2.25 stars.

It kind of hurts me to have to rate this so low, because I really enjoyed Alexandra Paige's writing style. AND!!!!!! despite my rating, I actually think this is a very good debut novel. However, this is marketed as a romance novel, so I feel that I have to base my review on the romantic relationship between the main characters. Slight spoilers ahead!!!!

FIRST let me start with what I loved:
- As I said before, I love how Alexandra writes. She did a great job at making me feel like I was actually in London living with this insane group of people. There were a loootttt of characters in this, and each of them was dynamic in their own way.
- Speaking of all of those characters, I adored their little apartment. Living with that many people at once sounds like my own personal hell, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it and the complexities of the relationships between roommates. Everyone had their own little quirks that made them both more and less lovable to their flatmates, and it was just so fun to explore that.
- My favorite part of the book was Lucy's professional journey and her learning how to combine her love for flowers with her ambitions to bring the store to new heights. If the book was mostly focused on this, I would've been very happy with it, but I felt like her own plot line was overshadowed by that man (gross.)

Now.......... what I didn't love:
- This book so perfectly depicts exactly what it's like to date in your 20s in the worst way possible. I constantly felt triggered (YES, TRIGGERED) by the things that man would do and say to the point that I was getting Vietnam-War-style flashbacks to shitty men in my own past. I fell in love with Lucy, and now you're telling me I have to watch her fall all over herself for a fucking loser......... Don't piss me off.
- That man was SO manipulative that it physically hurt to finish reading this. Lucy deserved so much better than to spend an entire year on that man's hook. I do not care if you can't decide where you want to live, you can't drag people along while you figure it out. I'm not faulting him for having his own struggles, I'm sure it was very hard to feel like he did, but he was so unfair in the way he approached things with Lucy, and I wish the author had given her a stronger backbone. She's sitting around and waiting for a man that might never come when she has so much other shit to worry about?!?!?!?! BYEEE

Okay that's as far as I'm going to go without giving too too much away or going off on a misandrist rant.

TLDR; Alexandra Paige, I love you, but I wish you would've killed off your MMC <3

Thank you so much NetGalley, Avon, and Alexandra Paige for an advanced copy of this book!!
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plssszz fuck off omg. 2.5 stars but i cannot in good conscience round that up to 3