⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ + Infinity Stars
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

I received an advance review copy of Read My Lips through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Every once in a while, I pick up a romance expecting to be entertained and instead find a book that rearranges something inside me. Read My Lips was one of those books.

I devoured it in about 36 hours, and somewhere along the way Ben and Simon stopped feeling like characters I was simply reading about. Their story became an exploration of shame, belonging, authenticity, disability, family, sexuality, and what happens when someone finally sees the parts of you that you’ve spent a lifetime believing you needed to hide.

Ben absolutely broke my heart. His belief that love and belonging must be earned—through gratitude, usefulness, performance, or making himself smaller—felt painfully real. Watching Simon gently challenge those beliefs was one of the most beautiful parts of this book. He doesn’t rescue Ben or love him into becoming a different person. He keeps showing Ben that the person already standing in front of him is worthy of being known, wanted, and loved.

And Simon has his own work to do. I loved that neither character exists simply to heal the other. Both have learned ways of moving through the world that once protected them but now keep them from fully inhabiting their own lives. Their relationship creates enough safety for both of them to begin choosing something different.

That made the intimacy between them incredibly effective for me. The sex is hot, but it is never just hot. Desire becomes another place where these characters learn to communicate, become vulnerable, receive care, and allow themselves to be fully seen.

The deepest message I took from Read My Lips is that love doesn’t require us to disappear into another person. Healthy love can make more room for us to become ourselves.

This book also reached beyond Ben and Simon for me. It made me think about the versions of ourselves who survived with whatever tools were available to them at the time. And how easy it is, looking backward with knowledge we have now, to judge them for not knowing what they couldn’t yet know. Sometimes growth comes later. Sometimes joy comes later. Sometimes we finally acquire the language, resources, relationships, or safety we needed decades earlier.

Later still counts.

I finished Read My Lips feeling both heartbroken for the time we can lose trying to become acceptable to other people and incredibly hopeful about how much life can still be waiting when we finally begin choosing ourselves.

I will be buying a physical copy when this is published because I need to reread it with a frankly unreasonable number of annotation tabs.

Infinity stars. No notes. ❤️

"Listen to me. You're exactly who I need, Ben Cooper. You always have been. No matter what you wear. Or who brought you up. Or what you choose to tell me. It's always been perfectly fine."

I am so grateful to have received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley.
I can honestly say I’ve never read a book as charmingly witty and Britishly fun as Jem wrote Read My Lips. Jem is clearly an absolutely brilliant author with such a fun, unique writing style, and I was completely hooked from the beginning.

The banter between Simon and Ben was absolutely perfect, and I fell for them both completely. Something that genuinely surprised me was how much I loved the single POV. I actually think it made the book better. I loved having to guess how Simon was feeling, and I felt like it added so much tension to the story. I didn’t want to know what was going on with Simon until Ben found out. It made me feel like I was right there alongside Ben, figuring everything out as he did.

There are some difficult topics explored in this book, and I really identified with the way Ben felt throughout the story. This is one of those heartbreakingly sad but incredibly beautiful books that manages to hurt your heart while still leaving you with so much warmth.

Jem, you’ve officially won me over. I absolutely loved this. ❤️

Author - Jem Martin
Star rating - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
Spicy Rating - 🌶️🌶️🌶️.5
Overall - Autistic Allie Approved✅

ARC provided by NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I've read 123 books this year so far, and very few of them have given me as much enjoyment as this dazzling sunrise of a debut. Read My Lips takes five dozen romance tropes and turns every one of them inside out and backwards with a wild, joke a minute, so-funny-why-am-I-suddenly-sobbing romp to its inevitable end.

The miscommunication trope is a ripe equine corpse in the genre. As this is a book quite literally about communication, the fact that the main characters tend to have a difficult time understanding each other (even both of them are plainly stating the truth), should come as no surprise, and at no point is it a cheap, silly plot gag. No one here speaks the same native language. They literally cannot communicate without effort. The differences of class, race, gender conformity, and culture add layers and layers of complexity between a wealthy Deaf biracial man who has been raised outside of Deaf culture employing as an interpreter a working class white hearing man raised with BSL (British Sign Language) as his first language.

Despite the richly nuanced and charged themes, it's still a laugh out loud romcom. largely due to interpreter Ben's painfully self-deprecating first person narration as he eloquently laments the Situation he has gotten himself into. Even before the plot really gets rolling, it is a pretty lamentable situation: being three years deep in one sided, gross out all your friends, hopeless love with your boss/client in a profession that demands the highest of ethical standards is a real bummer of a rat's nest. Hijinks ensue and things get exponentially more complicated from there.

One of my favorite things about this book is how well the author describes Deaf languages. BSL is central, described in vivid nuance rather than blandly transcribed as though it were spoken English. Signs are enhanced, expanded or one handed, quick small gestures as a secret told across a crowded room, exaggerated for comic effect, vulnerable with shaking hands. Lipreading demands eye contact and conversations are cut dead by someone turning their back on the other. I read as many genre books with a Deaf MCs as I can and this sets a new standard.

I loved every minute of this book and cannot wait to see what Martin does in the future

I loved the concept of this book from the second I read the synopsis and it was everything I hoped for and more.
Funny, sexy, educational and sweet but with a kind of poetic depth and immersive feel that I rarely find in typical romances.
The characters dialogue and mannerisms are spot on and at turns hilariously and emotionally evocative.
The author kind of throws the reader right into the middle of the action at the beginning in a slightly disorientating manner but trust me, just go with the flow. It’s worth it.
Simon’s insecurities and choices regarding lip reading and British sign language are fascinating and eye-opening. It was telling seeing how Ben, his roommate and the other supporting characters reacted to those aspects of him.
I love the concept wound throughout the story of being truly seen by another person and Ben and Simon really embody it for each other.
The whole book was full of charming details that brought the reader fully into the world of the story. From Simon’s amazing clothes to the food and drink, every scene was delightfully layered and easy to picture with all of one’s senses.
As an American who loves British novels the cultural details were right up my alley.
I’d love to read something from Simon’s perspective someday!
Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. I highly recommend this novel. 5/5 stars

Thank you Netgalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own. A charming read! I’m big into fake dating so I absolutely loved this! Ben has spent the last few years being a British Sign Language interpreter for Simon. As a PR agent Simon has a lot of work, so Ben stays pretty busy. The only problem is that he’s gone and developed feelings for his boss. Everything in Ben ants Simon so badly and Simon couldn’t give him the time of day. Also it would be inappropriate for anything to happen between them, but Ben can’t seem to move past his feelings. When a sex tape scandal with a client, one that could get Simon fired thereby leading to Ben’s unemployment, Ben can’t risk losing Simon in his life. So he lies, it was him in the tape with Simon not the client. Now Simon and Ben, in order to keep their jobs, must pretend to be boyfriends. They also have to recreate said sex tape to show it was Ben. How will Ben get through being so close to the man he wants so badly? And as they grow closer and the lines between them begin to blur can Ben survive? After all Simon doesn’t do commitment. Not to mention that Simon is absolutely stunningly gorgeous and Ben is most decidedly not. Sweet, swoony, spicy, and heartwarming! Jem Martin writes of love, disability, shame, insecurity, and truly being seen by someone else even when we can’t see it in ourselves! I highly recommend this one, it’s a fast paced read that was unputdownable!