A sweet ya romance! Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read in exchange for a review!

Harper works like crazy to help ensure her single mother's dream wedding dress shop is successful despite her mother's complete lack of business skills. She works such long hours at it that she's lost contact with almost all her friends except Theo, the dorky boy next door who has been her best friend forever. Harper also thinks romance and love are ridiculous because she has a front-row seat to awful bridezillas and their wedding drama, while Theo is a hopeless romantic who falls in love at the drop of a hat. A bet to prove whether love is real or not ends with Harper teaching Theo how not to fall in love with every girl he meets while Theo dares her to actually give a guy a chance and prove that she can date without falling in love. Harper is sure she'll win the bet, but things don't exactly work out like she expects them to and she's left wondering if there's more to love than she'd let herself believe.

I had a hard time deciding what to rate this one because, on the one hand, it's a pretty basic YA love story that I've read a ton of times before, but on the other hand, it's engaging and I really enjoyed reading it. There's something in Firkins's writing that pulled me into Harper's world. I wanted to see her figure things out and have her happy ending. So while the basic plot didn't blow me away, the story overall did thanks to the characters.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and Clarion Books for the chance to read it! I'm sorry I took so long...

This was a quintessential joyful YA rom-com. I loved the banter and tension between the two leads, and was screaming for them to just kiss already for most of the book!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

“People think it's the fear of falling, but it's not. It's the fear of falling combined with the desire to fall [...] the more we value something, the more we fear its loss.”

I have to be honest, friends to lovers and the miscommunication trope are probably two of my least favorite tropes. But this author somehow made it work. I think that in the beginning you very much so have an idea of what's to come , but it is the journey that this book takes you to get there that makes it so satisfying. This book is emotional and it is truly a perfect example that sometimes what we are looking for is in front of our face all along.

Doing a clean-up of NetGalley and any long-lingering non-feedback titles! Apologies for never getting to read this; don't even think I downloaded it in time. I appreciate being approved, and do apologise again.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

It's been awhile since I've read YA Romance and for me it was kind of refreshing. I liked the friends to lovers aspect that Theo and Harper experienced since they've known each other since childhood. When you've grown up with someone you consider a friend, moving into the next step of that friendship isn't always easy or easy to recognize. I liked both of their characters and found them adorable. Keeping in my this book is YA, it's easy to understand why they have such a hard time communicating with each other and for that age group it makes complete sense. While the ending was a bit eye-rolling for me, it was also endearing and made me think of young love...once again making sense. Overall I thought the book was so cute and I think the target audience will love it.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Clarion Books for a free eARC in exchange for my honest opinion which I have given

Really cute YA romance. Nothing overtly sexual, but the characters were super sweet and the storyline was precious. I'm not usually a big friends to lovers fan, but this one was cute.

A teen romance starring Harper, who is determined to not fall in love after a bad summer romance the year before. And the fact that working in her mother’s bridal shop makes her feel that love and marriage are just stress. Her best friend, Theo, falls in love all the time. They make a deal that she will help him date without falling in love and she has to date someone without falling in love. While Harper spends her time this summer before senior year in her mom’s bridal shop, Theo spends the weekends Larping. Pippa her friend at the bridal shop is encouraging her to ask out the hot, gym guy. As the summer goes on, Harper uses Theo’s vocab lists to study for the SAT retake, Theo tries a dating site, and Harper’s mom realizes how much time Harper’s been giving to the shop. Harper makes a realization in the summer, after dating Felix for a few weeks. It could change everything.

I am not a friend to lovers fan. Ever since I got into reading, I have been head over heels for enemies to lovers, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. But, I have got to say that Harper and Theo got to me! They made me believe that I could like friends to lovers too!

In all seriousness, this book was honestly so sweet and fun. I enjoyed every second of it. I loved the relationship between Harper and Theo and how we saw it evolve throughout the story. There were multiple tropes that I'm a huge fan of that made this story even more fun. I'm so glad I read this one and got to enjoy it!

I had really high hopes for this rom com, but it did not deliver for me.
I really liked the start and enjoyed reading the first few chapters. Harper in the bridal shop with the first bridezilla was funny. After that it went downhill for me. This is just me. I did not empathise with the characters after. Harper lost belief in love because a boy broke her heart at camp? She is a teenager, she cannot really expect a summer fling ( a few days basically) to last a life time. Theo is the typical airhead boy, who actually believes in love and fairytale ending? Their agreement to help each other also didn't resonate with me.

How Not to Fall in Love is a light, fluffy, friends to lovers, teen romance story.
The characters were likable and relatable. The plot was a little predictable, but that didn't make it less enjoyable.
It was a quick and easy read, and though I am likely not the intended target audience, I enjoyed it well enough.
Good summer read!

This was such a cute book and is perfect for a YA romance. Great coming of age love story!

Get this book for your older teen kids or friends!

I do not typically like friends-to-lovers romance books, because they leave out all of the parts of the romance that make them so fun to read. But this story did in a way that still made it enjoyable.

This was a cute and fun rom-com with the skeptical Harper who thinks love is a marketing tool and her bff Theo who fall in love at the drop of a hat and after his umpteenth breakup, Harper decides to teach him how to not fall in love. I really enjoyed how Harper was just so conflicted throughout the book and how sometimes I just wanted to yell at them to just talk to each other and quit making assumptions that are wrong. So in the process of trying to teach Theo to not fall in love she ends up falling in love herself.


Thanks to Clarion Books and Netgalley for the complimentary copy of this book in e-book form. All opinions in this review are my own.

This is a fun little book! I was looking forward to this one after reading the blurb, and I'm glad that it lived up to expectations!

This is definitely one of those novels where the ending is obvious from miles away, but we know we'll have a fun journey in the process. Like friends-to-lovers? This one is perfect.

This is my first time reading a YA Romance book. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. At first I had to go back and look to see if it was YA, because it felt like an adult level book. And then the further the plot developed the more the book felt like a YA novel that felt very much like a middle school drama as opposed to some of the YA novels I have come to love that feel like they are more mature in topic and writing style.

This book's trope was friends to lovers. It was predictable and could be seen a mile away. While this is true of a lot of romance novels, the connection between the two characters felt forced and contrived. It did not feel realistic or genuine.

Thanks to Net Galley for the gifted e-copy of this book.

This was a cute, entertaining read. The tropes were cute and Theo was all sorts of adorable. I wasn’t a fan of the love triangle (I rarely am) but I loved the characters and look forward to reading more by the author.