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All Roads
266 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2026
About the author
Valerie Kain
3 books20 followersValerie Kain has a lifelong love for telling stories filled with drama and angst. Some of the earliest home videos from her childhood are of her blabbering her tales at whoever would listen. It was only a matter of time before she took that passion to the page. As a Georgia native and UGA alumna, the city of Athens holds a special place in her heart which is what inspired her debut series.
She is currently in her contemporary romance era but has projects in the pipeline that span multiple sub-genres, including dark romance, paranormal romance, and romantasy. Follow her on Instagram and TikTok @valerie.kain.writes to stay updated on upcoming releases.
She is currently in her contemporary romance era but has projects in the pipeline that span multiple sub-genres, including dark romance, paranormal romance, and romantasy. Follow her on Instagram and TikTok @valerie.kain.writes to stay updated on upcoming releases.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
September 13, 2026
If there are two things I love in a book it’s friends to lovers and angsty one-sided pining. The first sentence of the author description said that she had a lifelong love for telling stories filled with drama and angst and I think she delivered on that promise.
I hated how Evelyn felt about herself, I was so sad that her childhood trauma made her feel like she was always second best and the last choice and that she couldn’t communicate that to the people she was closest to. This story was a case of the person you’ve been looking for has been right in front of your face the entire time. Karis checked every box for what Evelyn was looking for in a partner, sometimes I felt angry as Evelyn described what she wanted and Karis had done exactly that like maybe one or two chapters ago. I was so glad when she finally reached a point in which she realized that she was also attracted to Karis. Karis had a tough exterior but she was so sweet to Evelyn and had a beautiful friendship with Gage.
The cause of the main conflict after getting together was a chronic case of miscommunication and carelessness. Evelyn didn’t tell Karis how alone she was feeling while she was working on the custom motorcycle and Karis, despite noticing, chose to take Evelyn at her word and stopped showing up in the relationship. I’m glad Evelyn took that experience and learned to communicate how she was really feeling.
I have not read the previous books but I was still able to follow along without a problem and could easily keep track of the established couples.
Thank you to Valerie Kain for providing me with an eARC.
I hated how Evelyn felt about herself, I was so sad that her childhood trauma made her feel like she was always second best and the last choice and that she couldn’t communicate that to the people she was closest to. This story was a case of the person you’ve been looking for has been right in front of your face the entire time. Karis checked every box for what Evelyn was looking for in a partner, sometimes I felt angry as Evelyn described what she wanted and Karis had done exactly that like maybe one or two chapters ago. I was so glad when she finally reached a point in which she realized that she was also attracted to Karis. Karis had a tough exterior but she was so sweet to Evelyn and had a beautiful friendship with Gage.
The cause of the main conflict after getting together was a chronic case of miscommunication and carelessness. Evelyn didn’t tell Karis how alone she was feeling while she was working on the custom motorcycle and Karis, despite noticing, chose to take Evelyn at her word and stopped showing up in the relationship. I’m glad Evelyn took that experience and learned to communicate how she was really feeling.
I have not read the previous books but I was still able to follow along without a problem and could easily keep track of the established couples.
Thank you to Valerie Kain for providing me with an eARC.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Love, Motorcycles and the Spectacularly Poor Feline Birth-Control Situation
How Valerie Kain’s “All Roads” Finds a Serious Theory of Belonging Inside a Very Messy Happy Ending
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 2nd, 2026
Dependability rarely gets top billing in romance. It lacks candlelight, grand gestures and the airport sprint that has ruined many a sensible shoe. Yet in Valerie Kain’s “All Roads,” the most consequential act of courtship happens every Sunday morning, when Karis Hanson turns up at the Labre Mission to chop vegetables beside her best friend Evelyn Eden. Evelyn has spent years trying to persuade friends to volunteer with her. Karis comes anyway. Evelyn thinks she wants a partner who will show up simply because what matters to her matters to them. She does not yet notice the woman holding the knife beside her.
Evelyn’s blindness is the joke on which Kain builds this profane, high-heat friends-to-lovers romance, but the joke keeps acquiring weight. Evelyn wants, for once, to be somebody’s first choice. Growing up in foster care without the permanence she kept hoping for, she has turned a childhood of departures into a private theory: other people are loved deliberately; Evelyn is tolerated until something better arrives. By twenty-four, she has friends, graduate school and useful work, yet she still feels like the extra chair no one thought to remove.
Much of the first half makes that belief look both painfully reasonable and increasingly absurd. Evelyn’s friends push her toward Dovely, whose rows of profiles produce anxiety, mediocre men and the indignity of deciding whether television habits count as character evidence. Karis, a tattooed motorcycle mechanic with a vocabulary capable of peeling paint, offers to screen the candidates. Generous, except that she is secretly in love with Evelyn and quietly blocks one promising man because he has, as Karis instantly recognizes, a real chance. Impartiality has left the building.
Even before Evelyn catches up, the reader knows where the road goes. Karis’s feelings arrive early and without camouflage: Evelyn needs somebody who actually sees her; Karis knows that she does. That trades ordinary suspense for a more pleasurable kind of embarrassment. Every date becomes less a rival than a diagnostic test. What does Evelyn want? Someone who remembers her coffee, dances with her, watches “Passion Lake” and cares about the Mission. The stranger hunt keeps returning a result already sprawled across her couch.
The cleverest version of that joke arrives when syntax accomplishes what neither woman can. Evelyn, undone after another bad date and convinced she will never be chosen, begins crying beside a half-drunk Karis. Karis tries to reassure her by describing the hypothetical man who will someday recognize Evelyn’s worth. He will make the right coffee, supply late-night ice cream, remember her food preferences, watch “Passion Lake,” dance and volunteer. Then the hypothetical buckles: “he’ll” becomes “I’ll.” Evelyn kisses her. The romance announces itself through grammatical failure. Karis can no longer construct Evelyn’s ideal future without confessing that she has been living inside it.
Rather than sprint from kiss to happily-ever-after, “All Roads” lets the category trouble linger. Kain is careful about the difference between discovering an attraction and suddenly acquiring an identity out of nowhere. Evelyn has already understood herself as capable of attraction beyond men, though she has lacked a tidy label and lived inside other people’s assumptions. Kain does not make Karis the cause of Evelyn’s queerness. She makes Karis the person who forces Evelyn to notice what her own desire has been saying.
If Evelyn’s narration loops and second-guesses, Karis’s arrives with elbows out. She thinks in fragments, obscenities, threats, mechanical metaphors and tenderness for which she seems to blame everyone except herself. Karis treats affection as contraband best smuggled through an insult. That defensive comedy gives her chapters speed, but the joke works because the softness keeps escaping anyway: kittens get fed, food appears, bikes get fixed, Evelyn gets watched over with an attention Karis would deny under oath.
Prose, though, is where the novel’s limits become easiest to hear. Kain’s language is brisk, contemporary and unusually explicit about emotion. She favors short and medium sentences, emphatic fragments, slang and interior commentary that rarely leaves motive in doubt. That closeness can feel intimate; the narrators seem only inches away. It can also become overexposure. Kain will build a scene that has already landed, then explain the bruise.
