Rating: ★★★.75
Audience: Contemporary Romance
Length: 400 pages
Author: Elle McNicoll
Publisher: Saturday Books
Release Date: October 13th, 2026
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

The dazzling debut new adult romance novel from bestselling author, Elle McNicoll. For fans of Emily Henry’s Book Lovers, this is big-hearted and full of bite!

An unapologetic celebration of love, relationships, and the women who have historically been shut out of such stories, until now . . . Elle McNicoll is about to become everyone’s favorite new name in new adult romance.

Enter Raina Lewis, London’s hottest It Girl – effortlessly cool, endlessly intriguing, and beloved for her smash-hit podcast spotlighting autistic women. But not everyone’s convinced by the hype. Investigative journalist and ‘King of Cancel Culture’, Tom Branimir is sure there’s more to Raina than meets the eye. He’s determined to uncover her secret. That is… if he can just manage not to fall for her first.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook.

GREW ON ME.

I loved the way this story was approached. There were a lot of important themes and topics touched about for neurodiverse women. And I liked that at the forefront of the plot. The writing is good and I would be interested to read future books from this author. I also thought the audiobook narrator did a great job but I do wish there had been a separate narrator for Tom’s occasional POV’s. While I can’t speak to every thing in here there were moments where I was like YES THAT’S HOW IT FEELS and I love when a book does that. Raina was a great FMC.

As someone who is kind of tired by everyone having a podcast I didn’t love the continual conversations with podcasts, media, socials, etc. The amount of podcast content that comes across my feed already is plenty. But if you like these things, totally go for it. I think it will hit the spot.

I definitely needed a slower burn. 50%? Nah. I don’t feel like Raina and Tom actually had enough conversations and moments together to start adding spice. He’s very infatuated from the get go which felt insta-love adjacent? Though like I mentioned, it did grow on me. I did not like the third act whatsoever. The usual. BUT I did like the groveling from Tom and the grand gesture worked for me. That at least felt genuine to the plot in place.

Overall audience notes:

• Contemporary romance
• Language: moderate-high
• Romance: 3ish+ open door
• Content warnings: ableism, misogyny, bullying, body shaming, eating disorder, toxic friendships

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