The Break Up by Charlotte Barnes

I received an advance review copy for free thanks to NetGalley and HQ and I am leaving this review voluntarily

You don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.

Edi Parcell thought she had life all planned out, so when her childhood sweetheart proposes a three-month break to date other people, she’s shocked. Unexpectedly back on the dating scene after years with the same guy, this is the first opportunity Edi’s had to think about what she really wants from life – and love.

When she meets Winifred, her world is turned upside down. She never expected to have feelings for someone else, but now she’s met Winifred she can’t stop thinking about her. As the months pass, Edi is shocked to realise she’s not sure she wants her old relationship back at all – not now there’s Winifred…

This was not what I expected from the book - it isn't a bad book I just feel that it has been marketed wrong and is not for the target audience that is implied. For me, the plot was dragged out - the ending was obvious from the start and it could have been a much shorter book.

Rating 3/5

when you don't accept your loser ex and upgrade bc women >>>>>>>>

felt like it fell a little flat at times but i love this premise! thought edi's fiance was unnecessarily cruel at times but i guess that was just to further push her toward the protagonist? but still felt a little too unrealistic and/or forced.

super quick read though!

Synopsis

You don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.

Edi Parcell thought she had life all planned out, so when her childhood sweetheart proposes a three-month break to date other people, she’s shocked. Unexpectedly back on the dating scene after years with the same guy, this is the first opportunity Edi’s had to think about what she really wants from life – and love.

When she meets Winifred, her world is turned upside down. She never expected to have feelings for someone else, but now she’s met Winifred she can’t stop thinking about her. As the months pass, Edi is shocked to realise she’s not sure she wants her old relationship back at all – not now there’s Winifred…

Unfortunately, this one wasn't for me, I found it difficult to gel with the characters and I wanted more story post Rowan!

I DNF'ed this book, I just wasn't interested in reading it and there were 1 to many parts that felt problematic and a little homophobic. Life is to short to read books you don't like.

first of all thank you to netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

this book was the very definition of meh. everything that was touched upon felt very surface level to me, which left me deflated. the premise seemed like an exciting one! woman gets left in this open relationship she didn't necessarily want but finds love in a woman! except she didn't! after she finally breaks up with the awful dingbat rowan, she doesn't even end up with Fred!
unfortunately the premise falls flat. every character feels flat. edi has no backbone whatsoever when it comes to her fiancé rowan and I didn't believe their love for a second (sorry edi but come on...) rowan was an awful awful person and I hated him from moment one but as we got to know him more he got so much worse.
he CHEATS and then he wants an open relationship and then isn't forthcoming with what he's doing and who he's seeing???? it's begging for a transmittable disease????edi girl I am so confused why you didn't see this as a justified cheating scheme??? also the HOMOPHOBIA??? what the actual fuck. 'I'd rather you be straight than happy' is something that comes out of this man's mouth and I wanted him to die right then and there.
her redeeming factor should've been her friends except:
1. I could not keep them apart for the life of me
2. she didn't tell them the truth about her relationship until YEARS later because they'd hate rowan (I mean ma'am.....)
3. they felt very white post feminists throughout the story and I didn't vibe with them at all sorry.

overall the book fell flat for me but that did make it easy for me to sweep through it, since I wasn't bogged down by anything so yay! gave it three stars instead of two for that alone.

P.S. edi, babe, in the next life, don't waste all your young years on someone that does all the above mentioned and still expects you to stay.

DNF at 30%.
I read 30% of the book, and nothing happens in this first part. Edi's fiancé is not a nice person, her group of friends is annoying, and Edi is also a very boring character. I didn't learn anything about her personality or interests in this whole time. And the love interest hasn't even appeared! So I'm going to do myself a favor and pick another book.

I was really excited for this book based on the summary and the cover. Unfortunately within a few pages I realized it was not going to be what I was expecting. There were too many characters and not much exposition about them. The book was fast paced early on and I got lost will all the characters.

The novel started off really well and I liked the fact that it was fast-paced. But shortly within a few pages, there were too many characters. And there weren't much depth to them either. So I got confused with the names.

The good thing about this book is that it was incredibly fast paced so I didn't need to spend hours upon hours reading it.

I was given the opportunity to read this book for an honest review and I hate to say that it is a negative.

The transphobia is shaken throughout the book. The storyline jumps around so much that it was difficult. There are so many names thrown at you without the author attempting to build any form of relationship or attachment with the characters. In the end, I couldn't differentiate between the characters and it didn't really matter.

This book had the opportunity to be incredible. I loved how the author talked about sexual fluidity but then missed the mark on so many occasions.

I definitely wouldn't buy or recommend this one, which is a shame because it could have been the airport book of the year!

Personally I really enjoyed this book mainly for the tight-knit friend group and Fred and all of her advice. This book really did add into my “men ain’t shittt” philosophy because babe why are you staying with someone who treats you like YOU’RE the charity when in reality it is vice-versa. Honestly, I wish a lot of things went differently but I know that not ever romance is going to give you the full fantasy HEA. I’m ‘still satisfied with the MC’s HEA in a way..

Such a cute read! Predictably romantic but in just the right way. I empathized with the characters and couldn’t put it down!

