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My Review:Title: Love, Comment, Subscribe
Author: Cathy Yardley
Series: Ponto Beach Reunion #1
Published by: Montlake Romance
Release Date: October 1, 2021
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 335
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 2, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2023 May SIAM
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:
Blurb:Back in high school, Lily Wang wanted to be popular, but she considered herself lucky to be part of a tight group of oddballs and honors students called the Nerd Herd. Now, at twenty-eight, she feels like she’s finally on the cusp of succeeding as a beauty influencer—if she can hit five million subscribers, brands will take notice and she could get her own makeup line.
Fellow Nerd Herd alum Tobin Bui has had a lot of success as a YouTube gamer. But the road to online stardom has been rocky. First, he disappointed his parents by dropping out of college, and now, after years of pranks, skits, and playthroughs, he’s struggling to come up with new content to satisfy his ever-growing fan base. His agents say he needs cross-audience appeal, a new twist.
When Nerd Herd frenemy Lily approaches Tobin about teaming up to do a video to bolster her brand and reinvigorate his, he agrees. But when their first collab video goes viral, their relationship heats up too. With the whole internet watching, will these two former misfits finally realize they’re perfect together?
3.5 stars — So, this one was hard for me. And mostly just from a personality perspective, which hopefully will make sense. Here’s the thing: I am more like Emily in the Nerd Herd. I have always bucked *against* popularity, and just wanted to find people who like me for me. So Lily was always going to be a struggle to connect with for me.
And I will admit that initially she proved all my fears right. She wanted things that I have just never wanted. She strived for things that have never been important to me. BUT, there were some moments where Ms. Yardley actually got me to see Lily, and what made her tick, and her need for acceptance. So there were moments where I did connect with parts of Lily. But if I’m being honest? It wasn’t quite enough for me. She still held these views that made my heart hurt. She definitely learns and grows, but it happens a bit quickly at the end, and for me I was only so-so on it. I believed it, there was just something else I was wanting, and I’m honestly not sure what. It could be that this cold my husband gave me is messing me up a bit too, so don’t discount that.
Tobin was a pretty fun hero, but there was also depth to him that I wasn’t expecting. It was interesting to get a different perspective of the fun-loving mask that, well, masks the struggle underneath. We got to see a perspective of someone with ADHD, but also someone struggling with other mental health issues and burnout. I really enjoyed him, but I will admit there is some unnameable something that kept me from fully connecting with him too. Maybe it was just that fear of what would happen with them together?
Which brings me to them as a couple. I’m not a huge lover of enemies to lovers, and so I’m always going to be a little more reluctant on those romances…it’s just a personal taste thing. They definitely had their struggles because they are such opposites, but I did appreciate that they could bring balance to one another. Tobin mellowed Lily out and brought out her fun side, Lily helped give Tobin some drive. Do I believe it will work long term? Mostly. And they had pretty fun moments in their steaminess, which was a nice change.
On the personality front, I will also admit that I don’t really get the whole influencer thing, and have very mixed feelings about it. So maybe I’m just a bit too old to really appreciate that aspect of this story. 😉
I honestly think my own reluctance for the story might have hampered my enjoyment a little bit, but at the same time there were moments where I was pleasantly surprised. So while it wasn’t a hit out of the park, it went better than I was expecting!
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