James has been in love with his best friend, Jess, all his life. But she only ever saw him as a friend. Despite his attempts to show his true emotions, she always kept him in the friendzone. Until the right time comes and James is decided to change that.

Honestly I wanted to absolutely love this. Victoria is the sweetest and this is her first work so let me start by saying how proud of her I am.
My main issue with this book was how predictable everything was. Of course we all suffer from this with romance books but right from the first 5 chapters you can tell all the storyline. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I like to have a twist to keep me addicted to the book.

Jess, as a main character, didn’t stick out to me. She is supposedly this super attractive woman with her own problems. And all this is interesting until she is very smart to work where she does, but completely clueless about everything else in a normal adult’s life. I get it, she has been through a lot with her family and it’s not easy to move past traumas… And I’m not saying she should be okay all the time because she’s an adult but she should act like one, which doesn’t happen most of the times.

James… Well, the man was pinning over his friend over 10 years so I do feel bad for him. His input in the story was okay but I wanted to see more of his pov in the present and not have constant flashbacks to all the events that he had with Jess over the years.

But when they finally get together… It’s so anticlimactic. Even though it’s been around 20 chapters by this point, it feels rushed. Maybe because we had a bunch of flashbacks and whining until this point. But it was going okay.
Now this is a personal preference but the 3rd act breakup, most of the times, is so unnecessary and feels like it’s extending a story that could have an earlier and better ending because this “breakup” is solved so quickly.

There were a few things that I wanted to be more developed in the book, such as Jess’ family and career situation, the whole thing with Claire, the relationship with Ben, and others. I’m curious to see about Parker and Liz in the next book though so hopefully I will like it better than this one.

I want to say that this isn’t, in any way, a review to hurt the author. Not only because I never review with such intend, but because Victoria is genuinely a good person and I think it’s important to have all sort of opinions, especially when you’re starting a career. And just because I wasn’t a big fan of this book, doesn’t mean other people won’t love it.

Thanks to Victoria (the author) and the publisher for sending me an arc in exchange of my honest review.