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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
Love love love... a slow burn and great finish.
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Wes, the oldest Jansen brother, tried to shield his brothers from their parents' fighting as a child and still feels like he needs to protect them from their father's ire as an adult. His childhood caused him to feel that companionship, not love, is the recipe for a successful partnership aka marriage. When he meets Hailey, the owner of By the Cup, and she is desperately in need of business advice, he forms a friendship with her and starts to help with her shop. However, what he feels for Hailey feels a lot like attraction, which is not something Wes was expecting or wanting.
I absolutely loved being back with the Jansen brothers! I loved being able to see more of the brothers' interactions than we did in the prior two books, and I enjoyed seeing the happy couples and the continuation of their love stories. This is absolutely readable as a stand-alone, but I think it is richest when read alongside Sophie's other two books about the Jansen brothers.
I think I officially love the friends to lovers trope. I loved watching Hailey and Wes' friendship develop throughout the story. I also really enjoyed how Hailey's store By the Cup was centric to the story development. I enjoyed the new recipes, new employees, and increased foot traffic that we got to see, and I celebrated Hailey's successes. I think that Wes' involvement with her store allowed their relationship to have an organic and sweet growth since they always had something to talk about and a common focus.
Overall this was such a sweet book and I will absolutely read it again. I think rom com lovers will enjoy it a lot.
Thank you to St Martins Griffin for an e-arc. All thoughts are my own!
I absolutely loved being back with the Jansen brothers! I loved being able to see more of the brothers' interactions than we did in the prior two books, and I enjoyed seeing the happy couples and the continuation of their love stories. This is absolutely readable as a stand-alone, but I think it is richest when read alongside Sophie's other two books about the Jansen brothers.
I think I officially love the friends to lovers trope. I loved watching Hailey and Wes' friendship develop throughout the story. I also really enjoyed how Hailey's store By the Cup was centric to the story development. I enjoyed the new recipes, new employees, and increased foot traffic that we got to see, and I celebrated Hailey's successes. I think that Wes' involvement with her store allowed their relationship to have an organic and sweet growth since they always had something to talk about and a common focus.
Overall this was such a sweet book and I will absolutely read it again. I think rom com lovers will enjoy it a lot.
Thank you to St Martins Griffin for an e-arc. All thoughts are my own!
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love when characters are portrayed with anxieties and they're seen as part of the character that they work through rather than they have to "fix" their anxieties.
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For fans of breezy romance books, there is plenty to like in A Guide to Being Just Friends by Sophie Sullivan. The opening hours of the story move along with likable characters and a plot that stretches the bounds of story logic without ever becoming ridiculous. Hailey Sharp owns a burgeoning salad eatery with great recipes and a not-so-great client base who crosses paths with tech-minded Wes Jansen— and the story goes from there. Both of the leads are likeable, but not treacly, and their surrounding cast of relatives and friends fill out the various rom-com roles well. The totemic When Harry Met Sally... is name-checked several times, and the inspiration for the story and characters is certainly apparent on the page.
Sophie Sullivan throws in the odd antagonist, but she doesn't force a main villain to add stakes to the story. Instead, the core conflict for Hailey is establishing herself in an unfamiliar world while encountering people who may have different ideas and plans than her. There's nothing wrong with a high-concept story that uses a quirky premise to sell the story, though Sullivan does a lot with her more grounded approach to human relationships, both romantic and platonic.
Where A Guide to Being Just Friends runs into trouble is with its pacing and the specificity it tries to add to its characters. The early chapters move along nicely as the stakes are set, and Sullivan builds out her world, but as the story goes on, it starts to run into trouble. What feels like it should be the ending of the book arrives about three-quarters of the way through—which wouldn't have been an issue because the book isn't short by any means—but then it keeps going. There isn't some major twist or wrinkle added to open up Wes and Hailey's world; it simply feels like a few familiar issues from earlier in the book are revisited to fill out the page count. When the rest of the novel glides along so effortlessly, for the last quarter to become such a slog really stands out.
Second to my pacing issue is one that's more personal—which probably won't bother most readers. When an author has a character trait they want to highlight, whether it's owning a salad business or working in tech, I always go in with the hope that they either have done a lot of research into the interest or they come from that world themselves. It's always cool when you can learn about someone's niche or hobby through the work they create, and these little eccentricities make their characters more interesting than if they are another writer returning home to fall in love with an old flame. That's a story I've seen countless times before, and I appreciate it whenever a writer decides to mix it up. Where it runs into trouble is when that character quirk or hobby rings as false—which was sadly the problem with Wes and his dreams of being a game designer. I'll partly blame Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for making Wes' interest in game design seem so hollow by comparison. The video games referenced, the ideas behind game design, and the work that goes into making a video game all felt poorly written in contrast to Hailey's world of salads and hospitality. Wes could have just been an app developer or an investor, and the novel would've functioned just as well, so the decision to try to cram in video games was puzzling and took me out of the story.
While A Guide to Being Just Friends sometimes lets its innovations and ambitions get in the way of the central story, the novel is a fun read to cozy up with for romance fans.
Sophie Sullivan throws in the odd antagonist, but she doesn't force a main villain to add stakes to the story. Instead, the core conflict for Hailey is establishing herself in an unfamiliar world while encountering people who may have different ideas and plans than her. There's nothing wrong with a high-concept story that uses a quirky premise to sell the story, though Sullivan does a lot with her more grounded approach to human relationships, both romantic and platonic.
Where A Guide to Being Just Friends runs into trouble is with its pacing and the specificity it tries to add to its characters. The early chapters move along nicely as the stakes are set, and Sullivan builds out her world, but as the story goes on, it starts to run into trouble. What feels like it should be the ending of the book arrives about three-quarters of the way through—which wouldn't have been an issue because the book isn't short by any means—but then it keeps going. There isn't some major twist or wrinkle added to open up Wes and Hailey's world; it simply feels like a few familiar issues from earlier in the book are revisited to fill out the page count. When the rest of the novel glides along so effortlessly, for the last quarter to become such a slog really stands out.
Second to my pacing issue is one that's more personal—which probably won't bother most readers. When an author has a character trait they want to highlight, whether it's owning a salad business or working in tech, I always go in with the hope that they either have done a lot of research into the interest or they come from that world themselves. It's always cool when you can learn about someone's niche or hobby through the work they create, and these little eccentricities make their characters more interesting than if they are another writer returning home to fall in love with an old flame. That's a story I've seen countless times before, and I appreciate it whenever a writer decides to mix it up. Where it runs into trouble is when that character quirk or hobby rings as false—which was sadly the problem with Wes and his dreams of being a game designer. I'll partly blame Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for making Wes' interest in game design seem so hollow by comparison. The video games referenced, the ideas behind game design, and the work that goes into making a video game all felt poorly written in contrast to Hailey's world of salads and hospitality. Wes could have just been an app developer or an investor, and the novel would've functioned just as well, so the decision to try to cram in video games was puzzling and took me out of the story.
While A Guide to Being Just Friends sometimes lets its innovations and ambitions get in the way of the central story, the novel is a fun read to cozy up with for romance fans.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted