I really really enjoyed this book. It was so cozy and kept me wanting more. I must admit nothing that happened shocked me but I am so glad I read the book.

I would totally recommend for a lovely relaxing read!

Make Up Break Up is the perfect enemy-to-lover love story (although I’m never sure they were really enemies to begin with).

The story follows Annika Dev and Hudson Craft, two creators of morally conflicting dating apps as they slowly figure out their feelings for each other, sparked by a previous encounter during a trip to Las Vegas. Hudson Craft is everything that Annika Dev isn’t, and so we follow her on her journey of picking between her head and her heart.

Make Up Break Up is the perfect adult romance novel – bringing in the normal trial and tribulations of everyday adult life and entwining them with a dysfunctional, and yet oddly perfect, love story.

The characters were relatable (some not in the sense that you are them, but in the sense you know them), and the plot was light-hearted yet deep in unexpected places. Overall, a very refreshing, uplifting read.

This book features one of my favourite tropes, a killer setting and kick ass female business owners but unfortunately it just fell a little bit short for me. It was one of those reads where you kept reading on and on and waiting for something romantic or sexy to happen and it just didn't. I think there was just something a little off with the pacing and so I felt like I was still waiting for something to happen as I reached the ending.

The characters in this book are really interesting because they are self made, we have a female business owners, a female coder and people who have really identified gaps in the market and capitalized on that. This book also really shows how the whole hustle culture is really taking its toll on people today. The whole thing about boasting about lack of sleep is truly real! These characters were great on their own but I really didn't get the chemistry between them, even the rivalry or friendship let alone the romance.

I think that if this book had given up a little more action earlier on it could have been a real contender for a great romcom. I loved the idea that characters have met before and now they're forced back together again in turbulent circumstances, it's like the beginning of Grease! However I really needed to know what had happened in Vegas, and what was going to happen next as a consequence. I really wanted to love this book but it just didn't do it for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins Press/ St Martins Griffin for ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is an excellent first romance novel from Lily Menon and I look forward to reading lots in the future from her!!

I found this book an easy romantic read which I loved! A perfect read for holidays relaxing in the sun.

Annika Dev’s enthusiasm for her career and business keeps you rooting for her all the way through! Is the business going to make it?!

You will both love and hate Hudson in this book which is fantastic! That you get such a great feel for the characters to have such strong feelings about them is brilliant.

Although like many romance novels in which you want the perfect ending the story is obvious from the start...there’s no real surprises in store but that doesn’t take away that it is a book worth reading.



Annika Dev believes in love, second chances and fairy-tale endings. Her app, Make Up, helps couples believe in these things too.

Hudson Craft believes in fast cards, flashy start-ups and high efficiency break-ups. His app, Break Up, helps people expedite their failing relationships. It's wildly successful and everything that Annika hates.

Which wouldn't be a problem if they'd gone their separate ways after their summer fling in Las Vegas, never to see each other again. Unfortunately for Annika, Hudson's moving into the office next door to hers - and he's planning on also competing at the prestigious EPIC investment pitch contest. A contest Annika needs to win if she wants to keep Make Up afloat.

Annika is not prepared to go down without a fight. Only, as the two rival app developers clash, Annika finds that she enjoys sparring with Hudson way too much. And that underneath his shallow exterior, he might not be all that despicable... Could it be that everything she thought about Hudson is completely wrong? Could the creator of Break Up teach her what true love's really about?

This book certainly has the basis of a great enemies-turned-lovers romance with all the mandatory tension, conflicts, and chemistry. I loved Annika as a character, her relationship with her best friend June, her father and her passion for her business all made her a compelling character. I was less enthused about Hudson Craft, something just didn't click with me, maybe it was the Christian Grey vibes I'm not sure, there was just more to be developed there I felt but maybe that's just me.
This is a sweet, fun story that appeals to those who love city/professional character-led romances and drama.
I think some parts of the story were slow or felt awkward so this lost some of the appeal but it is a book with a lot of positives in the romance field.

Thanks to Hodder and Stoughton for a review copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Annika Dev believes in love, second chances and fairy-tale endings. Her app, Make Up, helps couples believe in these things too.