A habit often does more for Kain than an image. “Passion Lake” begins as junk television Karis pretends to disdain and becomes a domestic ritual. Coffee becomes knowledge. Motorcycles move from private obsession to shared experience. Even sex, once the two women cross that line, matters less for novelty than for how quickly it joins the routine: shower, cuddle, terrible television, repeat. Kain is good at the moment when intimacy stops feeling like an event and starts colonizing the calendar.
Plot matters here chiefly when it disturbs one of those habits. Across 28 chapters and a Karis-narrated epilogue, the novel alternates first-person perspectives. The same silence can therefore look like abandonment from one side and near-comic devotion from the other. Early on, that arrangement flatters the fantasy that these two know each other exceptionally well. Later, it takes the fantasy apart. Knowing someone’s coffee order is not the same as knowing what they refuse to tell you.
After the romance becomes official, Kain changes engines. The first half asks when Evelyn will recognize the love already organized around her. The second asks what happens when recognition becomes scheduling. Karis receives the opportunity she has spent years wanting: Bradley Torran admires her custom motorcycle work, commissions a bike and offers her a lucrative position. The catch is Charleston. Before deciding whether to move, she plunges into the build with the same obsessive concentration that made her good enough to be noticed.
Devotion now has to compete with a deadline. Karis does not stop loving Evelyn; she simply keeps losing track of time. She works late, cancels, grows distracted. Evelyn waits alone. Eventually Karis misses the Sunday volunteering that had served as their original love language. Grand abandonment would almost be easier for Evelyn to name than being displaced by a project plan. Karis is not cruel. She is busy. Evelyn’s nervous system declines the distinction.
It matters that Evelyn helps manufacture the disaster. She tells Karis she understands. She says she is fine. She suppresses disappointment because she does not want to become the girlfriend who makes a talented woman shrink her ambitions. Then she treats Karis’s failure to intuit what she is concealing as evidence that the relationship is failing. Nathan, unexpectedly useful beneath several layers of nonsense, tells her what the reader has been thinking: talk to your girlfriend. Karis reaches the complementary conclusion herself. She knew Evelyn was unhappy and chose to accept the reassurances because accepting them let her keep working. Their crisis is contrived only as many intimate disasters are: two people collaborating, with impressive efficiency, on not saying the necessary sentence.
Maybe inevitably, the reconciliation gives Evelyn exactly the declaration she has spent the novel craving. Karis turns down Charleston. When Evelyn asks whether Karis is choosing her over a dream job, Karis refuses the premise: there was no choice; it was always Evelyn. For a romance, the line is catnip. For a book trying to move love beyond rankings, it is less stable. Evelyn’s deepest wound is her belief that love must be proved by winning. Here the novel briefly gives her a scoreboard: dream job on one side, Evelyn on the other, Evelyn victorious.
If “All Roads” stopped there, Karis would become a romantic cure for a problem larger than romance. She does not. Evelyn feels peripheral even among people who care for her. She has watched friends disappear into couples and read their reorganized attention as proof that she mistook proximity for permanence. Her foster-care history matters here because it has taught her to turn absence into verdict: somebody leaves, therefore she was not worth staying for.
The answer is a room full of friends doing chores. Nathan learns that Evelyn does not really believe the group considers her a friend. The others are appalled, then forced to admit that indignation erases nothing. Morgan once volunteered beside Evelyn but stopped after coupling up; Jamie has become difficult to see without Morgan. Their repair is wonderfully unglamorous. They come to the Labre Mission, take whatever dirty or dull work needs doing, and sign up to return. Their affection finally acquires a calendar.
Rather than turning Evelyn into a case study, Kain lets the consequences of her childhood remain stubbornly ordinary. Evelyn is educated, employed, socially surrounded and still primed for disappearance. Foster care taught her that self-sufficiency is safer than dependence and that an empty chair may be advance notice. The observation is almost embarrassingly simple: competence can become so polished that other people mistake it for not needing anybody.
Opposite Evelyn stands Karis, who possesses a home before she knows how to let anybody live in it with her. She owns land, earns good money, possesses rare skills and guards her independence almost as fiercely as her tools. Early on, the property is a place almost nobody is allowed to see. Evelyn changes that; so do kittens and friends. By the epilogue, Karis sits around a bonfire with the entire unruly ensemble and realizes that the property never felt like home until other people occupied it with her. Evelyn must learn she can belong without being unrivaled. Karis must learn that privacy can shelter a life without becoming the whole architecture of one.
Perhaps the most useful comparison is Haley Cass’s “On the Same Page,” another romance in which friendship already contains nearly everything its characters associate with partnership. Ashley Herring Blake’s “Delilah Green Doesn’t Care” offers another echo in queer heat, bruised family feeling and prickly humor. Kain is looser than either writer, happier to sprawl through routine and much less willing to let subtext fend for itself. “All Roads” rarely makes the reader hunt for meaning; sometimes it practically hands the subtext a reflective vest and asks it to direct traffic.
Overarticulation is therefore not an incidental flaw but the shadow cast by Kain’s accessibility. Evelyn’s fear of being secondary is powerful, but repetition sometimes stands in for development. Karis’s devotion and the language of choosing receive the same treatment. The best scenes have already produced the evidence; the narration does not always trust the evidence to survive unattended. There is also an early ethical breach the novel lets off too easily: Karis’s secret interference with Evelyn’s dating profile violates Evelyn’s agency, not merely the dignity of a promising match. A novel increasingly concerned with reciprocal choice might have looked harder at that behavior.
Ultimately, the ending begins handing back nearly everything the novel has threatened to take away. Evelyn and Karis reconcile. Brooks, the boy Evelyn loved like a brother before foster care separated them, returns through a suspiciously convenient connection to Karis’s motorcycle work. The friend group repairs itself. Graduation arrives. Karis’s professional dream reappears when Brooks proposes a custom shop together in Georgia. Even Tiny Bastard, the feral cat who vanished after resisting domestication, comes back, climbs into Karis’s lap and turns out to be pregnant. Kain has apparently decided that restoration, like kittens, should arrive in litters.
Love this abundant risks making the book’s more difficult insight too easy. If Evelyn has learned that belonging can survive imperfection, does every threatened relationship need such thorough repair? If Karis has learned to negotiate ambition rather than flee from it, must the dream return in a geographically convenient package? A little unresolved loss might have made permanence feel less like a prize the plot eventually dispenses. Yet Kain has earned enough affection for these people that one does not exactly resent seeing them fed.
On balance, “All Roads” earns 81/100 and 4/5 stars. Its familiar romance machinery keeps converging on one precise question: what does love look like when nobody is making a declaration? Kain’s best answers are behavioral – coffee remembered, Sundays kept, apologies converted into calendars. Her chief limitation is a reluctance to let those gestures speak without commentary. She writes generously, sometimes too generously: feeling, jokes, sex, second chances, explanations, then explanations for the explanations. But she also understands that tenderness becomes convincing when somebody has had ample opportunity not to bother.
So underneath the dating app, the motorcycles, the declarations and the spectacularly poor feline birth-control situation, “All Roads” arrives at a reversal quieter than its happy ending initially suggests. Evelyn begins wanting one person who will finally choose her above everyone else. She ends surrounded by people whose love is less exclusive and therefore, perhaps, more durable. Karis begins with a road she can ride alone and a piece of land she keeps largely to herself. By the end there are friends around the fire, Evelyn at her side, Brooks at the door and a formerly feral cat deciding, on her own mysterious terms, to come home. The book’s best insight is not that all roads lead to one person. It is that home becomes visible in the people who keep taking the road back.
