This was such a cute read and definitely saved me from a post fantasy reading slump.

Loved the dual pov giving the right amount of yearing, touch of spicy but not smutty (explicit words)

I actually really liked the authors use of a romantic story to talk about mental health both for men and women and especially male athletes, grief, female friendships and being in a toxic relationship you need to let go off. I’ll be honest I didn’t expect the level of depth we got and I was impressed.

Gossip girl fans this one is for us

xoxo

I liked this one. I read some reviews prior to reading it. I did find it to have some gossip girl and one tree vibes but found it to be on the more edgier / darker side of this comparison. I liked the university setting and exploring the student and athlete life. There was interesting, toxic and dynamic friendship dynamics explored throughout that added some depth to the story. I liked that there was a duel POV and past timeline jumps. I enjoyed the mental health representation and the different coping avenues depicted when it came to anxiety, trauma and grief.

I would have liked gossip column explored more as I saw this to have real potential and would have made it more salacious. Im also not a huge fan of the insta love trope it just seemed very unrealistic to me.

Overall a quick and easy read

This was an okay read. This was not the type of love triangle I’m used to. I like heart wrenching, making you sob love triangles. This felt too much like a bad soap opera on tv. Olivia was very unlikeable and immature. 3 stars.

There were some things I loved about this book: the love triangle with the two brothers, the college setting, the messiness, and the Gossip Girl/One Tree Hill vibes. I found some of the storylines to be undeveloped and I didn’t love the best friend storyline. I also found it to be a bit too soapy for me. However, if you love the drama and Gossip Girl/One Tree Hill vibes, you might really like this one.

I was excited to get this ARC when I saw it getting compared to Gossip Girl. However, I think my biggest problem with this book was that the characters weren’t very likeable and hard to relate to. Olivia was such a pick-me girl and it was a red flag with how much she continued to flirt with Ben knowing she was still in a relationship with Will, no matter how toxic their relationship was. She was very rude and I felt like she wasn’t a girl’s girl, especially in the first chapter where she gets annoyed every time someone tries to flirt with her best friend Lily. Will was awful and how he treated Olivia had no real accountability or calls reason to it. There was a lot of telling more than showing how the characters felt. Ben’s anxiety was dealt with really well, but it was so messy and hard to root for him constantly trying to flirt with his brother’s girlfriend. I will say that the idea of the first book has a lot of potential to be a good series, but how it executes it here wasn’t for me. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but maybe it’ll be yours!

Thank you to Sydney Madison and PS Published for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for my honest review!

The way Sydney Madison deals with mental health, especially grief, was beautifully done. The story felt real and honest and I loved seeing the way the relationships developed.

This gave me the same feelings that Magnolia Parks gave me when reading it. I hated all the nonsense but still interested in what happens. I was annoyed majority of the time reading this with most of the characters but the drama is what gets you if you’re into reading about toxic relationships & drama 😂

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC

4.0⭐ this book was so gossip girl/magnolia parks coded and i was living for it

i kind of just expected a cute little college romance going into this but i was so wrong. the drama the love and the characters in this book were so complex and exceeded my expectations. although the relationships were *slightly* unconventionally i still loved them and i feel like every ironed out in the end

i feel like the characters really stuck with me in this book. olivia was such a relatable and flawed character like most of them especially the "second fiddle" part of her character that helped her develop so much. ben was a less complex characters but also was shown struggling so much with his mental health and his love for olivia was so pure and adorable i couldnt help but root for them at all times. will is trickier because i really hated him at the beginning when he was with olivia but once you learn his trauma and his backstory and he makes up with everyone he becomes so much more understandable and you just feel for him even though he acted out.

im so excited to see more of these characters in gen and grants book especially to see more of sloane! thanks to netgalley for this arc!!

"I think I loved you that first night I saw you because there hasn't been a day that's passed that I haven't thought about you.”

Olivia is learning how to navigate Astor Hill’s campus after the loss of her best friend Lilly, with her boyfriend Will by her side. When Ben arrives on campus, Olivia begins to question everything she once knew as her world gets turned upside down. Will Olivia be able to keep her head above water with life’s secrets collapsing around her?

