Laura Morrison’s life is a bit of a mess. She’s currently living on a blow-up bed in her sister’s attic. She’s hanging on to her job by a thread. Her ex-boyfriend and former roommate has just moved in with his new girlfriend. And Laura is worrying that there is something wrong with her because she’s never had a long-term relationship. And then, along comes Cupid (and no, I don’t mean the baby with a bow and arrow). A new dating app that promises to find you your perfect match by having access to all your internet browsing. In an effort to save her job, and to open the door to love, Laura agrees to be the first to test it out.

I had high hopes for this book, I had just finished something very dark when I started this. Unfortunately, my hopes fell a little flat. Laura is a very relatable character, I mean who hasn’t worried that something is wrong with them? (Please tell me I’m not alone here). There are a lot of times where you just want to jump through the page and give her a hug. However, after just a few pages you know that instead of looking for love, Laura needs to learn to love herself. And this is never properly dealt with in the book. To be honest, any issues that characters face are brushed off a little too lightly.

As for her love interests, well….. Adam seems to be a sweetheart, while Cass is a slimeball. As soon as Cass was introduced you knew straight away, not good news. But other than the typical good guy bad guy trope, neither of these men felt like real human beings.

The book does have some funny moments, with some witty dialogue. I think maybe my hopes were a little high when starting, but overall it is a good book. I think that I had hoped for a little more insight and selfcare when it came to Laura.

As the synopsis for this book tells you, life for Laura hasn’t been great. So when an invite to trial a new dating service arrives she decides to give it a go. Laura is a journalist and she can use her experience of the service to hopefully help her keep her job.

This is a light and fun read. Following Laura as she goes through her days and then her meeting with her potential perfect match. As this is supposed to be an easy way of meeting and finding your partner it is supposed to take some of the doubts and lies out of the start of a new relationship.

I liked the idea of this book, using algorithms to find a potential match is great. As we know, algorithms are great but they do have peculiarities so I was waiting for a twist along the way.

Laura has other problems in life and this did help bring other characters into the story along with family and friends. These characters add a good range of personalities and give different advice and opinions.

Overall a lighthearted story that had a few surprises. If you are a fan of contemporary romance then I do think this is one you would enjoy and it’s one I would recommend.

I really couldn’t get into this one. The premise of online dating and the possibility of finding love through an app is a very modern take on the rom com genre, however, I just didn’t really gel with the characters therefore didn’t finish it.

(3.5 stars)
Firstly I’d like to say thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the arc in return for an honest review.
No such thing as perfect was a quick, fun read whilst also presenting what I think would be familiar problems for people of the age of the main character.
I started this book thinking I knew exactly where it was going but it turns out I was wrong! Every time I made a guess as to what was going to happen, I was proven wrong, meaning that this book didn’t feel too predictable to me, which is refreshing as with this genre I typically find myself knowing exactly what’s what.
As well as experiencing romance through Laura’s eyes, we also see family issues and different kinds of relationships throughout- something I thought added depth to the plot.
The writing style was simple but effective and the use of flashbacks throughout really enabled me to get a deeper understanding of the main character Laura. At some stages of the book, Laura’s actions were somewhat questionable and sometimes unlikeable. However with that being said, I do believe the ending was written well enough to redeem her slightly and it was nice to see all the issues wrapped up at the end.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend if it’s something you think you’d enjoy!

The journey through life is decisions made, finding out how things work out, and then making more decisions. That is what Laura is doing, things doesn't seem to fall into place for her. One sentence I read while reading what the book was about, seemed to stand out to me, and that was, "Maybe for life to start falling into place, Laura has to learn to let go..." That kept me reading the book. Sometimes, letting go, opens our eyes to things we were missing. I did find this in the book and I enjoyed the characters, and each one gave their own personality, and added something to Laura's life.
I received an ARC from Random House UK, Cornerstone Century, through NetGalley.

Laura’s life is a bit of a mess but she is ready to make some changes. She gets the opportunity to try an online dating service called Cupid. She gets matched up quickly and Adam seems like just the right man for her. He is nice, handsome, and seems to have his life together. What more could Laura ask for? Then she discovers that sometimes a connection with someone is more that what they look like “on paper”. The bulb for this book focuses on the dating storyline (which is central) but there is a lot more about life going on in the book. Laura’s family and friendships play just as important of a role in the plot as the romantic relationships.

