Sophie Ranald has an incredible ability to understand people's emotions. She's written some incredibly difficult scenes with so much sensitivity, and there are other parts of this book that will have you laugh out loud. The story is not at all what I expected really; it has a completely different – and entirely loveable – ending to what I assumed.

Each character is cleverly constructed and could almost be real people – they're so multi-faceted! Ranald writes in a compelling manner and I devoured this book. Just Saying will offer you a heart-warming story which allows you to escape from your everyday reality. It's not your usual rom-com and you'll thank yourself for picking something different to read.

I'd definitely recommend this to my friends and family, and if you've read The Flat Share or similar, you'll love this.

Light Hearted, Touch of Humour with Elements of Life's Struggles 💝

Alice and Joe are training to be solicitors, on Alice's birthday during a visit to the local farmers market, a familiar face from the past for Joe which raises concerns for Alice... his ex Zoe❣️

Whilst Alice had thought her life was sorted on completing her training, an event out of her control changes her job prospects instantly. Life the way she knew it then became very different.

Just Saying is a great easy read, whilst there is humour, it also touches on subjects that some people can relate to. I've not read any books by this author before, but definitely intend to read more.

What a great read Sophie, took me from shock to laughter to dispare to anger to tears to joy..and most of all to hope. I loved the relationships ,'best friends', 'siblings', 'lovers', 'exlovers', 'community' a real story about what really matters in life, totally brilliant.

This is my first book by the author and undeniably a cosy read. It took me a while to engage with the MC but there were a number of other secondary characters to bond with. Several storylines where covered throughout the book which I felt could have been expanded slightly.
What was different was the fact the author built the storyline around an established relationship and not a start up relationship.. The story flowed well, contained both funny and heart warming moments . From an eccentric landlady to a vegan ex girlfriend ...there is something for everyone. What was great is that it wasn’t predictable either and kept me guessing. A great read and I will definitely read another book by this author.

Although this hasn’t been my favourite book from this author it is still a good, quick read.

Alice lives with her boyfriend Joe they’re both trainee laywers about to qualify at a big London firm. When Alice’s career path takes a different route they end up renting their spare room to Zoe who is an old girlfriend of Joes! … Crazy, right?!

The book isn’t overly romantic and it has a few interesting side stories touching on the #metoo movement and the Windrush generation.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC

This follows our main character Alice, who resides with her boyfriend Joe. She considers him to be "the one" and their life is pretty much perfect... until it isn't. When Joe asks his ex, Zoe, to move in since she is homeless and has no where to go, Alice reluctantly agrees and starts to second guess Zoe's intentions and if her relationship really is as good and secure as it seems.

This book was fun! I liked the main story line and how there were other story lines weaving into it. I thought that Alice was a really passionate character. She was also relatable in the insecurities she felt in regards to herself and her relationship, because all women feel that. Even those that seem the most confident.

I liked how the author also tackled the #MeToo movement and made it part of Alice's story, but not to the point where it was overtaking the original plot and story line. I do wish that Alice had told Joe sooner, since a lot of the book was about Alice thinking about this event and secret she had from Joe and how she was going to tell him. I understand why the author wrote it this way, and it is realistic in the fact that there are many women who never come forward, or who take a long time to do so.

This review will be published on the below-mentioned blog and other social media on 22nd June 2020

Book Title: Just Saying

Author: Sophie Ranald

Genre: Fiction / Romance

Publishing Date: 03 July 2020




Line Summary:

This story is about the character "Alice", her life after her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend moved into their apartment as a flatmate and her decision to quit her lawyer job and be a bar employee!

My Review:

This is my first book from this author and I kind of feel "meh" about this book! I don’t love it but I don’t hate it either. But the blurb definitely misguided me! I have a very different expectation from the blurb and its a totally opposite one! This is clearly not a humorous romance book! I didn’t even smile at any scene! The plot is a good one but not interesting at all! The characters are good, deep, and very natural. The initial chapters seem wandering without any point but after some time the sideline story of “me too” movement and sexual harassment kind of getting our attention. but the main story kind of boring without any turning points. I love the way the sexual harassment been handled very sensitively but without compromising its evilness! The bar and the love towards it didn't much influence me. The gay rights and the issues around them also didn’t get much notice. I think the book tried to handle too many things and ends with watering down all the emotions! And so we couldn’t connect deeply with any single thing/emotion! The love /insecurity between the couples, the love towards the bar, the sadness behind the gay couple, meanwhile the sexual harassment and its impacts everything seems too much to put into a single story and so it’s kind of getting weakened! This is a flat, in the end, all a good story! If you prefer one, it’s a decent enjoyable read!

