hopefully the ARC will go through further editing and proofing; there are silly errors such as Ally removing her shoes and then a few lines down, removing her shoes again, and later on, sunning her feet on a dashboard without even putting them there...

That aside, it's quite a decent book, but it's a sign of the times, I think, that this female lead is so supposedly scared of commitment, when most traditional romances would have this the opposite way round, with the guy being the gun shy one. Tbh, I liked Marcus more than Ally, though I wasn't quite sure what he was getting at at the start, asking her to come to his place, baiting her and being rather obtuse in his questions. I didn't have a clue about the potential romance, so I was a bit blindsided.

I'm not sure that I believed this was a 2020 tale - to have a 28yo female lead being nicknamed The Brentford Bike, supposedly at school, makes it sound dated and the attacks on Sam by his homophobic older brother, and his weak mother, also dated the tale. It's a British tale and I like to think we Brits are live and let live - certainly in the London I know - this wasn't really the case here. I did believe that Ally was all about sex with no strings without justifying it and without the author overtly blaming her hippie mother, or absentee father, etc. It's about time a woman can have her cake and eat it!

The star of the show for me was Harry. Sweet, flirty, lovable Harry. I was sad at the passing of Debbie, having gone through something similar, and it felt as if Marcus gave up on her a little too readily and that that part of the tale was very rushed. I also didn't quite get how two grown-up sons wouldn't clock that their parents hadn't had a marriage for 30yrs, slept in separate rooms and lived like strangers, and still seemed to be trying to set them in in date-type situations to try to get them back together again. And, the final angsty scene where Ally completely believes someone who turns out to be a compulsive liar and manipulator, doesn't ring true - it sounds like she's reverted back to her (as she classes herself) ditzy persona. Yes, she was in shock, but you don't just immediately distrust someone you know intimately, when you're clearly being set up as she was. But, it worked for the angst-needed part of the tale.

This book had a little too much happening in it and could have done with a little weeding out, with a little less of Ally not knowing her mind. And, tbh, having a female lead who knows she has feelings for the male lead, suddenly jump into bed with a f-bud who's just become available again, then changing her mind, then a month or so later, agreeing to go to the tropics somewhere with him, before changing her mind, made me think that Ally really didn't know her mind, only her libido. It detracted slightly from the rose-tinted glasses aspect of traditional romance (showing my age here, lol!) but I think that's what made it contemporary and believable in these days of Me, Me, Me.

ARC courtesy of Headline Eternal and NetGalley for my reading pleasure.

I really enjoyed this book. Ally with her head in the clouds but a good heart and lovely and selfless Marcus and all the drama that came with these two people being drawn to each other. I felt for Ally and her need to keep Sam and how it was in constant conflict with her growing feelings for Marc. Also loved her following her career dreams despite her fears that she would fail and Marcus’ unfailing belief in her talents. Overall a really good debut and I look forward to more from this author.

The story of Ally and Marcus. they meet when she is pretending to be Sam's girlfriend. She thought it was a bit of harmless flirting but then she realises that Marcus is Sam's dad. Can they have a future together and what will Sam say when he finds out?

This is a fun, enjoyable read. The Author is English, so there is a small language adjustment, which I found added to the novelty of the story. There are several problems addressed in this book, a substantial age difference between the main characters, the flighty memory but delightful mind of Ally and the discord between family and friends. All made this story one of my favorite reads. Add to this your TBR list.