I was so excited to receive the ARC of Astor Hill. I had seen the promotional posts on Instagram and I was not disappointed! This is similar to your typical college romance, but has a component that many books can often lack, deeper emotions. The authors highlight pain and emotion in such an amazing way and positively highlight mental health representation. It’s not often that i feel emotionally connected to characters, but they were able to evoke that connection and cause the reader to emphasize and feel the emotions of the characters. This book kept me guessing what was going to happen next and rooting for love and friendship the whole time.

Rating: 2.5 🌟
Spice: Barely there

Firstly, it was the cover that drew me in to read this book, followed by the blurb. Magnolia Park and Gossip Girl fans, that was definitely me. Sadly, this book didn't deliver for me. From the confusion of what was happening at the start, to the ick boyfriend and the FMC's lack of self-worth left me underwhelmed.

Ben was a beautiful character, who was torn between his brother and the girl he loves, but even he couldn't make it a higher rated book.

It is nothing against the author, but I just didn't vibe with this book or the story. I do truly appreciate Netgalley and Sydney Maddison for allowing me to read this ARC.

3.5 ⭐️ A dramatic romance with many problematic characters and toxic relationships. While intentional, it enraged me a bit too much and no amount of character development could redeem these people in my eyes. Plot was also a bit all over the place. But college kids do be messy, the chemistry was good, and I couldn’t stop reading the train wreck. Gave strong season 1 of One Tree Hill vibes.

Thanks NetGalley for the arc!

Thank you Netgalley and Sydney Madison for my review copy. These are my thoughts:

This was intense. I almost didn't finish this book because I wasn't hooked from the start. I felt a bit confused at the beginning with all that was happening and slightly uncomfortable with how toxic these people were. But ultimately, decided to see this through.

These characters came (mostly) from privileged families and attend an elite college. They all have issues and secrets but are also arrogant and honestly, mean. Carefully crafted facades and plastered smiles hide the pain and grief that these young adults are hiding.

Olivia and Will got together after Olivia loses her best friend. Their relationship is not the healthiest and his brother Ben, feels like a breath of fresh air. I'm not a fan of love triangles but at least there wasn't any blatant cheating. I did like Olivia and Ben together.

You get some "Gossip Girl vibes" - the intrigue, secrets and toxic behaviour.

This is the first book in the series and I would be curious to see whose book comes next.

3.5 ⭐️

💭 i really enjoyed this. To be honest at the start i had no idea the importance of the prologue but I was here for the ride anyway. It definitely picked up and I got really invested in the middle third. The end was a bit slow but non the less it was a great story. I have absolutely no idea why liv was friends with lily, she seemed a complete ass hole to be honest. Here for Ben though 🤍 swoooooon!

🤍

'Here I am, staring after my brother's girlfriend with the realization that I will never get over her and I haven't even had her yet.'

"You are always on my mind, even and especially when you shouldn't be."

"There isn't a world where I wouldn't want to wait for
you, Liv. Least of all this one."

⭐️ 3
Enjoyable read! A feel-good romance with drama, mystery, and real-life portrayals of anxiety, grief, and loneliness. I appreciated the complexity and growth from the characters in this book. I especially appreciated Olivia’s grief and healing journey, Ben’s healing journey from his anxiety and trauma, and seeing the beginning of Will’s healing. I absolutely loved how head over heels Ben was for Olivia. I’m not normally one for “insta-love” but Ben can do no wrong😍 He has a lot of really good lines, very *swoon-worthy*!! I actually hated Will for the majority of this book, but the authors did a very good job at making me feel for him towards the end. I love a redemption arc, and I’m all for humanizing the “villain” and I thought it was done well with Will.

**some spoilers below!**
I wish I could have seen more of Olivia being a journalist, it’s talked about how amazing her instincts and writing are, but we don’t get to see any of that. I also wish the reader could have seen more of Olivia’s gradual healing of grief, with emphasis on Lily’s positive attributes. I felt as though Lily was an extremely toxic friend because of the way Olivia discussed her, but in the same breath Olivia would talk about how amazing Lily was. I didn’t witness any of those good attributes. I also feel there could have been more developments of Olivia’s confidence following leaving Will. I also wanted more from Ben. There was lots of alluding to him continuing to struggle with anxiety, but I wish I could have seen more of this. With how strongly mental health was highlighted in this book, I feel as though Ben’s journey should have been more realistic, with some bumps in the road.

This book sadly wasn't my cup of tea.