There is a lot of keep track of within the story and at times I wished it was narrowed down a little bit. With that said, it captured the messiness of life and finding yourself very well. Most of us have a lot going on at any given time in life! I enjoyed watching Laura’s journey and I was rooting for her the whole time. This was a fun, entertaining read and I will be interested to see what the author comes up with next.

Thanks to Emma Hughes, Random House UK, Cornerstone, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a bit of a drag to read. I didn't like the majority of the characters, but I did love any scenes with Inge & Lil - I thought they added some much needed humour to the story. I didn't enjoy the dating premise, and was disappointed that there was so much cheating. However, I did enjoy the last chapter - for me, it redeemed the story a little, but not enough.

I liked that this had a twist that I wasn’t expecting. However I struggled to like any of the characters which is really important for me. It did keep me gripped, however.

Emma Hughes's novel 'No such thing as perfect' is an ideal novel to escape into for a few hours.

Laura is searching 'for the one' when an opportunity falls into her lap whilst she is trying to prove herself enough to keep her job. She's asked to trial Cupid an online dating app that finds her perfect match.
However, her perfect match seems too 'perfect.'

I loved the dynamic of Laura's relationship with her sister and how she handles 'bumps in the road' whilst navigating dating.

It's a lovely read and I look forward to reading more of Emma's work.

I was really looking forward to this book, but in all honesty I just didn't get along with it.

The story revolves around Laura. She's about to lose her job and had lost her home and had to move in with her sister, when she is given the opportunity to trial a new dating app called Cupid. Cupid is apparently designed to use clever algorithms to match you with someone that is mathematically perfect for you. But as the book says. There is no such thing as perfect.

The first chapter I came up against my first issue which took me a while to get around. The main protagonist is called Laura. Throughout the book she is referred to as Laura. For me this made it so much harder to get in too, than a book written from the MC POV.

Secondly. I think cheating is appalling so it just wasn't for me. Laura was so woe is me. I hated her sister Jamie. Her mum was a cheater. Her dad, as much as a felt sorry for him I couldn't understand how much of a wet blanket he was.

I think Lil and Inge were the only redeeming characters is my opinion.

Had a good twist but I wouldn't read again.

This sounded fun - a witty romcom about online dating. And, it was fun but it is was more mildly amusing than laugh-out-loud funny. It was an easy read but the main premise (the dating) largely took a back seat to all the other things going such as parents separating, sibling tension, redundancies and changing friendships. These side stories did add to the story but less is more and some just felt a bit unnecessary and under-done. I loved the ending, however, which refreshingly for chicklit wasn't a happy-ever-after but a more realistic self discovery and hint of future happiness. Sadly the real reason I didn't love this as much as I'd hoped was main character Laura who I found quite annoying, particularly her incessant (and largely unjustified) moaning about her sister and ex-housemates.

An enjoyable, funny read, full of remarkable characters. Laura has had no luck with love and ends up trying out a strange matchmaking set up. Plenty of ups and downs along the way.

This book didn’t set my world alight although it was an ok read. The characters didn’t get into my mind and it finished quite abruptly without me feeling it had concluded or there was a resolution.

A rom-com dating story with a little twist. It was a little bit of a slow starter of a story, but it soon got going. A light, funny read.

The premise for this book really caught my imagination when I read the blurb on NetGalley, but something about the execution fell a little short for me.

I think a lot of it sits in the characters within the story; I didn't feel fully connected to any of them. Laura started off likeable and fairly easy to root for, but at some point I found myself getting annoyed by her constant moaning and wishy-washy behaviour. I'm all for people making mistakes and learning from them, but Laura getting as much enjoyment as she did out of her poor choice seemed at odds with what had been shown of her personality earlier in the book.

The secondary characters weren't particularly striking either; I found them to be either annoyingly passive or irritatingly judgemental. A couple of them had some redeeming qualities that made them easier to read and did help to fill out Laura's world - her relationship with her brother-in-law, Whit, seemed sweet, and what little time we got to spend with her boss, Inge, was well-spent and improved the story.