Hudson Craft believes in fast cars, flashy start-ups and high efficiency break-ups. His app, Break Up, helps people expedite their failing relationships. It's wildly successful and everything that Annika hates.

Which wouldn't be a problem if they'd gone their separate ways after their summer fling in Las Vegas, never to see each other again. Unfortunately for Annika, Hudson's moving into the office next door to hers - and he's planning on also competing at the prestigious EPIC investment pitch contest. A contest Annika needs to win if she wants to keep Make Up afloat.

Annika is not prepared to go down without a fight. Only, as the two rival app developers clash, Annika finds that she enjoys sparring with Hudson way too much. And that underneath his shallow exterior, he might not be all that despicable... Could it be that everything she thought about Hudson is completely wrong? Could the creator of Break Up teach her what true love's really about?

I was looking forward to this book. Unfortunately I found I couldn't connect with the main characters, I found the main female character too harsh and didn't read enough about the main male character. Seemed to follow a trend as opposed to having a new idea.

I absolutely loved this book. It's a fantastic enemies to lovers/second chance romance. The protagonist is a fiery 24 year old woman whose dream is to launch an app that brings struggling couples back together. The hero is the cocky, antagonistic CEO of a rival app which provides hassle free breakups. There is absolutely no reason why they should work. Except the perfect week they spent together almost a year ago.

If you're looking for a fun filled romance brimming with sabotage and seduction, this is the book for you. I think it will especially appeal to fans of The Hating Game who haven't found that same spark in other enemies to lovers romances.

TW for loss of a parent and grief.

On surface, Lily Menon's premise for this one ticks all my boxes! Rivals to lovers goodness? Yes please. But unfortunately, this book really really wasn't for me. First, the 'lore' with all the technical details of the app was really boring and I found myself skimming through. Then, the chemistry between the two leads was non existent? They had none of the spark and banter I've come to expect from a rivals to lovers trope! It's so much of telling, and not enough showing. I'm supposed to believe Annika is attracted to Hudson because she says so, repeatedly. And thirdly, Hudson's interaction with Annika's Indianness and her own perception of it made me super uncomfortable. Thinking her name sounds exotic? Really? In 2021?.

Needless to say, I'm well disappointed especially considering how much I enjoy Sandhya's writing. Someone who likes tech techbro content mixed heavily with their romance may enjoy this book better than I did!

This book made me wanna scream into my pillow, but in a good way. Annika and Hudson are definitely rivals-to-lovers excellence and have become my newest OTP. There were literally so many moments I was screaming at them to kiss.

And I have to say, Annika is exactly the type of person I wanna be. I related to her so much throughout the whole book, especially during the scenes she had with her father. June is exactly the type of supportive best friend we all need. I felt like her and I would really get along with each other.

And Hudson??? I. Love. Him. He's such a fun character and god, my favorite scene of him was definitely the one where he was talking about sculpting. I could feel his passion for it and that made me fall in love with him a lot more than I expected.

All in all, I would 1000% recommend this book if you're looking for a cute, funny and lighthearted rivals-to-lovers story. Make Up Break Up has certainly been one of the most enjoyable stories that I have read.

I love seeing books with women working in STEM. It's really inspiring to see a character working in a profession where women are so strongly underrepresented. Seeing the insight to their app was so interesting, and I loved watching them prepare for the showcase.

One thing I didn't particularly enjoy was the working relationship between Annika and June. At times it felt like two women working against each other on the same project, and that Annika didn't particularly see her as an equal in the project.

I love an enemies to lovers romance, but this is SUCH a slow burn, and we don't really see any kind of ease in the animosity between Hudson and Annika for a good 3/4 of this book. For me, that's just a tad too long to enjoy.

It's a great adult debut from an already well established author, but I think there are just some things that could be tweaked.

So I feel like I have a lot to say about this book as much as I don't. I expected more from it. It had the potential to give The Hating Game a run for its money but it fell kinda, flat? Was there tension? Sure. Was there love? Sure. Was there hate? Um, don't think so. Yes, Annika and Hudson had spats and played tricks on each other but Annika was 100% in denial over her feelings for Hudson, and he was a really love sick puppy. And that last chapter? Ick. There was something off about it, I've been trying to put my finger on it for days.