I loved the sound of the book and was so existed to read it but unfortunately I couldn’t get past the half way mark. It just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t really connect with the book and I found that from what I read the story didn’t really move that fast.

At first I was really excited to read this book because of f/f representation. However this book was not as well written as I would have liked. The characters and story fell flat for me and it made it very difficult to finish. 2/5

i thought the idea of the book was very nice and it was genuinely refreshing after so many books with the same concept. but i felt like the book was very hard to get into because your introduced to so many characters and its hard to keep up. and the way the book was written was very off putting for me like it contained so much slang that i couldn't understand and that sometimes wasn't needed but i felt like the writer kept adding it to appeal to a younger audience and i personally just hated it as i don't like slang in books.

I loved this boook!!!!!!!! Like literally LOVED IT!!! I could not put jt down and the story was brilliant!! I will tell everyone jus my how amazing this book is

I've been sitting on the fence about this particular review for quite a while now. There were so many things about this book that were problematic for me and it's always a challenge to reframe my brain dump of thoughts in a way that is more meaningful than simply saying that I just didn't like it. All things considered, I am a firm believer that each book has an audience somewhere and I have no doubt that there are people that would relate more to the characters in this book than I did.

First of all, I had a tough time convincing myself to get past the first few pages of this book. Normally I give myself 30 or so pages before I start to get a feel for the characters. However, the main couple in this story bothered me right from the start. Granted, the book is literally called The Break Up, so obviously we're not supposed to like the couple together. However, even though the plot point is in the title of the book, they don't actually break up until quite far into the book. This was a problem for me because I found that the majority of the comments that the main character guy said really got under my skin. Toxic masculinity, sexism and discrimination against people of different sexualities is never fun to read, especially if it's not even addressed half the time. Now, I realize that this was probably supposed to be a growth point for the main character woman, but I'm not convinced that she developed as a person considering a lot of the language that she was using about herself even towards the very end. I was expecting that the story would be an empowering journey of self discovery and respect as the main character learned how much more she had in her life than just her relationship with this horrible guy, plus maybe a bit of spicy romance mixed in! If this is what you're hoping to read about, I'm sorry to say that this is only the case for *maybe* 10% of the book.

The one potentially redeeming quality of the plot for me was the strong friendship group. The main character had a pretty great group of friends who were always there for her. I enjoyed the banter and occasional deep thoughts in the friendships scenes, but there were too many friends in the group for me to feel any particular connection to them. I felt like none of the friends had any real depth to them and they were only there to provide banter and to peer pressure their friend to sleep with strangers. Although some characters had good moments, I still had issues with some of their language and behaviour that I found disrespectful at times and also unrealistic. Who really goes drinking and partying every weekend as an adult? And did any of them have jobs?

Finally, about halfway through the story the main character meets her new love interest. At first, I was excited to see where things would go, until I realized how emotionally unavailable the main character was. Instead of having the beginnings of a fresh romance with someone who respects her, she doesn't even bother to get to know the new person so as a reader, they seem pretty one dimensional. All I know if that the new girl was gorgeous, creative and that they were weirdly accepting of the main character's arrangement with her ex.

Basically the only bits I liked about this book were the occasional fun friendship chats and the beginnings of a romance with a genuinely nice human. But that was all we got. Just a tiny taste towards the end. I was happy that the main character dumped the guy in the end but I don't think it was an enjoyable read on the whole. Wouldn't recommend.

I DNF'ed this book at around 33%. I just wasn't interested in reading it. It felt like a chore to pick it up. I kept trying to power through but after getting a third of the way in I just couldn't do it. Life is to short to read books you don't like.

I'm afraid this just wasn't it for me. I loved the concept, the blurb and the cover - but it wasn't at all what it seemed to be marketed as. What I thought was going to be a story about self-discovery, sexuality and love with a sapphic romance was not really any of that.

Rowan decides to break up with Edi, but only for three months so they can date and explore before settling down together. But then, she meets Winifred and wonders if she even wants to go back or start again. The story was largely about her relationship with Rowan, who was not redeemable for me in the slightest. I didn't really get any progression from the characters translate through when I read it, and even though I'm aware it's some of these unlikeable characters who are stating the opinions, the amount of transphobic, homophobic and just generally uncomfortable statements in this book made it feel all wrong and they didn't read as though the person saying them was 'in the wrong' exactly.

There were some humorous, sweet parts of this story, and I think if this was remarketed and sensitivity read, it could make for a really sweet novel.

This book was marketed as a romance novel which I think was a mistake. The main character Edi gets engaged to her high school sweetheart, gets coerced into an open relationship, and then meets a woman in a cafe who she finds herself interested in. She spends most of the novel upset that her and her fiance's engagement isn't going exactly as planned. I found the book overall lacking and quite boring. The music and TV show references in the book dated the book but not in a fun way - there was no nostalgia brought up when the characters talked about OITNB or Little Mix playing in the club. Edi's friends are also very into choice-based feminism but I feel like the character never made a choice herself.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this book. I didn’t love it but I also didn’t hate it. I couldn’t really connect with the characters so that made it hard to read for me. However, I did love Edi’s journey to finding herself outside of the longest relationship she’s ever been in.