I really tried with this one but I am past the point in my life where YA contemporary, unless it's a really special circumstance with an author I love so much just isn't my vibe and tbh I love Law Of Inertia and Perfext On Paper but I am not sure this author is for me anymore but I'll recommend her books still bc people will love them!!

This is a true love letter to fanfiction and I can't believe it's taken this long for a YA book to come out revolving around fanfiction! This was so much fun and easy to read, It was so cheesy and that just made it even better, because it was just joyful. I really liked the main character Ivy and I also loved Henry, one of the side characters. Admittedly, I didn't love our other side character Mack, but I still had a great time following the antics of the trio (+ Weston!). This story is very self-aware, poking fun at various tropes and fandom references, and it was just a silly goofy time. I also thought the author dealt with the dual timelines very well, and I was glad to be able to go back and see how Mack and Ivy's friendship deteriorated to get to where they are now. It did mean however that I didn't end up rooting for their romance in the present day setting, because I couldn't get over how Mack had treated Ivy in the past, I thought Ivy deserved so much better.

We LOVE a fan fiction girlie.

Ivy and her bestie are OBSESSED with a certain superhero TVshow and after some weird storm a character comes to life and is completely smitten over ivy.

This is a good book filled with banter and drama. And most of all queer love

the pwrfect guy doesnt exist review

When Ivy’s parents go away for 5 days, Ivy wishes for Weston to be real and when she wakes up he is in her bed - appeared out of nowhere.

This book was really funny, I loved seeing Ivy having to work with her friend, Mack, who she fell out with before, and with the help of a dual timeline, we found out how and why. Henry was also a brilliant character, and as a trio, Ivy, Mack and Henry need to hide and control Weston and figure out why he has come to life, after all he is a fictional character from a show Ivy loves.

Ivy was also a fanfiction writer, and I loved this fact a lot! Imagine if your fanfics or book characters came to life? How would you act? Personally I wouldn’t want any of my characters coming to life from when I used to wrote on Wattpad a lot, I tbing they would be the word cringe personified.

I found this book to be a pretty fast paced book and I mamaged to read it rather quickly, because the writing just flows so well! I am apparently making it a tradition to read a Sophie Gonzales book on a plane now, and I like it. I find her writing to flow well and the characters are great and she comes up with some really original ideas, such as in The Perfect Guy Doesn’t Exist.

The bi rep!!!! I loved that Ivy was bi and this was made clear, and Mack being lesbian. Sophie never fails to have positive lgbtq+ representation (in the two books I have read by her)


I do wish the characters had a little more depth to them, but I feel like what we as readers, do have in this book works well and knowing wvery single thing possible about each character would’ve been too much for this book.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a book they will devour with fun characters, lgbtq+ represnetation, strong friendships and friends working together to figure out how to return Weston to the fictional world! I am giving The Perfect Guy Doesn’t Exist 4 stars, and I will definitely be picking up another Sophie Gonzales book in the future!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC of 'The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist' by Sophie Gonzales.

The talented Sophie Gonzales has written a new book and my gosh it's amazing. As always Gonzales has written raw and authentic characters mixed in with the contemporary writing style making it outstanding. This whole concept is so interesting to me about how Ivy's investment in fanfiction just managed to conjure this fictional man alive and I'd honestly love to see it adapted into a tv show or a movie as it was just such a fun read.

I found this a really easy, enjoyable read. Watching the MC grow was nice and I found the characters likeable. The storyline made me laugh and Weston was funny and was an excellent character.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review

When things aren't going your way it's easy to imagine what your perfect world would look like. For Ivy, our main character, this gets a little too much when she inadvertently ends up bringing one of her TV heroes to life - or at least the version of him that she wishes she could have.
I found the moving backwards and forwards through time a little off-putting initially. Ivy and Mack were great friends and we could see Ivy's obsession with this show was forming a barrier between them. Perhaps the biggest barrier was each of them having feelings for the other but not feeling able to share this. So, before we know it, things have altered significantly, they aren't talking and the atmosphere is decidedly frosty.
Ivy's new best friend Henry shares her love of the show, but even he is somewhat lost for words when a version of their favourite character suddenly wakes up in Ivy's room.
The whole set-up was bizarre. You are never going to satisfactorily explain how that happened, but the relationship and interactions were entertaining, and the overall message of the story was enough to keep your focus.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the chance to read and review this in advance of publication.

I normally really like Sophie Gonzales, so I was looking forward to reading this sapphic tale of friends to enemies to lovers, with a dash of fanfiction reality thrown in there as well. But in the end, I'm not sure what it was, but this book really didn't click for me. Perhaps it was the extreme anxiety of the main character, which often hits too close to home for me to really engage with a book, or it was the stubborn refusal to realise that a fictional character living in your house isn't the world's best idea, and it's maybe unwise to want to keep him, but whatever it was, although this was a funny and engaging book, with a solid central relationship and good character development, it just never clicked for me. I do think it was a me issue, rather than a book issue, and I'm sure some people will love it, but it wasn't for me.