Another thing I didn't like was how much talk there was about the apps. It got so bad that I swore to myself if Annika explained the premise of her app one more effing time, I would straight DNF it.

HOWEVER, the one thing that saved this book was its humour. It was genuinely funny in some parts and overall I enjoyed the read more as a 'I'm in the mood for something light' rather than anything else. It was easy to pick up and just as easy to put down.

I liked parts of this book but found it really hard to relate to Annika - her decisions and feelings did not seem to reflect what was happening at some points and I found her reactions to Hudson to be sometimes bizarre. I did enjoy the aspects of the book that focused on her business however, and enjoyed that the book focused on a women led company.

Angst, misunderstandings, clever pranks & funny, emotional and passionate MC’s. I can’t wait for it to be out in this world!!

2.5/5

This started out so well [sigh]. I do have things I like in this book, I just wish some aspects were executed a little better. The premise really intrigued me since it reminded me of Alisha Rai’s The Right Swipe but it went in a different direction with very different characters so my brain wasn’t making that many comparisons.

Let’s get straight to the point. Things that I did not like about the book:

Hudson. He is so… plain. I struggled to root for his character throughout the book, he consistently does things that made him really irritating and it’s always addressed on a very surface level. His apologies and “actions” towards the end felt so disingenuous as well. He does a lot of petty and frankly unethical things as a business owner towards our main lady Annika which kind of took away my enjoyment from the rivalry because it’s not a healthy, friendly one. Also knowing that Annika is a woman of color trying to make it in a white, male dominated industry and still having to deal with Hudson (who is the embodiment of privilege)‘s pettiness feels so distasteful. It is never really addressed too besides the occasional Girl Boss lines. We learn very little about his backstory besides his financial goals and his parents owning a store, it’s just so hard to feel anything for his character throughout the book which is an issue seeing how this is a romance novel involving him. By the end of the book he still feels like an incredibly douche-y character who says things like “Hey, that’s the sound of success.” The bar is so low.

Annika is a fine main character, I like that she’s really hardworking and wants her business to succeed as an ode to her parents’ love and I understood her frustrations in the beginning of the book with Hudson and his company. But, as the book went along, her character felt so… confusing? This isn’t me saying her character has to follow a caricature or that women can’t be multifaceted but a lot of her actions were just so strange? Example one: Make Up is on the verge of bankruptcy, the bank has decided that if they could not pay off some of their debts, they’ll have to be evicted. When invited to a party filled with potential investors by Hudson, she decides to hire a mariachi band on top of renting the other half of the roof to disrupt his party… why? So many of her actions felt so juvenile and irrational, and then we find out his father is incredibly rich after calling her best friend a trust fund baby.

“You know, not the dark, sinking desperation that came from being cash-poor.” <b>But you’re not really though are you?</b>

The romance really fell flat for me, mostly due to how I feel about the two characters individually. It wasn’t enough for me to connect with any of them and root for their relationship. I wish we had a whole chapter just diving back into the one week in Vegas instead of little glimpses and fade-to-black paragraphs. It might’ve made Hudson’s character make more sense to me and help us better understand why Annika seems to fall for him so easily instead of just telling us how he used to act.

The writing was very simple which works at times, though a couple scenes felt lacking in conveying emotions. We would just get really surface level telling which makes it hard to feel for characters when they go through something difficult. The family aspect with Annika could’ve been written better, having her father repeat the same conversation with her felt unnecessary and at times it was a little unbelievable cause one minute he would be really caring, trying his best to understand her choices and the next scene he would act without giving a thought to her feelings(?) Some subplots felt really cliche but I didn’t mind it that much.

I wish the book delved deeper into the tech industry and brought some depth to the topic, it felt like it had quite a bit to say about how technology has influenced dating and modern love but it ended up feeling very surface level. Like how technology can also discriminate, the set backs and benefits of online dating services besides the sentimental factor, how their OLLI program would work for neurodivergent users, etc etc. It’s also really hard to believe how over one million used the breakup app to actually break up with people.