How Valerie Kain’s “All Roads” Finds a Serious Theory of Belonging Inside a Very Messy Happy Ending
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | September 2nd, 2026
Dependability rarely gets top billing in romance. It lacks candlelight, grand gestures and the airport sprint that has ruined many a sensible shoe. Yet in Valerie Kain’s “All Roads,” the most consequential act of courtship happens every Sunday morning, when Karis Hanson turns up at the Labre Mission to chop vegetables beside her best friend Evelyn Eden. Evelyn has spent years trying to persuade friends to volunteer with her. Karis comes anyway. Evelyn thinks she wants a partner who will show up simply because what matters to her matters to them. She does not yet notice the woman holding the knife beside her.
Evelyn’s blindness is the joke on which Kain builds this profane, high-heat friends-to-lovers romance, but the joke keeps acquiring weight. Evelyn wants, for once, to be somebody’s first choice. Growing up in foster care without the permanence she kept hoping for, she has turned a childhood of departures into a private theory: other people are loved deliberately; Evelyn is tolerated until something better arrives. By twenty-four, she has friends, graduate school and useful work, yet she still feels like the extra chair no one thought to remove.
Much of the first half makes that belief look both painfully reasonable and increasingly absurd. Evelyn’s friends push her toward Dovely, whose rows of profiles produce anxiety, mediocre men and the indignity of deciding whether television habits count as character evidence. Karis, a tattooed motorcycle mechanic with a vocabulary capable of peeling paint, offers to screen the candidates. Generous, except that she is secretly in love with Evelyn and quietly blocks one promising man because he has, as Karis instantly recognizes, a real chance. Impartiality has left the building.
Even before Evelyn catches up, the reader knows where the road goes. Karis’s feelings arrive early and without camouflage: Evelyn needs somebody who actually sees her; Karis knows that she does. That trades ordinary suspense for a more pleasurable kind of embarrassment. Every date becomes less a rival than a diagnostic test. What does Evelyn want? Someone who remembers her coffee, dances with her, watches “Passion Lake” and cares about the Mission. The stranger hunt keeps returning a result already sprawled across her couch.
The cleverest version of that joke arrives when syntax accomplishes what neither woman can. Evelyn, undone after another bad date and convinced she will never be chosen, begins crying beside a half-drunk Karis. Karis tries to reassure her by describing the hypothetical man who will someday recognize Evelyn’s worth. He will make the right coffee, supply late-night ice cream, remember her food preferences, watch “Passion Lake,” dance and volunteer. Then the hypothetical buckles: “he’ll” becomes “I’ll.” Evelyn kisses her. The romance announces itself through grammatical failure. Karis can no longer construct Evelyn’s ideal future without confessing that she has been living inside it.
Rather than sprint from kiss to happily-ever-after, “All Roads” lets the category trouble linger. Kain is careful about the difference between discovering an attraction and suddenly acquiring an identity out of nowhere. Evelyn has already understood herself as capable of attraction beyond men, though she has lacked a tidy label and lived inside other people’s assumptions. Kain does not make Karis the cause of Evelyn’s queerness. She makes Karis the person who forces Evelyn to notice what her own desire has been saying.
If Evelyn’s narration loops and second-guesses, Karis’s arrives with elbows out. She thinks in fragments, obscenities, threats, mechanical metaphors and tenderness for which she seems to blame everyone except herself. Karis treats affection as contraband best smuggled through an insult. That defensive comedy gives her chapters speed, but the joke works because the softness keeps escaping anyway: kittens get fed, food appears, bikes get fixed, Evelyn gets watched over with an attention Karis would deny under oath.
Prose, though, is where the novel’s limits become easiest to hear. Kain’s language is brisk, contemporary and unusually explicit about emotion. She favors short and medium sentences, emphatic fragments, slang and interior commentary that rarely leaves motive in doubt. That closeness can feel intimate; the narrators seem only inches away. It can also become overexposure. Kain will build a scene that has already landed, then explain the bruise.
A habit often does more for Kain than an image. “Passion Lake” begins as junk television Karis pretends to disdain and becomes a domestic ritual. Coffee becomes knowledge. Motorcycles move from private obsession to shared experience. Even sex, once the two women cross that line, matters less for novelty than for how quickly it joins the routine: shower, cuddle, terrible television, repeat. Kain is good at the moment when intimacy stops feeling like an event and starts colonizing the calendar.
Plot matters here chiefly when it disturbs one of those habits. Across 28 chapters and a Karis-narrated epilogue, the novel alternates first-person perspectives. The same silence can therefore look like abandonment from one side and near-comic devotion from the other. Early on, that arrangement flatters the fantasy that these two know each other exceptionally well. Later, it takes the fantasy apart. Knowing someone’s coffee order is not the same as knowing what they refuse to tell you.
After the romance becomes official, Kain changes engines. The first half asks when Evelyn will recognize the love already organized around her. The second asks what happens when recognition becomes scheduling. Karis receives the opportunity she has spent years wanting: Bradley Torran admires her custom motorcycle work, commissions a bike and offers her a lucrative position. The catch is Charleston. Before deciding whether to move, she plunges into the build with the same obsessive concentration that made her good enough to be noticed.
Devotion now has to compete with a deadline. Karis does not stop loving Evelyn; she simply keeps losing track of time. She works late, cancels, grows distracted. Evelyn waits alone. Eventually Karis misses the Sunday volunteering that had served as their original love language. Grand abandonment would almost be easier for Evelyn to name than being displaced by a project plan. Karis is not cruel. She is busy. Evelyn’s nervous system declines the distinction.
It matters that Evelyn helps manufacture the disaster. She tells Karis she understands. She says she is fine. She suppresses disappointment because she does not want to become the girlfriend who makes a talented woman shrink her ambitions. Then she treats Karis’s failure to intuit what she is concealing as evidence that the relationship is failing. Nathan, unexpectedly useful beneath several layers of nonsense, tells her what the reader has been thinking: talk to your girlfriend. Karis reaches the complementary conclusion herself. She knew Evelyn was unhappy and chose to accept the reassurances because accepting them let her keep working. Their crisis is contrived only as many intimate disasters are: two people collaborating, with impressive efficiency, on not saying the necessary sentence.
Maybe inevitably, the reconciliation gives Evelyn exactly the declaration she has spent the novel craving. Karis turns down Charleston. When Evelyn asks whether Karis is choosing her over a dream job, Karis refuses the premise: there was no choice; it was always Evelyn. For a romance, the line is catnip. For a book trying to move love beyond rankings, it is less stable. Evelyn’s deepest wound is her belief that love must be proved by winning. Here the novel briefly gives her a scoreboard: dream job on one side, Evelyn on the other, Evelyn victorious.
If “All Roads” stopped there, Karis would become a romantic cure for a problem larger than romance. She does not. Evelyn feels peripheral even among people who care for her. She has watched friends disappear into couples and read their reorganized attention as proof that she mistook proximity for permanence. Her foster-care history matters here because it has taught her to turn absence into verdict: somebody leaves, therefore she was not worth staying for.
