Booked on a Feeling (A Sweet Mess) – ARC review

Booked on a Feeling
by Jayci Lee
Release Date:  July 26, 2022
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Book #3 in the A Sweet Mess series
Number of Pages:  317
Kindle Edition
Source:  ARC from NetGalley
Contemporary Romance
Ages 15 and up
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Jayci Lee’s romcom Booked on a Feeling features an overachieving lawyer. A failing bookstore. A childhood friend. And the chance of a lifetime…

Lizzy “Overachiever” Chung, Esq. has her life mapped out neatly:
* Become a lawyer. Check.
* Join a prestigious law firm. Check.
* Make partner. In progress.

If all goes to plan, she will check off that last box in a couple years, make her parents proud, and live a successful, fulfilled life in L.A. What was not in her plans was passing out from a panic attack during a pivotal moment in her career. A few deep breaths and a four hour drive later, Lizzy is in Weldon for three weeks to shed the burnout and figure out what went wrong. And what better place to recharge than the small California town where she spent her childhood summers with her best friend, Jack Park.

Jack Park didn’t expect to see Lizzy back in Weldon, but now he’s got three weeks to spend with the girl of his dreams. Except she doesn’t know of his decades-long crush on her–and he intends to keep it that way. She’s a high-powered attorney who lives in L.A. and he’s a bookkeeper at his family’s brewery who never left his hometown. He can’t risk their friendship on a long shot. Can he? When Lizzy decides that the local bookstore needs a little revamp, of course, Jack is going to help her bring it back to life. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to ignore there might be more than just friendship among the dusty shelves and books…

Sometimes the path to the rest of your life has been in front of you all along.

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This is a sweet story, but it just didn’t hit the right notes for me overall. I love the characters and the best friends to lovers story, but I was left skimming. I think it’s because, for me, Lizzy and Jack spent far too much time being obtuse.

Did Jack and Lizzy have a wonderful connection? Absolutely. I even got butterflies a time or two. I realize one of the points of this story is how much these characters are people pleasers. In different ways from one another, but still both always worried that they are letting others down. Yet the lengths they go through to NOT talk to each other about their feelings and important matters that have to do with the direction their lives will potentially take got to be repetitive. I found myself looking forward to their interactions with his family and their friends because they often called them out on things they had been keeping close to the vest. In other words, they made them talk. Still not enough for my liking, though.

There is a whole lot of food in this story when neither character is in the food business. That was actually something I enjoyed because I like to look up foods I’m unfamiliar with when I come across them in books and see if I could try something new. Just putting it out there, do with it what you will.

While Lizzy and Jack are both amazingly wonderful and kind people, they were also a tad bit boring. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I just felt I needed a bit more of a spark between them. It, quite frankly, felt one-sided much of the time. Which is the risk you take with a friends to lovers story.

This is a story that can travel well, to the beach or on vacation or when you know you’ll be sitting in a waiting room. It’s cute and sweet, but also easy to put down when you get interrupted and easy to pick back up when you have the time.

3 stars

**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**