Now the good, the book isn’t a total flop, there were things I liked.

There were a couple lines that genuinely made me chuckle, the humour wasn’t really sustained throughout the book especially after they started dating for some reason, but the beginning had a couple scenes and lines that were really witty and funny.

I love Annika’s relationship with June. The two of them had such wholesome scenes, it was one of my favourite aspects of the book. Hell June carried this book for me with her little Southern bell, blonde, adorable charm and her relationship with Ziggy gets zero screen time but they were cute too. Yeah that’s it.

<i><b>Thank you to Netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review</b></i>

A sweet romance with some good fun humour mixed in. I liked that they had a brief history even if I wasn’t entirely hooked with their ending and the choices Hudson makes.
The two apps that each create and run companies for are a new venture for romance but I’m not entirely convinced it really worked in this context, it felt slightly disjointed the competition between the apps, until it came to the EPIC presentation I couldn’t really see how the two apps really needed to be pitted against each other and so how that led to the enemy status of Hudson from Annika.
It was still a fun read and I sped through the whole book.

Addictive steamy, rom-com with engaging leads and novel angle. Annika Dev is the young dynamic CEO of Make-up, an app that helps couples get back together. Her arch nemesis. Hudson Craft, is the sexy, extremely successful CEO of Break-up, an app that out-sources break-ups. She cant stand him or his ideals, and yet they keep crossing paths, which is tricky considering their undeniable chemistry and a week (that may or may not have happened) in Vegas. Now they must compete on a professional stage while something different is transpiring on the personal front.

Good pace, cool backdrop in the start-up space, endearing characters and just enough friction between the leads to keep it spicy and steamy. A perfect, light read for my beach holiday .

Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Annika created an app so couples could make up. Hudson created an app so couples could break up. So apparently, they have completely different views of love and to make matters worse, he moves to an office that it's next door Annika's and they'll soon do a pitch for the same investors. To increase - even more - the tension between those two, they still have the unresolved hook up that happened a year ago.

I don't know why but I'm never able to rate Sandhya Menon's higher than 3.5 stars. Even though I find her books very entertaining, I always feel like there's something missing.

Her writing was - as per usual - very easy to get into. In the first chapter, I was already hooked. I really liked the humor throughout the narrative and the dialogs. Also, the characters' rivalry and the bantering was so fun to read.

I liked the characters fine. Annika was funny, but a bit too much for me at times. Hudson was cool, but not the male lead that made my heart melt.

My biggest problem was their relationship. They were kind of cute at times - and very funny, I'll give them that - but I felt like there wasn't enough tension and chemistry as a hate-to-love story should have. It also annoyed the hell out of me the fact that they didn't talk and I know lack of communication is supposed to be an issue here, since the characters talk about it several times, but it was still a bit irritating.


Overall, it was a really fun book, but the romance was not so convincing to me

I was really excited for this book as I loved the premise. I love enemies to lovers romances that involve competition as it means that the 'enemies' aspect of the story is believable. The competition between the two main characters made for a nice element of the story.
However, I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed. This book just constantly felt like it was setting it up but never going any further with the romance. The romance itself started off interesting but it just seemed to jump from point A to point F so quickly. I think the main two needed more of a natural development in their relationship because it just didn't really make sense.
I do still think it is a great adult romance read, especially if you like enemies-to-lovers, but I just wish it was developed a little bit more.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martins Griffin and the author for allowing me to review this book.

Rating: 2/5

I read the synopsis of this book and was excited to start reading. However, I found that I couldn’t connect with the main characters at all. As for Annika, to say I dislike her is not even justice enough.

The story of a summer hookup stealing your ideas and running with it and then becoming much more popular than you could ever imagine...annoying sure but when you share your ideas with outsiders, it can happen.

I just couldn’t relate to Annika and the way she was treating Hudson was usually too much for me and I just couldn’t hope for them to resolve their issues.

Every bit as charming, sweet & steamy as The Hating Game. This was book was impossible to out down. I loved that Annika was strong and emotionally charged. I cannot wait for future Lily Menon books!