The answer is a room full of friends doing chores. Nathan learns that Evelyn does not really believe the group considers her a friend. The others are appalled, then forced to admit that indignation erases nothing. Morgan once volunteered beside Evelyn but stopped after coupling up; Jamie has become difficult to see without Morgan. Their repair is wonderfully unglamorous. They come to the Labre Mission, take whatever dirty or dull work needs doing, and sign up to return. Their affection finally acquires a calendar.
Rather than turning Evelyn into a case study, Kain lets the consequences of her childhood remain stubbornly ordinary. Evelyn is educated, employed, socially surrounded and still primed for disappearance. Foster care taught her that self-sufficiency is safer than dependence and that an empty chair may be advance notice. The observation is almost embarrassingly simple: competence can become so polished that other people mistake it for not needing anybody.
Opposite Evelyn stands Karis, who possesses a home before she knows how to let anybody live in it with her. She owns land, earns good money, possesses rare skills and guards her independence almost as fiercely as her tools. Early on, the property is a place almost nobody is allowed to see. Evelyn changes that; so do kittens and friends. By the epilogue, Karis sits around a bonfire with the entire unruly ensemble and realizes that the property never felt like home until other people occupied it with her. Evelyn must learn she can belong without being unrivaled. Karis must learn that privacy can shelter a life without becoming the whole architecture of one.
Perhaps the most useful comparison is Haley Cass’s “On the Same Page,” another romance in which friendship already contains nearly everything its characters associate with partnership. Ashley Herring Blake’s “Delilah Green Doesn’t Care” offers another echo in queer heat, bruised family feeling and prickly humor. Kain is looser than either writer, happier to sprawl through routine and much less willing to let subtext fend for itself. “All Roads” rarely makes the reader hunt for meaning; sometimes it practically hands the subtext a reflective vest and asks it to direct traffic.
Overarticulation is therefore not an incidental flaw but the shadow cast by Kain’s accessibility. Evelyn’s fear of being secondary is powerful, but repetition sometimes stands in for development. Karis’s devotion and the language of choosing receive the same treatment. The best scenes have already produced the evidence; the narration does not always trust the evidence to survive unattended. There is also an early ethical breach the novel lets off too easily: Karis’s secret interference with Evelyn’s dating profile violates Evelyn’s agency, not merely the dignity of a promising match. A novel increasingly concerned with reciprocal choice might have looked harder at that behavior.
Ultimately, the ending begins handing back nearly everything the novel has threatened to take away. Evelyn and Karis reconcile. Brooks, the boy Evelyn loved like a brother before foster care separated them, returns through a suspiciously convenient connection to Karis’s motorcycle work. The friend group repairs itself. Graduation arrives. Karis’s professional dream reappears when Brooks proposes a custom shop together in Georgia. Even Tiny Bastard, the feral cat who vanished after resisting domestication, comes back, climbs into Karis’s lap and turns out to be pregnant. Kain has apparently decided that restoration, like kittens, should arrive in litters.
Love this abundant risks making the book’s more difficult insight too easy. If Evelyn has learned that belonging can survive imperfection, does every threatened relationship need such thorough repair? If Karis has learned to negotiate ambition rather than flee from it, must the dream return in a geographically convenient package? A little unresolved loss might have made permanence feel less like a prize the plot eventually dispenses. Yet Kain has earned enough affection for these people that one does not exactly resent seeing them fed.
On balance, “All Roads” earns 81/100 and 4/5 stars. Its familiar romance machinery keeps converging on one precise question: what does love look like when nobody is making a declaration? Kain’s best answers are behavioral – coffee remembered, Sundays kept, apologies converted into calendars. Her chief limitation is a reluctance to let those gestures speak without commentary. She writes generously, sometimes too generously: feeling, jokes, sex, second chances, explanations, then explanations for the explanations. But she also understands that tenderness becomes convincing when somebody has had ample opportunity not to bother.
So underneath the dating app, the motorcycles, the declarations and the spectacularly poor feline birth-control situation, “All Roads” arrives at a reversal quieter than its happy ending initially suggests. Evelyn begins wanting one person who will finally choose her above everyone else. She ends surrounded by people whose love is less exclusive and therefore, perhaps, more durable. Karis begins with a road she can ride alone and a piece of land she keeps largely to herself. By the end there are friends around the fire, Evelyn at her side, Brooks at the door and a formerly feral cat deciding, on her own mysterious terms, to come home. The book’s best insight is not that all roads lead to one person. It is that home becomes visible in the people who keep taking the road back.
Review of advance copy
Thanks to BookSirens and author Valerie Kain for this ARC. I am very happy to share my honest review.
I was immediately captivated by the cover! So cute! I absolutely love Friends to Lovers Sapphic romance and was so excited about this book. All Roads is a super sweet, warm, funny and wonderfully emotional friends to lovers sapphic romance that shows us that sometimes the one for you has been there all along. The innocent and genuine wonder accompanied by falling in love with your best friend is such a special circumstance and the satisfaction of unrequited love finally being returned is so wondrous. Honestly, I felt swept away and so happily entertained by this story.
Evelyn and Karis are friends, best friends actually and of course Karis has been hopelessly in love with Evelyn for what feels like forever. Their friendship is so sweet and really showcases how well they know each other. The unrequited love aspect is done so well and adds the exact right amount of pinning and angst that is enjoyable. It also added so well to the pay off in the end because I was instantly taken with Karis and was rooting for these girls to get together. The book has a fun premise whereby Evelyn decides that it's time for her to find true love and jumps on a dating app to do so. She dates man after man, each of them seemingly worse than the other while Karis tries desperately to support her friend but of course, it's killing her inside. There is a very special pain in watching the woman you love choose people who are not you time and time again. Karis’s pining just tugged at my heartstrings and I felt the tension in my tummy.
I was eager for the tides to turn and they finally did. Once Evelyn finally considers that maybe there is more to how she feels about Karis, I was so excited. Their chemistry and genuine connection was everything and they are so good together. Evelyn has struggled with self worth but she finally sees that Karis looks at her like she hung the moon. I very much enjoyed that the story allows us to bask in the joy of Karis and Evelyn finally choosing one another for a while. The intimate scenes were the perfect balance of steady and passionate. It was sweet and believable while also making me blush. I genuinely grew to care about both Karis and Evelyn and was so invested in them by the end. Sure there were obstacles throughout the story but these ladies were made for each other and their happy ending was so well deserved…and deeply satisfying.
I found the writing to be really enjoyable. It was fun, funny and easy to read. There was wonderful depth and delightful humor along for a wonderful balance of emotional but not overly heavy. I loved this style and it made the story truly enjoyable for me. I felt like Evelyn and Karis were written with so much love, care and depth. Their connection was so special and the dialogue was playful. It’s definitely the kind of writing that keeps the story moving and easy to become absorbed in.
All Roads is a sweet, humorous and wonderfully enjoyable friends to lovers sapphic romance. This book was charming and a ton of fun to read. Karis and Evelyn will remain in my mind and heart for some time. If you are searching for a feel good besties to lovers romance with a great deal of depth, emotion and heart, this is your book. I loved it and you will too!