Thoughts while reading:
I love the "Alice" character! Her good heart, patience, insecurities, love everything seems natural and quite good to read!

I don’t know why but The way she loves the bar and tried to save it didn’t impact much at all maybe, it's because the story implies she tried to distract herself from her trauma than having a passion for the bar job!

As expected I hate the "Zoe" character! But the way she is sneaking into the story is wonderful and the way the story pictures the uneasiness around her is so natural!

Kudos for capturing all those sexual Harassment victim's emotions! Everything related to it is heartbreaking and it definitely creates awareness about the victims! Those who asked "why they keep silent at that time" should read it I don’t have enough words to praise it!

I wish the story handled only the main romance/ insecurities with "me too" movement rather than the other topics! The sideline flirt, the case of deportation everything seems squeezed into it and so I couldn’t enjoy it at all!

I liked the climax even though it’s a cliche! Overall a good story to enjoy!


Thanks to #netgalley and the publishers #bookouture for this ARC. This review is straight from my heart not biased in any way!

-- Read this review, and others, on my blog www.hookedbythatbook.com –

Alice and Joe are very happy together and working at the same company, both as lawyers. Until Alice’s new boss is fired for inappropriate behaviour, and she loses her coveted position at the company. Alice falls into working at the local pub, and finds that she really loves it. But this means that Joe and Alice need some extra money to pay the rent, and Joe offers the extra room to his ex-girlfriend, Zoë.

I’m not a big fan of this trope. When Zoë moved in with Joe and Alice, I started to feel very antsy. There is just so much that can potentially go wrong here and I could feel myself tensing up about it. I have never wanted to skip ahead so much! But I didn’t. And even though I felt anxious about this situation for much of the book (definitely not the author’s fault!), I still enjoyed the story.

I liked Alice and I think her reactions to the things that happened to her were very normal and expected. Joe is the best guy ever. Ladies, you should aim for this kind of man.

This book made me think a lot. Even though you might have a very strong relationship that can withstand almost anything, doesn’t mean you should deliberately test that bond. Like inviting your ex to share the apartment with you and your partner, or playing secret online Scrabble matches with a guy who is not your boyfriend (and not telling him about it).

I’m happy with the ending. There was definitely a lot to think about, and I think this will make an excellent book for a book club discussion.

Thank you to Boukouture and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC. Any thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book was cute and I finished it in one day! I definitely could relate to Alice wanting to quit her job and figure something else out for herself. I found that part of the book to be very inspiring. While I found Joe buying shoes for Alice to be really cute (read the book to find this out :) ), I didn't find the book to be so romantic because most of it took place in the pub Alice worked in. I do think that the insertion of the #MeToo was handled very well and realistically. Overall, an entertaining read but found, at times, that it strayed from the romantic aspect of it.

I LOVE Sophie Ranald - so many thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC and chance to review this book!

Alice has it all - she's training to become a lawyer in a prestigious office and even has an in-office job lined up for after her training, she lives with her fantastic boyfriend, everything seems perfect! But then, she and Joe run into his ex, Zoe - and Alice also runs into some unexpected problems at work, so she quits and Zoe moves in to their spare bedroom.

The synopsis above sounds like a mess. And really, the story kind of is all over the place, but in a good way. It's so much more than I expected. There's workplace drama, Alice coming to terms with past trauma in the #MeToo era, a new and different job prospect, and - of course - plenty of suspicious activity between Alice and Zoe. Yes, it is a romantic comedy of sorts, but it's also so much more.

I would like to thank #bookouture for sending me an #ARC of Sophie Ranald's book, #JustSaying, via #NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Just Saying by Sophie Ranald is a stand-alone book, about a woman named Alice, who, just as life was shaping up the way she thought it ought to, with her wonderful boyfriend of two years, their own flat, and job offers at a pretegious law firm, has it ripped away after finding out her boss was terminated, and the position she was offered, no longer there. Instead of looking for work in her field, she ends up wandering into a local pub, and after helping out there, ends up working there and falling in love with the run down place. To make ends meet, her perfect boyfriend suggests moving in his friend ... who happens to be his ex who he was in love with ... into their second room, which, as you can imagine, leads to a slew of new problems.

This is the hard part of receiving advanced reading copies. The books that leave you ... stumped. I don't want to be too rough, but I need to be honest. Just Saying is ... a bit of a mess. For a few reasons. But I want to say what I liked about it first.

