Starred review from October 8, 2018
Lauren’s delicious newest standalone rom-com (after Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating) captures some of the perils of online dating by focusing on the alternating points of view of Millie Morris and Reid Campbell, two members of a small, insular group of friends who work at UC Santa Barbara. After the two of them enjoy the titular sexual encounter, Millie, using a half-obscured profile picture and her middle name, matches with Reid on a dating app. The two friends wind up entangled in an unexpected sexual and romantic relationship in the digital realm that threatens to destroy their offline friendship. The majority of the novel is told in prose, but text messages, group chats, and emails sent through the dating app solidify the world that Millie and her friends live in and shows the steady deepening of the romance between Reid and Millie’s alter ego. This is a messy and sexy look at digital dating that feels fresh and exciting. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary.
October 15, 2018
A criminology professor uses a fake dating profile to flirt with her best friend in Lauren's (Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, 2018, etc.) latest.Looking for a date to a commencement banquet at UC Santa Barbara, Millie Morris and her platonic friends Reid Campbell, Stephen "Ed" D'Onofrio, Alex Ramirez, and Christopher Hill decide to join a dating site. But when Millie and Reid have a one-night stand (parting ways early, making it a half-night stand), their feelings for each other start to interfere with their plans. Reid pursues two online matches, the first a pretty but bland woman named Daisy and the other a fascinating woman named Catherine whose face is obscured in her profile picture. Writing as Catherine, Millie opens up to Reid about all the things she's been afraid to talk to him about in person--her home life, her past, and her true feelings for him. But when they start to get closer in real life, too, she realizes that her ruse may cost her both her friendship with Reid and any prospect of a relationship. Meanwhile, Reid is torn between Millie and her digital alter ego. With her split personality--aloof and sarcastic in person, honest and vulnerable online--Millie brings great tension to the book, even if her quirky obsession with serial killers is underutilized. Text messages headed with avatars and wrapped in conversation bubbles add a fun texture to the rapid-fire dialogue. Though the commencement banquet turns out to be little more than a footnote, it's worth pulling an all-nighter to see if Reid and Millie will graduate from friends to lovers.A funny, sexy page-turner that warns: Keep your friends close and their avatars closer.
COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.