I was immediately captivated by the cover! So cute! I absolutely love Friends to Lovers Sapphic romance and was so excited about this book. All Roads is a super sweet, warm, funny and wonderfully emotional friends to lovers sapphic romance that shows us that sometimes the one for you has been there all along. The innocent and genuine wonder accompanied by falling in love with your best friend is such a special circumstance and the satisfaction of unrequited love finally being returned is so wondrous. Honestly, I felt swept away and so happily entertained by this story.
Evelyn and Karis are friends, best friends actually and of course Karis has been hopelessly in love with Evelyn for what feels like forever. Their friendship is so sweet and really showcases how well they know each other. The unrequited love aspect is done so well and adds the exact right amount of pinning and angst that is enjoyable. It also added so well to the pay off in the end because I was instantly taken with Karis and was rooting for these girls to get together. The book has a fun premise whereby Evelyn decides that it's time for her to find true love and jumps on a dating app to do so. She dates man after man, each of them seemingly worse than the other while Karis tries desperately to support her friend but of course, it's killing her inside. There is a very special pain in watching the woman you love choose people who are not you time and time again. Karis’s pining just tugged at my heartstrings and I felt the tension in my tummy.
I was eager for the tides to turn and they finally did. Once Evelyn finally considers that maybe there is more to how she feels about Karis, I was so excited. Their chemistry and genuine connection was everything and they are so good together. Evelyn has struggled with self worth but she finally sees that Karis looks at her like she hung the moon. I very much enjoyed that the story allows us to bask in the joy of Karis and Evelyn finally choosing one another for a while. The intimate scenes were the perfect balance of steady and passionate. It was sweet and believable while also making me blush. I genuinely grew to care about both Karis and Evelyn and was so invested in them by the end. Sure there were obstacles throughout the story but these ladies were made for each other and their happy ending was so well deserved…and deeply satisfying.
I found the writing to be really enjoyable. It was fun, funny and easy to read. There was wonderful depth and delightful humor along for a wonderful balance of emotional but not overly heavy. I loved this style and it made the story truly enjoyable for me. I felt like Evelyn and Karis were written with so much love, care and depth. Their connection was so special and the dialogue was playful. It’s definitely the kind of writing that keeps the story moving and easy to become absorbed in.
All Roads is a sweet, humorous and wonderfully enjoyable friends to lovers sapphic romance. This book was charming and a ton of fun to read. Karis and Evelyn will remain in my mind and heart for some time. If you are searching for a feel good besties to lovers romance with a great deal of depth, emotion and heart, this is your book. I loved it and you will too!
Review of advance copy
*I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.* ✨️
I had such a fun time with the book. It was a really fast read: funny, sweet, and had the kind of character dynamics that made me want to keep reading. Evelyn and Karis both felt really real to me, especially when it came to all the messy, confusing feelings neither of them quite knew what to do with.
I especially loved watching Evelyn figure out her feelings throughout the book. I thought the way it handled coming out a little later in life was really well done, especially because Evelyn had this sense that she kind of knew underneath everything, but still had to actually confront what that meant for her.
The tension between Evelyn and Karis was probably my favorite part. The whole friends-to-lovers dynamic worked really well for me, and I loved how much Karis genuinely saw Evelyn. Their friendship, along with the larger friend group, was one of my favorite things about the book. I really enjoyed seeing how everyone interacted and getting a glimpse into their lives. The group dynamic felt warm and believable, and there were plenty of moments that genuinely made me laugh.
I also really liked the way intimacy was written. It felt natural and fit the characters rather than feeling like it was just there for the sake of it.
One of the main conflicts does revolve around a lack of communication, which is something I’m not always the biggest fan of because it can be really frustrating when it’s not handled well. Thankfully, I didn’t find it too bad here, and I thought it worked with where the characters were emotionally.
Also, I went into this having not read the first two books in the series, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to follow. There were definitely names and bits of backstory where I could tell I probably would have had more context if I’d read the previous books, but I never felt lost or like I was missing something important to this story. So if you’re like me and somehow start with book three, you should be totally fine! And if you have read the other books, I think it’s a really nice addition to the series and a fun way to see what everyone is up to.
Also, completely superficial, but the cover immediately gave me Nana and Hachi vibes, which I loved and was one of the reasons I picked this up (sue me).
Overall, a really cute and funny romance with great tension, a lovely friend group, and characters who felt genuinely human. 4 stars from me ✨️
I had such a fun time with the book. It was a really fast read: funny, sweet, and had the kind of character dynamics that made me want to keep reading. Evelyn and Karis both felt really real to me, especially when it came to all the messy, confusing feelings neither of them quite knew what to do with.
I especially loved watching Evelyn figure out her feelings throughout the book. I thought the way it handled coming out a little later in life was really well done, especially because Evelyn had this sense that she kind of knew underneath everything, but still had to actually confront what that meant for her.
The tension between Evelyn and Karis was probably my favorite part. The whole friends-to-lovers dynamic worked really well for me, and I loved how much Karis genuinely saw Evelyn. Their friendship, along with the larger friend group, was one of my favorite things about the book. I really enjoyed seeing how everyone interacted and getting a glimpse into their lives. The group dynamic felt warm and believable, and there were plenty of moments that genuinely made me laugh.
I also really liked the way intimacy was written. It felt natural and fit the characters rather than feeling like it was just there for the sake of it.
One of the main conflicts does revolve around a lack of communication, which is something I’m not always the biggest fan of because it can be really frustrating when it’s not handled well. Thankfully, I didn’t find it too bad here, and I thought it worked with where the characters were emotionally.
Also, I went into this having not read the first two books in the series, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to follow. There were definitely names and bits of backstory where I could tell I probably would have had more context if I’d read the previous books, but I never felt lost or like I was missing something important to this story. So if you’re like me and somehow start with book three, you should be totally fine! And if you have read the other books, I think it’s a really nice addition to the series and a fun way to see what everyone is up to.
Also, completely superficial, but the cover immediately gave me Nana and Hachi vibes, which I loved and was one of the reasons I picked this up (sue me).
Overall, a really cute and funny romance with great tension, a lovely friend group, and characters who felt genuinely human. 4 stars from me ✨️
Review of advance copy
This one hits hard on the “pining best friend forced to play matchmaker” trope, and it does it well. Karis agreeing to help vet Evelyn’s dating app matches — all while quietly sabotaging the ones she deems unworthy — is such a relatable kind of self-inflicted torture, and I loved watching her struggle to keep playing the supportive friend while it slowly eats her alive.
What really stood out was Evelyn’s own journey of self-discovery, figuring out who and what she actually wants rather than just going through the motions to fit in with her friend group. I also appreciated how the book shows Karis losing herself in work and obligations, letting the person and the feelings she’s wanted for so long slip further out of reach, while Evelyn simultaneously downplays her own worth and needs. Watching both characters grow into more honest versions of themselves was genuinely satisfying. My one critique is the shift from friendship to physical intimacy happened a bit fast given everything building up to it, which made that transition feel slightly less believable than the rest of the story.
Overall a strong read with great emotional depth, even if the pacing stumbled a little at the turning point — a solid 3.5 stars for me. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book after receiving a free copy.