I liked the story in genral. Love after loss and a love triangle with the (ex)boyfriends brother promised a lot of drama. (What I absolutely love!)

Ben was a very realistic MMC. He acknowledged his mistakes and flawd and worked on himself. He wasn't too proud to apologize and gave the FMC room when she asked him to.

What I also loved was that this book showed that toxic relationships are not just limited to lovers. Some friendships can be just as toxic.

My biggest issue was the writing style. The story didn't have a good flow. I couldn't follow some of the conversations because the MC's were in their heads a lot and there was so much thinking between the "spoken" sentences that it was very confusing. There was also a lot of talking and little acting. Like the FMC always said that she was sad and still grieving but we never got to SEE her actually being sad.

There was also a big secret and the buildup was okay but the reveal could have been better placed in the story.

Thank you to the authors and PS Publishing for the e-ARC.

So I was really excited about this book because I was a huge gossip girl fan and for me I feel like this didn't really meet that and I also don't like insta-love connections. But other than that the book was a decent read

I was excited to read a college sports romance about rediscovering yourself after loosing a loved one. Unfortunately the synopsis did not match what I was reading. Some major themes were left out of the synopsis that, if they had been made clear, I wouldn’t have requested this ARC.

This book is marketed as a slow burn, but it’s fairly insta-love from very early on.

What I liked:

Grant. He is a ray of sunshine who deserves the world. How he thoughtfully considers others and checks in on them, without needing to know what is wrong.

What I didn’t like:

I didn’t like any of the main characters to be honest. They were elitest, entitled, selfish, and shallow. And while there was significant growth- that didn’t occur until much later in the book.

Lily was a terrible friend who kept secrets and didn’t care who she hurt.

Will constantly degrades Olivia publicly, and shamelessly flirts with other women. Among other things…

Olivia doesn’t have any respect for herself, but also doesn’t care about anyone else feelings or the consequences of her actions. Her heart is drawn to Ben while she is currently in a monogamous relationship. That my friends is infidelity of the heart. Which is just as bad as committing physical infidelity.

Ben acts like he deserves to win Olivia’s heart because he saw her first. But also didn’t really try to hide how attracted he was to Olivia while she was still in a relationship with his brother.

On the topic of grief, I believe the authors tried their best to depict what it is like to go through grief. But it just didn’t hit for me. There was so much more going on, that the grief plot fell short. It was tacked on at the end to wrap things up.

It seems like the book focused more around infidelity, narcissism, and misogyny- rather than grief or self discovery. Again, there was some character growth, but the progression felt quite sudden for most of the characters. Suddenly everyone was hashing out their feelings and getting along. It didn’t make sense to me.

There was just too much infidelity in this book that it kind of shocks me that it wasn’t mentioned in the synopsis. And because of that, I wasn’t excited when the two MCs got together. How they acted on their feelings was wrong, and there were little to no consequences at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and PS Publishing for receiving this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

When reading the blurb for Astor Hill I thought I would be overjoyed to read this book. I am a huge gossip girl fan and tend to be a fan of “messy” relationships in books.

This book however could not connect to me. I had an issue with the “instant connection” between our FMC and MMC. I also felt like there was a lot of filler at certain points of the story. I was not a fan of the cheating and there was definitely points of the story where I was slightly furious with our FMC (which is a good thing for me because it helps the connection with characters). This was a good read overall. The story and writing picked up around 50% for me.

If you like toxic, messy type relationships especially around college age you’ll enjoy this!!

- arc review -

When SM reached out via instagram DM’s offering me an arc copy of their new book, I got so excited because the tropes sounded right up my alley.

This was so fun! I really enjoyed all the secrets and lies. The love triangle(s) (bc yes there are a few) reminded me of gossip girl with a bit of one tree hill. Add in the suspense and I’m sold.

Ben, Olivia, and the whole crew had me so entertained and I can’t wait for book 2!

Thanks again for the arc! 🫶🏼

- college
- love triangles
- basketball
- boyfriend’s brother
- slow burn
- secrete, lies, drama
- he falls first

Loved this one! I thought some of the characters could be annoying af but eventually they all redeem themselves. I think the story kept me hooked from the beginning but towards the 50% mark, I could not put the book down. I knew that at some point, Liv was going to find out about the secret and the fallout would not be nice but man, the story was still good.