This book was a great romcom and would make an AMAZING Netflix film, but it wasn't my favourite read, and probably isn't one I'd recommend. The characters felt like they didn't have depth, and the fantastical elements just weren't for me, especially blended with a more contemporary-feeling book.

The book follows Ivy, whose parents are heading out of town for the week and how, as a consequence, has been left to look after the house - and herself. Enter Weston, her favourite character from a hit TV show, who wakes up in her bed one morning. Could it be possible that Ivy's fanfictions are... coming to life?

There were a few things which fell flat in this book for me. It was quick and easy to read, but the descriptions of the main characters - Ivy, Mack and Henry - were so minimal it was almost painful. They were one-dimensional and not exactly endearing or inspiring, or even particularly relatable. Apart from their cliches - Ivy as an awkward, bumbling fangirl with no particular interest in the real world, Mack as a tough lesbian who's actually a lot more sensitive than she seems, and Henry, kinda ordinary and boring, semi-cool (I think) - there wasn't a whole lot going on. They felt a little like caricatures of how Sophie Gonzales suspected teens today might act, which didn't come across well.

Secondly, I really don't enjoy when a book doesn't have a clear setting or world-building. Beyond the central characters, the school and the coffee shop, the plot is situated in an ordinary American town (or city? could be a city) in the middle of... where? If more specific locations were mentioned, it definitely wasn't clear to me. Apart from the thunderstorm at the start and some mentions of the part of the US the book takes place in then, it felt like it was floating, and I would've loved to see more side characters and settings and weather, and a greater sense of the book's being, rather than the plot taking over.

It was a fun read, but I won't be rushing to read Sophie Gonzales again.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this!

I've been a fan of Sophie Gonzales for a while, her books never fail to offer a fun read and this is no different.
I'd say The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist is definitely aimed at the younger side of YA, it could easily slot into the middle grade category so I've reviewed it with that in mind.
The characters read young and their emotional nuances and personals dramas reflect this. I feel like this might not resonate with older readers as some of their adolescent drama might be considered trivial but would speak to and be perfect for a younger reader.
The plot itself is really cool, I loved the fanfic, convention elements, who wouldn't love to write their ideal partner into existence. I also liked the past, present format and how plot points were revealed throughout the story, it kept me reading to find out more.
Mostly I always adore the humour that Gonzales delivers in such a way, you can't help but find yourself on a train, cry laughing aloud and scaring strangers into leaving your carriage.
I'd say it's a delightful hilarious read perfect for the younger side of YA.

Thank you NetGalley and Hachett Children's Group for the eARC.

I liked the premise of this book and I enjoyed the characters but sadly I felt the execution of the plot fell a little short. I felt like I was being told about the romance between the characters rather than shown and the resolution of the fanfic come to life storyline just felt lacklustre.

Sophie Gonzales always brings us such unique and fun YA romances to the genre that just always makes her an auto-buy and a standout in such a copy-paste industry. This was also so different from her other books, too! The fan-fiction aspect initially intrigued me and made a little bit wary… I was worried it would fall into the cringe category but instead I found the whole concept so delightful and hilarious to read!

The dual timelines allowed us to really get to know our main trio of characters which I loved despite not always loving the back and forth formula. But Gonzales nailed it here alongside creating a group of really dynamic and endearing characters.

I cant wait to see what book she releases next because she always manages to keep me on my toes🙏🏻

There are both positive and negative parts to the book for me, unfortunately I didn't get into it as much as I had hoped but I would read more by the author.

This was a really tricky one to rate. I loved parts of it, and know my 14-year-old self would have loved them even more. The idea of writing someone into existence, and the rules that sprang up around that were really interesting. I liked the past/present format too, it kept the intrigue going initially and had me haring through the first half.

The major problem for me was that 'the big fight', when it was revealed, was such an anti-climax I couldn't get my head around it. I was expecting something HUGE and got something bafflingly minor. I slowed to a crawl after this. There's a lot of repetition, and the 'fight' was eventually dissected so many times it started to feel even more minor and really began to grate. The repetition slowed the pace to a crawl and ended up making it hard to finish.

Mack and Ivy weren't the most likable pair for me either, which is fine, unlikeable characters can rock, but with them both being this way I didn't find the relationship easy to invest in. I think they'd both annoyed me so much over such a trivial 'fight' that it was ultimately hard to care about them. They felt more like 12/13-year-olds, emotionally, which made this feel more MG than YA in places.

I did enjoy parts of this, but there was a lot that bothered me. I loved the fanfic element, for example, but I'm not sure how I feel about Ivy's final thoughts on the subject. I could see it maybe as a kick in the teeth for a lot of kids who write it, and that doesn't feel fair as they're the ones who're going to be buying this!

On the whole, an interesting concept, and the first half was a lot of fun, but there was enough that bothered me to make it a pretty low rating. Probably 2.5, but bear in mind I'm way over the target audience range. I do work with teens, however, and read a lot of YA, otherwise I wouldn't have reviewed.