What really stood out was Evelyn’s own journey of self-discovery, figuring out who and what she actually wants rather than just going through the motions to fit in with her friend group. I also appreciated how the book shows Karis losing herself in work and obligations, letting the person and the feelings she’s wanted for so long slip further out of reach, while Evelyn simultaneously downplays her own worth and needs. Watching both characters grow into more honest versions of themselves was genuinely satisfying. My one critique is the shift from friendship to physical intimacy happened a bit fast given everything building up to it, which made that transition feel slightly less believable than the rest of the story.
Overall a strong read with great emotional depth, even if the pacing stumbled a little at the turning point — a solid 3.5 stars for me. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book after receiving a free copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4.75 stars but let's round up to 5, it's that good.
Evelyn feelings and inner monologue hit way too close to home... its almost rude how close it hit. I may have shed some tears over how much I related to her, I felt fucking awful.. I'm glad she has those people around.
After the 70% mark, karis pissed me the fuck off, i was mad as all hell, like how could she do this to Evelyn??? like I was reeling, I was pissed, especially because she knew first hand Evelyn inner fight and thoughts... how could she let it get so bad?? but then we got her pov and I was back on liking her.
the whole friendship also annoyed me, keep in mind it's my first book of this author, I was reeling the whole book abt it, and then Nathan pulled this move and I changed my mind.
After all that, I think Evelyn was valid as fuck, especially when we got to see the conversation at the gym, some of them realising their failure to keep on working on their friendship and lowkey taking her for granted.
ANYWAYS, that was a marvelous read, I didn't know what to expect, because there was no blurb on netgalley? but damn I'm glad I trusted that cover!! I had the best of time.
thank you netgalley for the arc, because that was fantastic.
Evelyn feelings and inner monologue hit way too close to home... its almost rude how close it hit. I may have shed some tears over how much I related to her, I felt fucking awful.. I'm glad she has those people around.
After the 70% mark, karis pissed me the fuck off, i was mad as all hell, like how could she do this to Evelyn??? like I was reeling, I was pissed, especially because she knew first hand Evelyn inner fight and thoughts... how could she let it get so bad?? but then we got her pov and I was back on liking her.
the whole friendship also annoyed me, keep in mind it's my first book of this author, I was reeling the whole book abt it, and then Nathan pulled this move and I changed my mind.
After all that, I think Evelyn was valid as fuck, especially when we got to see the conversation at the gym, some of them realising their failure to keep on working on their friendship and lowkey taking her for granted.
ANYWAYS, that was a marvelous read, I didn't know what to expect, because there was no blurb on netgalley? but damn I'm glad I trusted that cover!! I had the best of time.
thank you netgalley for the arc, because that was fantastic.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was such a fun little romance! I loved the two FMCs so much and the tension between them was so good. I absolutely fell in love with Karis.
This book has everything I love: so much yearning, a found family friend group where you end up loving every single person for a different reason and a queer awakening that was written so beautifully.
It’s such a good slow burn romance with a surprising amount of depth. I loved how much we got to know both main characters and really understand them as people. And when they finally got together? I was living for it.
There were also so many funny little moments that genuinely made me chuckle, and I really enjoyed the writing style. Even though this is technically part of a series, it can absolutely be read as a standalone, which I really appreciated.
I had such a great time with this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves sapphic romance, slow burns, yearning and found family.
Thanks to netgalley and Victory Editing for the Arc.
This book has everything I love: so much yearning, a found family friend group where you end up loving every single person for a different reason and a queer awakening that was written so beautifully.
It’s such a good slow burn romance with a surprising amount of depth. I loved how much we got to know both main characters and really understand them as people. And when they finally got together? I was living for it.
There were also so many funny little moments that genuinely made me chuckle, and I really enjoyed the writing style. Even though this is technically part of a series, it can absolutely be read as a standalone, which I really appreciated.
I had such a great time with this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves sapphic romance, slow burns, yearning and found family.
Thanks to netgalley and Victory Editing for the Arc.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was such a fun sapphic friends to lovers romance that had me totally engrossed in the narrative to the point I could have kept reading and reading Evelyn and Karis’ story. This story has so much tension and yearning it had me really rooting for the characters the whole story. I could not wait for them to get together and kiss already. The found family in this novel was also top tier and the way they show up for each other made me want to read other books from this series to see more of the relationships between Karis, Evelyn, and their friend group. While it is a third book in a series it was completely understandable as a standalone but I am sure there was easter eggs I would have seen if I had read the other books. I read this book in about 4 hours total and don’t regret a minute of it. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves sapphic friends to lovers book with a large found family packed full of tension and sapphic yearning.
I received an advanced reader copy from Victory Editing Netgalley co-op in exchange for a honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was such a good sapphic romance and I ate it up in one day! It had so much tension and chemistry, and the spicy scenes were so good!🌶️
When Evelyn decides that her mission now is to find the love of her love, best friend Karis agrees to help her with online dating. But as Evelyn starts going on dates, is that jealousy she is feeling? And why can’t Evelyn stop thinking about Karis?💭
The story behind Evelyn’s mistrust broke my heart, but watching her friends show up for her gave me goosebumps. Karis is so lovable, and her punk style sounds perfect! All of the characters were so well done and I honestly wish I could be part of their friendship group. And the found family? Had me tearing up! The kittens were an adorable extra plot🫶🏼
This book had friends to lovers, friendship, mistrust, second chance, found family, and spice. I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to all sapphic romance lovers🩷
Thank you to NetGalley, Victory Editing and Valerie Kain for letting me read this superb ARC✨
When Evelyn decides that her mission now is to find the love of her love, best friend Karis agrees to help her with online dating. But as Evelyn starts going on dates, is that jealousy she is feeling? And why can’t Evelyn stop thinking about Karis?💭
The story behind Evelyn’s mistrust broke my heart, but watching her friends show up for her gave me goosebumps. Karis is so lovable, and her punk style sounds perfect! All of the characters were so well done and I honestly wish I could be part of their friendship group. And the found family? Had me tearing up! The kittens were an adorable extra plot🫶🏼
This book had friends to lovers, friendship, mistrust, second chance, found family, and spice. I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to all sapphic romance lovers🩷
Thank you to NetGalley, Victory Editing and Valerie Kain for letting me read this superb ARC✨
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks NetGalley for an ARC copy for my honest review.
2.75 rounded up to 3
This was an okay read. Fairly low stakes and angst.
There were a few consistency issues I had with it. When our MCs finally get together, there's a lot of back and forth that come from Evelyn. All she wants, throughout the entire story, is a loving relationship. When she and Karis are together, she can't stop the insecurities from taking over. Clearly she suffers with abandonment issues, so I tried to keep that in mind, but I just found her complaining for no reason.
If Kain would have spent a little more time in between, showing the readers how 'uncaring' Karis was, I think it would have had a larger impact; instead, she seemed ungrateful to me.
Karis was fine. There wasn't anything overly special about her but I do like how devoted she is to Evelyn. She was always thinking about her needs and wanting to provide for her.
I'm not sure this book will stick with me as anything special but it was a fine read.
2.75 rounded up to 3
This was an okay read. Fairly low stakes and angst.