It was an easy enough read and the writing was ok overall. The plot did just enough to hold my interest, but at times it felt like there were too many story threads to pay attention to, with none of them feeling properly resolved at the end. I understand that in a story of self-discovery, as this ended up being, it might make sense to leave things open to interpretation, but I feel that the book blurb sold the story as a romance and generally they come with a more conclusive ending.

The book wasn't bad, but I got something different to what I had expected, therefore I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped to.

After so many failed relationships, Laura agrees to trial a new online dating service and write a review after 3 months. As the days pass by, she begins to wonder how they were matched. With family dramas running in the background, work redundancies threatening and meeting another man who she feels is more her type, life gets complicated. Things just don’t seem right. Can Laura sort through everything and get her life back on an even keel?

I do apologise but I don't think this book was really my cup of tea. I was drawn in by the comparisons to such brilliant books as Bridget Jones's Diary and I just felt rather disappointed. The plot was quite predictable and I just somehow could not warm to the characters. I'm so sorry as I think this is probably a marmite kind of book and just not my thing.

I really enjoyed this one. I’m glad I took a chance and read it. Don’t sleep on this one. I think people will enjoy it just as much as I did

Disappointing. I just kept hoping this story would turn out to be more than what it hinted, but not really. A very classic rom com. Lacking a bit of surprise, all a little expected yet weirdly convoluted.

My biggest problem? Don’t. Glorify. Adultery. Don’t make it OK! The main character finds herself cheating on her partner. And literally no one seems to care: not the sister, not the best friend, not the family... She doesn’t open up to the poor guy she’s doing this to. No matter how boring/unsatisfying that relationship might have been, the guy didn’t deserve it. No one cares. It’s revolting.

Also: what is it with modern rom-coms? Why is the plot so unrealistic? No you’re not going to lose your job if you don’t get into a relationship. And you’re not going to be followed all your life with shame if you write an article about a relationship that is not “the best relationship ever”.

Look around! Hasn’t the past year provided examples of what antagonists or events that might have an influence on the job market? There’s a thousand valid reasons and “not being in a relationship to write about it” just isn’t one of them. If Carrie Bradshaw knew this 20 years ago, so should we! This is dumb.

Overall, this isn’t the most imaginative plot. The story kind of redeems itself in the end with a very expected plot twist.

I received Emma Hughes’s No Such Thing as Perfect as an ARC, and I’d like to say thank you to Emma and the publisher for this.
I think No Such Thing as Perfect is aimed at readers who enjoyed Bridget Jones, How to lose a guy in 10 days, Bridesmaids and maybe Fleabag. Laura is on a downward spiral – she’s on the edge of journalism, on the edge of losing her job, on the edge of being homeless, on the edge of heartache, on the edge of an unhappy family. Her life has not turned out to resemble her dreams, and the book is the story of how she learns to find happiness, and hope, in the middle of her life’s imperfections.
There’s some lovely writing in the book. For example, Laura’s first encounter with her computer-generated date, Adam, captures the excitement / dread / embarrassment really well. However there are issues with this book which made it difficult for me to relax and immerse myself in the story. I couldn’t forget I was reading and just lose myself in the story, and to me that was a real shame, because No Such Thing as Perfect could have been charming.
The first 20% of the story, up to Laura’s first date with Adam, was sluggish. It was too full of backstory, over-explaining, telling-not-showing and superfluous, unnecessary characters. I truly felt that everything I needed to know as a reader could have been dealt with in one, crisply written and excruciatingly comic/painful chapter, anything else could have been woven in as the book progressed and we could have got on with the action. In a world where a Kindle free sample download typically gives the reader 10%, if I’d downloaded a sample of No Such Thing as Perfect, I wouldn’t have converted it to a purchase. And I would have missed the good stuff that comes later.
The other problem for me was the formatting. There were far too many instances of words being run together – imitationleather, latemiddle-aged – and great chunks of text with short line lengths and strange line breaks in the middle of a sentence. Such a basic thing, but the formatting problems kept jerking me out of my reading trance, and were ultimately very irritating.