Very cute and happy. I enjoyed this. Solid 3.5 stars. ( )

This was completely adorable from page one. A nerdy book blogger who loves her romance books on her kindle and can’t seem to get a second date. A computer guy turned closet romance novelist who writes under a pen name because 1. His dad would never approve and 2. Would romance readers really accept books from a male author? The two meet in an adorable meet-cute, and things go from there.

But of course, the plot thickens. Our blogger has a secret online identity. Our author is known by his female pen name in the writing community, but no one knows who he really is. When something “real” is forming, can you get past the lies that may have gotten you there, even if they were well intended? I ate this up 😊. And it has ADORABLE cat scenes!

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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This was fine until we got to the point where the hero, knowing who the heroine is, continues to talk to her online as his pseudonymous author self... and uses that info to make decisions. At around 50%, he gets super possessive and the heroine apparently loves it, but I hated it. Lying to her, lying to his readers, being possessive... not the book boyfriend for me. ( )

I would have loved to give it more but I guess it’s like a 3.75 and I’m rounding it up to 4.

I just totally stumbled upon this book because someone on my GR feed added it to their shelf and the title immediately caught my attention. We all romance lovers love our book boyfriends, so I really wanted to know what this story was going to be about and it definitely didn’t disappoint.

This book has the perfect protagonists on first glance - it’s almost like they’ve been written just for me. Mia is a clinic coordinator by day and an avid bookworm and romance book blogger by night. Alex is a successful romance novelist who writes under a female pen name. And their meet cute is in a bookstore where he offers to pay for her books. It’s the exact kind of dreamy first encounter all us romance novel lovers swoon about. Mia is also an introvert and very awkward in social situations, in general very clumsy. However, she is much more open and comfortable in her online persona. She is mostly attached to her kindle, can read a book a day, stays up all night reading and has the worst book hangovers... and has a cat named Fabio. What I mean to say is, she is mostly just like me and I absolutely adored her and felt such a kinship with her. Alex on the other hand always wanted to be a sci-fi novelist but that never happened, until his editor sister gave him the idea of writing romance. He is divorced and is not really looking for anything long term and believes that the HEAs in romance novels are a fantasy which don’t happen in real life, but i liked that he was open to a relationship once he met Mia. He got slightly possessive once but otherwise, he was kind and respectful and loved spending a night snuggled up in bed with Mia reading or just eating pizza and chilling. So basically, a man after my own heart.

The attraction between them is instantaneous and I totally felt that because they were too perfect for each other. As Mia thinks a lot of times, he is like a book boyfriend come to life. They read the same books and discuss them during their dates and I found it adorable. They share a scorching chemistry too. While the relationship developed pretty fast, I totally saw it coming. I’m just still conflicted about the fact that Alex’s alter ego female author is best friends with Mia’s blogger persona and Alex lies to her for most part of the book. I always knew that his intentions were good but it just felt a little iffy.

Both of them have lovely supportive families who are not opposed to giving sound advice, even if that’s not what our MCs wanna hear, and I really appreciated that. I liked all of them but I’m still undecided on whether I want to read their stories next.

The writing is everything I could ask for in a lighthearted contemporary romance. It is sweet and swoony and very sexy, and I breezed through it. The characters are written in a way that they are very appealing to readers like me and I loved that. There are also some discussions about the love of books, obsessive reading, getting emotionally invested in characters and the general disdain that people seem to have towards the romance genre and its readers. It actually hit very close to my heart because I’ve heard it all and seeing Mia standing up for her love of the genre really warmed my heart. And the way the conflict was resolved was kinda adorable. Despite all this, I didn’t feel emotionally invested in their love story and I can’t pinpoint why. It was a fun read and the characters were so made for me, but the whole love story felt fast and superficial to me. And the whole lying thing also took out some of the joy out of my experience. But I really commend the author for writing this book.

Despite some little issues and me not being totally into the love story, I absolutely adored the characters, especially Mia. This is an enjoyable read with lots of swoons. And as the title suggests, this book really is a love letter to the romance genre and it’s wonderful reader base, those of us who find joy in the adorable HEAs and wish that these book boyfriends come out of the pages into real life. ( )

3.5 stars ( )