There were a few consistency issues I had with it. When our MCs finally get together, there's a lot of back and forth that come from Evelyn. All she wants, throughout the entire story, is a loving relationship. When she and Karis are together, she can't stop the insecurities from taking over. Clearly she suffers with abandonment issues, so I tried to keep that in mind, but I just found her complaining for no reason.
If Kain would have spent a little more time in between, showing the readers how 'uncaring' Karis was, I think it would have had a larger impact; instead, she seemed ungrateful to me.
Karis was fine. There wasn't anything overly special about her but I do like how devoted she is to Evelyn. She was always thinking about her needs and wanting to provide for her.
I'm not sure this book will stick with me as anything special but it was a fine read.
Read
August 25, 2026This novel is a truly absorbing experience, showcasing a unique blend of emotion and joy. It centers on the intricate relationship between Evelyn and Karis, two best friends whose lives become intertwined in unexpected ways. While Evelyn embarks on a journey of self-discovery, subtly guided by a devoted Karis who secretly harbors a deep affection, the story beautifully explores the complexities of unspoken love and burgeoning self-awareness.
Witness Evelyn's authentic queer awakening and her path to understanding herself, made all the more compelling by Karis's quiet devotion. Their slow-burn romance is masterfully developed, leading to a profoundly emotional and believable climax. Beyond the central love story, the book celebrates the strength of chosen family and is penned with wit and genuine warmth. For those who appreciate rich character arcs, profound emotional resonance, and the transformative power of connection, this stand-alone gem is highly recommended.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily
Witness Evelyn's authentic queer awakening and her path to understanding herself, made all the more compelling by Karis's quiet devotion. Their slow-burn romance is masterfully developed, leading to a profoundly emotional and believable climax. Beyond the central love story, the book celebrates the strength of chosen family and is penned with wit and genuine warmth. For those who appreciate rich character arcs, profound emotional resonance, and the transformative power of connection, this stand-alone gem is highly recommended.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4.5 ⭐'s
This is the first book I've read by this author, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
I loved the banter between Evelyn and Karis within their friendship. I liked that Karis had great characteristics of a friend and was so supportive of Evelyn. I also really enjoyed the friends group in this book. Although this is book three in a series, I read it as a standalone, and without reading the other books, I was able to keep up and see how the dynamics between the friends affected one another. I liked that there were connections between characters' past and present, and that it showed "small world" vibes in ways that surprised yet delighted me! I'd liked to have seen more of Evelyn and Karis once they got together, but I'm sure we will see more of them in future books in the series. I'd definitely recommend this book if you like sapphic contemporary romance, motorcycles, and a good friend group!
This is the first book I've read by this author, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
I loved the banter between Evelyn and Karis within their friendship. I liked that Karis had great characteristics of a friend and was so supportive of Evelyn. I also really enjoyed the friends group in this book. Although this is book three in a series, I read it as a standalone, and without reading the other books, I was able to keep up and see how the dynamics between the friends affected one another. I liked that there were connections between characters' past and present, and that it showed "small world" vibes in ways that surprised yet delighted me! I'd liked to have seen more of Evelyn and Karis once they got together, but I'm sure we will see more of them in future books in the series. I'd definitely recommend this book if you like sapphic contemporary romance, motorcycles, and a good friend group!
Review of advance copy
Evelyn Eden is studying at college, with a group of friends. One friend in particular is Karis Hanson who is a rebel on her own way she does not take shit from others. She is a petite woman compared to Evelyn.
Know that I introduced Evelyn and Karis I want to say that I really like the story line I was rooting for pacific things to happened and they did, so I won't be spoiled the story line for anyone. Valerie Kain wrote an amazing story, she was very creative in the pilot. Giving great details so I was able to picture the characters and what they were doing.
I give her 4.5 star I would've given her a 5 but one thing I was hoping to happened didn't but it didn't affect the storyline at all. Great story!!!!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Know that I introduced Evelyn and Karis I want to say that I really like the story line I was rooting for pacific things to happened and they did, so I won't be spoiled the story line for anyone. Valerie Kain wrote an amazing story, she was very creative in the pilot. Giving great details so I was able to picture the characters and what they were doing.
I give her 4.5 star I would've given her a 5 but one thing I was hoping to happened didn't but it didn't affect the storyline at all. Great story!!!!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy
Thank you to BookSirens for the ARC.
This book started off so strong. I was really getting into the the characters and felt like the tension was building towards a big payoff between Karis and Evelyn but then something happened and I started to get really frustrated with the choices that everyone was making. I don't mind miscommunication tropes but something about the way this one went about wasn't working for me.
I did, however, really like the found family aspect and the tension for the first half of the book was fantastic. It just kind of petered out in the middle and then picked up a bit of steam towards the end.
This book started off so strong. I was really getting into the the characters and felt like the tension was building towards a big payoff between Karis and Evelyn but then something happened and I started to get really frustrated with the choices that everyone was making. I don't mind miscommunication tropes but something about the way this one went about wasn't working for me.
I did, however, really like the found family aspect and the tension for the first half of the book was fantastic. It just kind of petered out in the middle and then picked up a bit of steam towards the end.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4/5 ⭐
best friends to lovers, found family, slow burn, so much sapphic yearning
i really loved this book, and could connect with both characters, but miscommunication is one of my least liked tropes and it was rampant in this book. not just between evelyn and karis, but between evelyn and their entire friend group. or really just between their entire friend group.
to have health relationships you have to talk to each other y'all!
it felt like it was relying more on the miscommunication trope to move the story along than actually letting any character growth happen.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me this arc in exchange for an honest review
best friends to lovers, found family, slow burn, so much sapphic yearning
i really loved this book, and could connect with both characters, but miscommunication is one of my least liked tropes and it was rampant in this book. not just between evelyn and karis, but between evelyn and their entire friend group. or really just between their entire friend group.
to have health relationships you have to talk to each other y'all!
it felt like it was relying more on the miscommunication trope to move the story along than actually letting any character growth happen.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me this arc in exchange for an honest review
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
3.5*
I went into this book relatively blind (no summary blurb online) and in this case I wish I hadn't. Evelyn and Karis started as very interesting characters, but I found myself increasingly frustrated with them as time went on. Miscommunication is one of my least favorite tropes and it's heavy in this book - every conflict from page one stemmed from some sort of miscommunication. Also, as a third book in a series of interconnected standalones, I felt like it was assumed the reader already had read the prior two books and therefore knew the characters. All in all, not a bad book, but not my favorite either.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance copy.
I went into this book relatively blind (no summary blurb online) and in this case I wish I hadn't. Evelyn and Karis started as very interesting characters, but I found myself increasingly frustrated with them as time went on. Miscommunication is one of my least favorite tropes and it's heavy in this book - every conflict from page one stemmed from some sort of miscommunication. Also, as a third book in a series of interconnected standalones, I felt like it was assumed the reader already had read the prior two books and therefore knew the characters. All in all, not a bad book, but not my favorite either.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance copy.
September 2, 2026
*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Pub date: September 15, 2026
Hmm. Kinda icky that Karis manipulates Evelyn’s dating app choices, even if with good intentions. The possessiveness of her calling Evelyn “my girl” and laying the compliments and touches on thick were a bit much for me as friends, knowing what her true feelings are.
