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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
Thank you to HMH books and Net Galley for providing me with this early digital copy of this book.
Harper is a rising senior in high-school, spending the summer working at her mother’s bridal shop. She’s not a typical teen, while most of her class is spending the summer in her small town, New Hope, PA, relaxing and going to parties, she is working 40+ hour days, trying to help her mom keep the shop afloat. After a series of bad business decisions on her mom’s part, Harper, an aspiring businesswoman, stepped in to take over the books and some sewing. Being surrounded by brides and wedding chit-chat all day is proving to be challenging though. After an ill-fated summer romance from the previous year ended in heartbreak, Harper has sworn off love and the brides at the shop just make her more cynical.
Theo, her long time best friend, could not be more of Harper’s opposite. He wears his heart on sleeve, constantly falling in love, and is always authentically himself; fencing, LARP-ing, playing the accordion, helping Harper study SAT words because he loves vocabulary, and wandering around without shoes. One day Harper comes home from the shop and finds Theo bawling his eyes out over another girl who broke up with him after 2 dates because he came on too strong. This is always Theo’s pattern and Harper doesn’t want to see him keep getting hurt. They make an agreement; she will give him lessons on how not to fall in love and Harper will go on a date and try not to fall in love.
What begins in lessons about how not fall in love, turns into a story about how to fall in love. This is a very sweet contemporary YA romance about opening up oneself to the possibility of love. Light-hearted, with realistic characters.
Harper is a rising senior in high-school, spending the summer working at her mother’s bridal shop. She’s not a typical teen, while most of her class is spending the summer in her small town, New Hope, PA, relaxing and going to parties, she is working 40+ hour days, trying to help her mom keep the shop afloat. After a series of bad business decisions on her mom’s part, Harper, an aspiring businesswoman, stepped in to take over the books and some sewing. Being surrounded by brides and wedding chit-chat all day is proving to be challenging though. After an ill-fated summer romance from the previous year ended in heartbreak, Harper has sworn off love and the brides at the shop just make her more cynical.
Theo, her long time best friend, could not be more of Harper’s opposite. He wears his heart on sleeve, constantly falling in love, and is always authentically himself; fencing, LARP-ing, playing the accordion, helping Harper study SAT words because he loves vocabulary, and wandering around without shoes. One day Harper comes home from the shop and finds Theo bawling his eyes out over another girl who broke up with him after 2 dates because he came on too strong. This is always Theo’s pattern and Harper doesn’t want to see him keep getting hurt. They make an agreement; she will give him lessons on how not to fall in love and Harper will go on a date and try not to fall in love.
What begins in lessons about how not fall in love, turns into a story about how to fall in love. This is a very sweet contemporary YA romance about opening up oneself to the possibility of love. Light-hearted, with realistic characters.
medium-paced
A hardened cynic and a hopeless romantic, best friends..... or maybe something more. Harper works at her mom’s wedding shop and after seeing so any relationship squabbles and after a particularly horrible break up she is convinced that she just doesn’t think romance is where its at. Her best friend Theo is the exact opposite, he is constantly falling in love and being dumped. He loves rom coms, is very sensitive, a bit of a dork and really into larping. He believes in loving as deeply as possible. After his most recent breakup Harper offers to teach him how not to fall in love and he makes a counter bet with her that she will fall in love with the guy that she starts going out with ( Felix, a super sweet and cute guy who works out at the gym across from her mom’s store that she’s been running into (literally)). However, the more Harper tries to help Theo work out his relationship the more she finds herself conflicted between her feelings for Felix.... and her relationship with Theo. It doesn’t help that Theo and Harper have always been close, physically and emotionally. After a weekend at one of Theo’s larp events, Harper starts to re-evaluate everything she feels.. and hopefully snag the right guy before its too late. This was a pretty cute romance read. It definitely works the friends to lovers thing well and the issues of mixed signals and messages between two people who are complete opposites but so close to one another that ruining their friendship is something neither of them wants to risk. Though there was a bit of a love triangle/ square (?) everything works out in the end and both guys were really sweet and nice guys, there was no issue with one being better than the other it was just sorting out feelings between someone new and someone who is a lifelong best friend. I had fun reading this and definitely would recommend it for anyone looking for a cute romance read!
*Thanks Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*
*Thanks Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Book Group for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Fairly standard, don't like the depiction of larp, overall fine
An excellent crossover book, both adults and teens would enjoy this one. Perfect for teens who devour Emily Henry.
If there was any problem that I had with this book, it's that I went into it expecting the characters to be, well, older than seventeen. The synopsis made it seem like they were at least in college, if not older. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with young adult romances centered around childhood friends to lovers, especially when they're still in high school since I do think that makes it more realistic, but for me, the lack of realism stems from a seventeen-year-old girl so cynical she can't even consider saying the word "boyfriend" out loud. I feel like to reach that point in your life, you need to have at least more than one bad romantic experience; I hardly think that one failed summer fling can serve as a catalyst for such a negative worldview.
So while Harper's wishy-washy attitude was enough to make me want to pull my hair out, the saving grace of this book was none other than Sir Theodoro himself. I found his dorky, sincere, romantic take on life to be a refreshing change of pace from the other leading male characters of books of the same type. As Harper was falling in love with him, so was I.
