Title: A guide to being just friends
Author: Sophie Sullivan
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Genre: Romance, friends to lovers
Pages: 330
My Rating:
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A guide to being just friends
Hailey just opened her own salad bar. One day she goes next door, where they sell amazing baked things. That is where she meets Wes. Wes thinks Hailey is his date and he is 100% sure. But Hailey is not interested in dating and she definitely did not have a date with Wes. Days later, they meet again and that is when Wes realizes she wasn’t lying about her name and she really wasn’t his date who stood him up. He makes up for that and the become friends. They hang out a lot and they start doing grocery shopping together. Both of them are not interested in dating or relationships. Wes never wants to get married and have kids and Hailey is too busy with her salad bar, she can’t use the distraction. What could possibly go wrong?
Review
Most of the time I have a lot of things to say in a book review, but honestly I have no idea what to say this time. First, of all, I am a sucker for pretty covers. It might be one of the reasons I bought it. But of course, the story itself is the most important thing. And I am not even sure how I feel about this book. Before you think it is a bad book, it is not. It is not bad at all. But the story and the main characters did not impress me that much. I did not feel connected to Hailey or Wes. Maybe now I think about it they were pretty dull in my opinion. But perhaps I think they were boring because I had no connection with them.
The story was good. Hailey starts a salad bar, which made me hungry. I love a good salad and she made all kinds of salads, which is pretty cool. Wes is a nice guy but he does not believe in love. He basically wants to hook up with someone. That is also how they meet. Wes thinks Hailey is his date for that night. He does not even Hailey when she says that she is not his date. Not cool, Wes. Anyway, they become friends after that. They are both not interested in relationships. Hailey had a nasty breakup and Wes never wants to get married (I’ll get to that soon).
Their friendship is pretty normal and okay. They started to do grocery shopping together, which is definitely more a couples thing than a friendship thing. I can’t imagine me asking a friend to do some grocery shopping. That does not sound fun at all. Anyway, I love the friends-to-lovers genre a lot. My ideal relationship would exactly be like that.
Wes was a little bit too overprotective I think. He constantly wanted to help her and give her things. Not just little things, but like an expensive bracelet from Tiffany’s. Even when Hailey is not that kind of girl. Hailey does not care about money and expensive things. So Wes screwed up a few times with that. I mean, who gives a woman something from Tiffany’s after two weeks of dating? Even for me, that is too much. One thing that bothered me is that Wes said he never wanted to get married and pretty quickly at the end of this book he changed his mind. I don’t like when characters go from one opinion to another one super fast. Sure, Wes loved Hailey but that does not mean he had to marry her. A lot of people in this world are in love with each other but never marry. It is like a woman saying she does not want to have kids ever and then one guy comes along and suddenly she wants a lot of kids. Without any explanation, it does not make any sense. But that is my personal opinion.
Overall, I think this book is still a pretty good friends-to-lovers book. The only thing that I did not like as much was that Wes and his I never want to get married part. But other than that it is pretty good. It was not my favourite book and it did not impress me, but that does not mean it was a bad book. It is impossible to like every single book out there, even when you are reading your favourite genre. So this book was not my favourite book, but maybe it will be yours.
I´ve read another book by Sophie a year ago, which I loved btw. She also wrote ´how to love your neighbour´ and I loved that one. I can definitely recommend that one!