I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

She’s read every romance…except her own…
Irene Park loves romance novels—so much so she’s made a career of them as an online book reviewer with a massive following. But Irene’s real life dating story? Non-existent. So when she starts her freshman year of college, she sets her sights on finding true love using the one thing she really understands…romance book tropes.
If only it were that easy.
Enter Aiden Jeon, Irene’s online book review rival and biggest nemesis. When Aiden challenges her to see who can find love-by-trope first, he becomes the one person standing in her way to getting everything she wants both professionally and personally, too. So when the competition takes an unexpected turn, forcing the two of them to have to partner in the ultimate trope, fake dating, Irene is not prepared for everything she believed about romance, and Aiden, to flip on its head.
As Irene tackles the challenges of college life, struggles to figure out what she really wants for herself, all while trying to win the race for love, Irene realizes the answers may not be found in a romance novel. Happily Ever Afters seem so easy on page. But for Irene to find her ultimate HEA, she’ll have to get her nose out of the book and become the main character of her own story.

Short and Sweet Review

Irene loves romance books, so much in fact that she’s a book reviewer and has a big following. Sadly, her own romance life isn’t as exciting, which is why for her first year of college she wants to find romance. During one of her classes she ends up meeting Aiden Jeon, a fellow book reviewer and also one of her rivals. Irene and Aiden learn that they’ll be partners for the rest of the semester, but they also decide to do a little competition involving book tropes and dating. We follow Irene as she navigates her first year of college and try to find love.

This book started off so good and it slowly started to go downhill and I think I attribute that to Irene. This is Irene’s freshman year of college and she wants to find love but that’s easier said than done. Irene was a character I couldn’t connect to and that became more clear to me as the book went on. It felt like Irene has walls built up and she likes to push people away because she doesn’t want to be a burden but it kind of does the opposite and makes her seem cold and unreasonable. When we first start the book we learn that Irene is a book reviewer and she has a lot of back and forth with Aiden who is also a book reviewer and they usually have the opposite take on the romance books they read. When Irene and Aiden meet in class, she feels like she’s in competition with him and they eventually do start a competition to find love but also use tropes that are found in romance books. I enjoyed seeing them try to find someone who matched each trope but we could tell that Irene and Aiden liked each other and it was only a matter of time before they ended up together. Irene spends a lot of time focused on reviewing books and this competition that she stops focusing on her school work. When we find out Irene is failing, I didn’t feel bad for her mainly because she didn’t really put in any effort to change her predicament. This happens towards the end of the book and this is when I really found Irene to be over the top. I felt bad for Aiden because we can tell he cares about Irene and wants to help but at this point she has other ideas in her head and can’t be reasoned with. I didn’t care about the romance it was predictable and some of the things they said to each other were cringey. I did like Irene’s roommate Jeannette who seemed to genuinely care about Irene and do her best to give good advice. Honestly I feel like Irene’s growth went downhill and we saw her true colors towards the end of the book and although the author tried to redeem Irene it was too late for me I already wanted to forget about her. Also even though Irene and Aiden are book reviewers this book read as what someone thinks a book reviewer would say and do and I just wasn’t coming across well.

Overall, this book had things that I liked and things I didn’t (Irene). It’s hard for me to figure out how I feel, I liked the first half of the book but didn’t like the second half. I would say this book wasn’t for me but it could be for other people especially if they’re into romance and want to see one play out in this book.