Rating: 4/5
So while Harper's wishy-washy attitude was enough to make me want to pull my hair out, the saving grace of this book was none other than Sir Theodoro himself. I found his dorky, sincere, romantic take on life to be a refreshing change of pace from the other leading male characters of books of the same type. As Harper was falling in love with him, so was I.
Rating: 4/5
It’s a cute story, but nothing new. Best friends that are into each other but date other people because they don’t know how to communicate.
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was in need of a cute, sappy book, and this was exactly what I was looking for.
The characters were fun, and while they seemed a little cheesy at times, you have to keep in mind that these are young, inexperienced teenagers, so it worked.
The plot is somewhat predictable, but is still cute and engaging enough to keep you reading because even though you have an idea of what will happen, you want to know how it will happen.
My only suggestion is to have a dictionary near by. Theo helps Harper study for SATs, and some of those vocab words they work into conversation are something else.
The characters were fun, and while they seemed a little cheesy at times, you have to keep in mind that these are young, inexperienced teenagers, so it worked.
The plot is somewhat predictable, but is still cute and engaging enough to keep you reading because even though you have an idea of what will happen, you want to know how it will happen.
My only suggestion is to have a dictionary near by. Theo helps Harper study for SATs, and some of those vocab words they work into conversation are something else.
How Not to Fall in Love is one of my most anticipated reads this year. I've been pining for another from Firkins since I read her debut, Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things. As both are loose adaptations of classic literature (combined with how much Firkins' first made me crave the next), I couldn't help but compare them as I read HNtFiL and while it didn't quite measure up to HSaOBT for me, it was still really good. Harper, the daughter of a wedding dress seamstress, has a cynical outlook on love after she experienced a terrible breakup post-summer camp. Her best friend Theo can't stop falling in love and getting his heart broken every week. They just might have something to teach each other and set up an agreement: Harper will try dating the cute guy at the gym across the street and Theo will stop heading straight for love with every girl he dates. But they might have more to learn from each other than just this.
This retelling of Don Quixote (which I haven't read, so I can't give an accurate assessment as to how well the plots/themes match up, though I understand a windmill plays a role in DQ, and readers looking for that feature will find it here, too) is fun and modern, including trappings such as the contemporary wedding industry, LARPing, and Renaissance Faires (or, something similar for this particular brand of LARPing). Firkins leads the reader through a plot that is somewhat predictable and formulaic, including heavy miscommunication. It puts a little bit of a damper on things and is mostly what kept this from being a five-star read for me, but I can't fault the book for it too much, knowing that it was based on an existing work. The benefit of the obvious formula is good pacing, however. Especially once everything was established and tension continued to rise, I didn't want to put the book down even if I felt like I knew what was coming next.
As far as characters go (and, again, perhaps my fault for making comparisons), I found Harper to not be as interesting as I wanted her to be. While her cynicism is necessary to the plot, it sometimes gets in the way of Harper having other personality traits. Theo, Pippa, Felix, and Harper's mother had enough dimension to make them easy to differentiate and they fit nicely into the story. No one comes off especially well-developed, however, which was a letdown after what I remember from HSaOBT.
HNtFiL also lacks the nuance and maturity that I really loved in HSaOBT. If you're looking for another HSaOBT, you won't find it here, but if you're able to better separate the two, HNtFiL is a fun YA contemporary romance that is still a good step above most of the rest out there. Firkins' characters have an air of realism to them, even if they're a bit less developed than I would have liked, and the chemistry between Theo and Harper (and Harper and Felix) is obvious. Despite my gripes, highly recommended.
This retelling of Don Quixote (which I haven't read, so I can't give an accurate assessment as to how well the plots/themes match up, though I understand a windmill plays a role in DQ, and readers looking for that feature will find it here, too) is fun and modern, including trappings such as the contemporary wedding industry, LARPing, and Renaissance Faires (or, something similar for this particular brand of LARPing). Firkins leads the reader through a plot that is somewhat predictable and formulaic, including heavy miscommunication. It puts a little bit of a damper on things and is mostly what kept this from being a five-star read for me, but I can't fault the book for it too much, knowing that it was based on an existing work. The benefit of the obvious formula is good pacing, however. Especially once everything was established and tension continued to rise, I didn't want to put the book down even if I felt like I knew what was coming next.
As far as characters go (and, again, perhaps my fault for making comparisons), I found Harper to not be as interesting as I wanted her to be. While her cynicism is necessary to the plot, it sometimes gets in the way of Harper having other personality traits. Theo, Pippa, Felix, and Harper's mother had enough dimension to make them easy to differentiate and they fit nicely into the story. No one comes off especially well-developed, however, which was a letdown after what I remember from HSaOBT.
HNtFiL also lacks the nuance and maturity that I really loved in HSaOBT. If you're looking for another HSaOBT, you won't find it here, but if you're able to better separate the two, HNtFiL is a fun YA contemporary romance that is still a good step above most of the rest out there. Firkins' characters have an air of realism to them, even if they're a bit less developed than I would have liked, and the chemistry between Theo and Harper (and Harper and Felix) is obvious. Despite my gripes, highly recommended.