I liked that the raw emotions felt from the characters in this book, given the situation, were realistic. Insecurity. Jealousy. These are normal, human emotions, that happen even in the best, and most trusting, of relationships. We are a flawed species, and it's natural. I also felt, in the too short times that Alice and Joe were together in the book, that their chemistry was there. The emotional turmoil one goes through when going through a rough patch with their partner was pretty dead-on. I also enjoyed that our main character, while pushed out of her job in a way, found something she actually loved, instead of something she felt she should do.

Now for what I didn't like.
1. The cover, and the description don't match with the book. At all. "Who Needs a Boyfriend When You Have A Bottle of Wine." doesn't even remotely make sense with this book. The description, makes you think that our main character Alice is fighting for man ... which, spoiler alert, isn't the case at all.

2. This book is labeled as a rom-com. I didn't find it funny. There is a bitter under-current to the whole book. I found the whole time I was reading it mildly anxious. Living with your boyfriend's ex, and watching them get along better than you are ... it's icky feeling, and not at all comedic. The most comedic scene in this book was Alice and her best friend talking about the "Ick" factor that ruins relationships. A couple of pages of dialogue doesn't make for a comedy.

3. It was hardly romantic. Most of the book is about Alice and the pub she works at. I won't lie, I ended up skimming chapters (which I NEVER do), because a lot of it was pointless. It had no bearing on the story that was described. For a romance, we hardly see Alice and Joe together at all in the book. I know their separate schedules could be blamed, and their rough patch, but in order to be classified as a romance, you actually need a couple to read about, and the only times I felt like they were a couple, were the first couple chapters, and the last one.

4. I mentioned this already, but there was a lot of pointless "scenes" in this book. I think Alice falling in love with the pub could have been established with a lot less.

5. There is a bit of a back and forth in timeline in this book. Which I am fine with. I only wish it was more clear at the beginning of a chapter, that we were going back in time.

6. The plausibility of someone EVER agreeing to have their partners ex, who they loved and had sex with once upon a time, to move in with them ... no. I read fantasy, and THAT even seems far-fetched to me.

The characters in this book were okay. Often, though, I found I was mostly frustrated. So many times I read that Alice KNEW she needs to talk to Joe, but continually found excuses not to, but then was in constant turmoil over the state of their relationship.

Just Saying is a bit of flop. The cover and description, hell, even the genre, is all wrong. The story itself had promise ... but it kind of went everywhere, and by the end, I didn't quite know what I just read. I still don't.

If you are looking for a book to lighten/brighten your mood, this may be the book for you. It is described as "an absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy". The book takes place in the U.K. and Alice is our protagonist. She is a young professional, has always done what's expected of her in terms of school and career choice. She is in a committed relationship with someone who is her equal and is loving and good to her. There are portions of the book that are laugh out loud funny, particularly early on in the book. Alice does have a bit of an identity crisis, in terms of her future and what she would like to do with her life. Throughout these bits of the book, there are themes that are more serious and some of them are troubling. Alice could easily represent any one of us. She is easy to root for. Even while dealing with subjects that may be upsetting or a trigger to some, Alice and the author of this book have a way of still leaving you with a smile on your face at the book's conclusion. Thank you @NetGalley, @bookouture and the author for the advance e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! Release date is 7/3/20. #NetGalley #JustSaying #sophieranald #goodreads #sophieranald #booksandmrdarcy #withhernosestuckinabook❤️📚

An invite to a book tour featuring a book by this author? YES, PLEASE! Her book covers and titles already put a smile on my face even before I have read one single letter of the content, but I also know that the author hides some deeper subjects inside. 

A story by this author guarantees tears, either caused by laughter or by feeling the pain the main characters go through. There is another certainty that comes with reading feel good books : a happy ending. No matter what the protagonists have gone through they always find their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

'A problem shared is a problem halved' is one of the proverbs that fit here, but sometimes you are too afraid, too ashamed to share. Once you have overcome these feelings, you can heal. 

The author succeeds, once again, to entertain me a lot with her new book. 5 stars

Thank you, Sophie Ranald and Bookouture

I will definitely be reading more from this author! This book was fun!!! I love books that I can laugh and learn a thing or two. Thank you so much #net galley for the ARC!

