#SpeakUpSMP

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og review — 2 stars

special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

to be honest, a good friends-to-lovers story is always a hit or miss, and this one was a miss. the main characters, june and levi, were generally all over the place and i really did not like part of the reason why they started fake dating to begin with.

not only that, the pacing of the story felt so rushed and sloppy. like june and levi hadn’t really talked in 10 years and they had trust issues but for some reason jumped straight into fake-dating so quickly? it didn’t make sense.

lastly, tiktok was mentioned 6 times and that’s one-too many times. when will authors realize that constantly using pop culture references doesn’t age well and makes their readers cringe 99% of the time?

overall, this book just wasn’t for me. i couldn’t get into it no matter how hard i tried, and i often found myself force-reading to finish it instead of enjoying it. sure, it had some cute, romcom-esque moments that i really liked, with fun banter, but that wasn’t enough for me as a reader.