Publishers Weekly
05/09/2022
Loren keeps the Say Everything series going strong with this sensitive and emotionally rich third installment (after What If You and Me), an exploration of grief, insecurity, and privacy in the digital age. Therapist and social media influencer Eliza Catalano presents her life as perfect to her followers while dishing out relationship advice, but she’s secretly still a wreck following the deaths of her parents two years earlier. When one of her own dates goes horribly wrong—and her drunken antics get posted online—she decides to take a break from both online dating and digital distractions. Enter Beckham Carter, Eliza’s mysterious, tattooed office building neighbor. He’s got some ideas on how to have fun off the grid, sparking an intense friendship. As the two grow closer, mutual attraction and unexpected feelings also grow. But to make it work, they must both work through some issues, among them hacker Beckham’s trauma around his complicated upbringing and Eliza’s desire for perfection. Loren’s protagonists are flawed, vulnerable, and authentic, and it’s a joy to watch them help each other tackle problems. Their obvious chemistry lends itself particularly well to the bedroom in some truly sizzling scenes. Readers looking for mature, thoughtful romance will be thrilled. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary. (July)
From the Publisher
"Absolutely unputdownable! Roni Loren is a new favorite." — COLLEEN HOOVER for The One You Can't Forget
"[The character's] obvious chemistry lends itself particularly well to the bedroom in some truly sizzling scenes. Readers looking for mature, thoughtful romance will be thrilled." — Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2022-04-27
A therapist and a cybersecurity expert who are neighbors in a coworking building agree to a friends-with-benefits arrangement.
Eliza Catalano loves her job as a therapist, but she struggles to manage her own feelings. Grieving over the loss of both parents in a car accident two years ago and feeling like a failure for being single at 32, she decides to adopt a dog on Christmas Day. When she stops at her office to do some paperwork first, she finds Beckham Carter, the cute younger guy in the office next door, also alone and working on the holiday. She spontaneously asks him to join her at the dog shelter, and a friendship is born. Beck is a cybersecurity expert with zero presence on social media, and he invites Eliza to join him at a “NoPho” party, where his large group of friends get together to focus on the people in the room, with no phones allowed. Beck encourages Eliza to detox from social media and the dating apps that make her feel like a failure, but he struggles to reveal his own feelings of failure about his past. His parents were leaders of a fundamentalist Christian cult, and he abandoned his entire family after leaving the cult in his late teens. There is a strong attraction between the two, but Eliza wants marriage and family while Beck is determined to stay single forever. They agree to a friends-with-benefits arrangement, realizing it’s the only path forward since they have such different relationship goals. Eliza and Beck are both sympathetic, nuanced characters, and Loren fully explores their inner lives to great effect. The late return of someone from Beck’s past is nothing more than a plot device, though; it strikes a discordant note in a book that aims to thoughtfully explore how sad, traumatized people learn to love and trust each other.
An angst-y, emotional romance that explores the challenges of falling in love.