Evelyn has some trauma from growing up in the foster system and Karis seems to capitalize on that knowledge to guide the relationship instead of it happening organically.
Spicy sapphic…but a bit toxic.
Hmm. Kinda icky that Karis manipulates Evelyn’s dating app choices, even if with good intentions. The possessiveness of her calling Evelyn “my girl” and laying the compliments and touches on thick were a bit much for me as friends, knowing what her true feelings are.
Evelyn has some trauma from growing up in the foster system and Karis seems to capitalize on that knowledge to guide the relationship instead of it happening organically.
Spicy sapphic…but a bit toxic.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I really enjoyed this book at first! I could really relate to Evelyn, and I liked Karis a lot. But once Karis got busy, I started getting really frustrated with Evelyn. I don’t want to spoil anything, but after that I just couldn’t get into the story anymore and it kind of lost me.
I did really like the ending
Overall, I still enjoyed the book and I’m glad I read it. I definitely think it’s worth giving a try!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I did really like the ending
Overall, I still enjoyed the book and I’m glad I read it. I definitely think it’s worth giving a try!
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy
3.5⭐ It was quite enjoyable and funny at times. A pleasant read overall.
A best friends to lovers romcom where they both like each other but don't know that they like each other all thanks to miscommunication and assumptions made.
Once they get the misunderstanding cleared, they start dating but there's trouble in paradise as they bring along all their unresolved baggage into the relationship, straining it. Difficult choices need to be made as uncertainty over their future together is at stake. Will the right choices be made?
Thank you to Booksirens for the free ARC.
A best friends to lovers romcom where they both like each other but don't know that they like each other all thanks to miscommunication and assumptions made.
Once they get the misunderstanding cleared, they start dating but there's trouble in paradise as they bring along all their unresolved baggage into the relationship, straining it. Difficult choices need to be made as uncertainty over their future together is at stake. Will the right choices be made?
Thank you to Booksirens for the free ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was a lovely read. Emotional with a lot of different types of relationships, including found family.
The characters are likeable and the struggles they face feel realistic. I enjoyed the support and positive communication between friends as well as the main couple.
This feels like more than just friends to lovers, there is a lot of healing being done too. A lovely story.
The characters are likeable and the struggles they face feel realistic. I enjoyed the support and positive communication between friends as well as the main couple.
This feels like more than just friends to lovers, there is a lot of healing being done too. A lovely story.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
At the time I got this ARC it didn't have an included summary so here's a brief one:
Evelyn and Karis have been part of the same friend group for a few years. Recently, most of their other friends have coupled up, leaving Evelyn feeling left out and lonely. One night, she declares she wants a relationship and her friends convince her to download the dating app Dovely. Too intimidated to start the process on her own, her friend Karis offers to help her weed through the dating pool. The only problem is, Karis has been madly in love with Evelyn for years. Somehow Karis finds herself accompanying Evelyn on her disaster dates. Meanwhile, Evelyn just wants a person who will pick her as a first choice. Slowly, she starts to realize maybe that person has been Karis all along.
This book was a great femme x masc, best-friends-to-lovers book with just the right amount of drama and found family. The build up to the relationship is full of pining, sweetness, and angst. As well, this book follows the relationship between Evelyn and Karis for a bit after they get together as well and shows the realities of how dating isn't always smooth sailing. There's also a great comraderie between Evelyn, Karis, and the rest of the friend group which I really enjoyed. They may have their issues and dramas but they clearly do all care about each other.
Overall, considering I went into this one knowing nothing about it, I did enjoy this one quite a bit. It's a quick and fun contemporary romance, and part of a series following the friend group as they all find love. 4/5 stars.
At the time I got this ARC it didn't have an included summary so here's a brief one:
Evelyn and Karis have been part of the same friend group for a few years. Recently, most of their other friends have coupled up, leaving Evelyn feeling left out and lonely. One night, she declares she wants a relationship and her friends convince her to download the dating app Dovely. Too intimidated to start the process on her own, her friend Karis offers to help her weed through the dating pool. The only problem is, Karis has been madly in love with Evelyn for years. Somehow Karis finds herself accompanying Evelyn on her disaster dates. Meanwhile, Evelyn just wants a person who will pick her as a first choice. Slowly, she starts to realize maybe that person has been Karis all along.
This book was a great femme x masc, best-friends-to-lovers book with just the right amount of drama and found family. The build up to the relationship is full of pining, sweetness, and angst. As well, this book follows the relationship between Evelyn and Karis for a bit after they get together as well and shows the realities of how dating isn't always smooth sailing. There's also a great comraderie between Evelyn, Karis, and the rest of the friend group which I really enjoyed. They may have their issues and dramas but they clearly do all care about each other.
Overall, considering I went into this one knowing nothing about it, I did enjoy this one quite a bit. It's a quick and fun contemporary romance, and part of a series following the friend group as they all find love. 4/5 stars.
Review of advance copy
This was a nice light romance with low angst. Well written with good characters and a happy surprise towards the latter of the story.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I enjoyed this slow burn romance; it was fun following the progression from best friends to lovers. This book is well written and very enjoyable.
Review of advance copy
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily
I really enjoyed this book.
I really enjoyed this book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A very quick and fun read that features the friends to lovers trope. Some scenes lay on the melodrama a little too thick, but the work overall is the right mix of fun, spice, and loveable characters.
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September 14, 2026Sweet book. Characters had communication issues but that's pretty normal for these books. Had some nice spicy content. Recommend!
Review of advance copy received from Author
Absolutely amazing book, truly. It kept me hooked from page one, I never wanted it to end. The FMCs were both amazing, so easy to fall in love with. I couldn't decide if I wanted to be, or be with Karis, she was such an incredible character. the way she was madly in love with her best friend but STILL helped her (kind of) find someone she wanted to date, and oh my god, the moment they FINALLY kissed, istg I damn near screamed. But the way Evelyn learnt she was in fact not straight was perfect, not to mention the date she went on who literally told her to go after Karis was everything and more. Seeing them finally get together was everything, their relationship was so real, it wasn't picture perfect, there were bumps and tough moments, but it was amazing watching them work through it.
As for Evelyn, well, she was truly an incredible character, so fucking strong honestly. I can't imagine how hard her life must have been, especially thinking her friends don't care about her, that shit damn near broke me, but the way Karis constantly showed up for her was beautiful. Seeing them step it up the second they learnt how she felt was so fucking cute, they really are an amazing friend group, I love all of them. (I definitely have favourites tho)
Learning about Vinny wrecked me, but seeing them FINALLY reunite was perfect in ways words could never describe. And it was such an amazing reunion. It's safe to say I loved this book so much, and I'll be thinking about it for a long fucking time, that much I can promise
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
As for Evelyn, well, she was truly an incredible character, so fucking strong honestly. I can't imagine how hard her life must have been, especially thinking her friends don't care about her, that shit damn near broke me, but the way Karis constantly showed up for her was beautiful. Seeing them step it up the second they learnt how she felt was so fucking cute, they really are an amazing friend group, I love all of them. (I definitely have favourites tho)
Learning about Vinny wrecked me, but seeing them FINALLY reunite was perfect in ways words could never describe. And it was such an amazing reunion. It's safe to say I loved this book so much, and I'll be thinking about it for a long fucking time, that much I can promise
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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