MY THOUGHTS

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for the advanced copy! This book releases in early July, and it’s really good. The synopsis of this book is a little offbase, though. While there is a romcom element to it, and while relationships are a crucial part, it’s actually much more focused on Alice’s own personal journey. She is in line to become a lawyer and is suddenly let go from her job without reason and finds herself working in a rundown pub near her apartment. Alice’s career moves drive most of the plot.

This is advertised as a “feel good page turner”, but it’s only half correct. It is a page turner, but I would not categorize this as something that necessarily made me feel good. I did laugh and smile, sometimes. But I also cringed, stressed, worried, and wanted justice. It should come with a trigger warning for sexual assault. The first half of the book definitely reads like a romcom, but the rest is deeper and heavier.

If you’re up for a book about a woman trying to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life as she finds herself working in a dirty pub, living with her boyfriend and his ex girlfriend, and maybe crushing on someone else, this book is for you 😉

‘Just saying’ was a really enjoyable read- the perfect feel good chick lit for any time of year (not just one for the beach!)
I was immediately invested in the main character Alice, and couldn’t put this book down until I knew how things turned out!
4/5 stars and I will certainly be looking out for this author again.

I don't really know how to feel. On the one hand, I enjoyed the storyline, but on the other, I was just missing something that I can't quite pinpoint. Maybe more drama, maybe more romance, maybe some fist fights, I don't know. Like okay, if your boyfriend of many years tells you that you guys should consider moving in his ex girlfriend into the house bc you guys need some financial help, you'd probably be like wtf no and have an existential crisis, I get it. And when your world turns upside down career-wise, you want to implode, like dang I get why you're frazzled. But, to me, Alice just felt like she struggled to be established in anything and I didn't seem to like her anywhere. Ugh, that sounds horrible, but I really did wish to have liked her more because this story solely revolves around her and it wouldv'e been more impactful if she had this extra boost in her to get the story moving. -JH

Totally brilliant! This is funny and heartwarming whilst also having serious issues running through it. I read it over 2 nights during lockdown and loved every page of it

Overall, this was a decently enjoyable read, but not what I had expected from the blurb. I had assumed this would be a funny story about a woman stuck in the same apartment with her boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, but it was actually mostly a story about a woman trying to figure out what she wants with her life while also dealing with trauma. That's fine, but definitely not what I had expected.

That being said, I had an okay time reading this, but this story is definitely not without its problems. It felt very long to me because it's filled with side plots that felt forced and didn't really add much. I think there were a lot of repetitions as well and Alice over-explained everything to the reader. The story moved slowly, particularly the large sections about Alice's work at the pub, and what I thought would be the main story (Alice's problems with her boyfriend Joe and his ex, Zoe) was sidelined throughout most of the book, so when the conclusion finally came, I just didn't care much.

The characters weren't very well-developed. I didn't really feel as if I knew who Joe was, aside from being athletic and making romantic gestures, Zoe felt like a stereotypical hipster character, Drew was almost lazily created ("Oh, this is my brother Drew. He's hot, flighty and really good with social media), and Heather who? The pub patrons were seriously underdeveloped as well - the only one I got a feel for was Maurice and I didn't really care for his side plot (it felt both forced and underdeveloped).

Also, I don't think this book will age particularly well. It's very much a product of its time with references to the (at the time) current political landscape, but also references to what's trending in the pub world and so. I thought the #MeToo thing could have been handled better, but I didn't mind its inclusion.

But again, I thought this was perfectly okay. The writing was fine, I appreciated Alice's struggle with her career path and I do have a soft spot for this kind of setting. I also liked Frazzle the cat.

Alice is in love, with her perfect boyfriend Joe. She gave up nights out for romantic evenings in, spent hungover mornings in bed together and blissful Saturday afternoons wandering around food markets. Then one day Joe runs into his ex Zoe and sparks seem to fly between them. That same week Alice looses her job and Zoe needs a place live, put two and two together and Zoe moves into their spare room to help with the rent. However Alice starts to feel threatened with the beautiful ex living in the spare room. At the same time she coming to terms with loosing her job and thinking of starting again. Can Alive come to terms with her new living arrangements and keep her boyfriend Joe?

I absolutely loved this book.
This is the third book I’ve read by Sophie Ranald and it’s her best yet. It’s got everything you look for in a chick lit; one moment you are laughing out loud the next being filled with emotion for Alice. It is brilliantly written, there is a deeper more relevant issue that was subtly written into the story and covered so well (no spoilers). I couldn’t put this book down and highly recommend to anyone looking for a book that has it all. Truly deserves it five stars rating.