A Guide to Being Just Friends

I liked this book for the most part. I had the audio and liked Hailey's narrator. Unfortunately I didn't like Wes's at all. I'd waited for the audio a while and the ebook would be even longer so decided to just do it.

I like Wes – more than Noah, but Chris is still the best Jansen brother. I liked that Wes didn't share Noah's sentiment when it came to money (that it's meant to be used for everything) and that he respected Hailey a lot for having her own business.

Hailey and Wes wercute together. And I'm saying this as a person who's NOT into the friends-to-lovers trope. I'm not a fan of it. I either have to trust your recs or just happen upon the trope while reading. But I ended up liking it a lot! It fit the characters well and I'm glad it did and I liked it. Though I won't go running to read all the friends-to-lovers books anyway.

I loved Hailey almost as soon as we were introduced to her. She runs her own business and wants it to be successful. She doesn't want people to help her out with her business just because they feel sorry for her. I'm glad that Noah wasn't her love interest because I think he would very easily throw money at her and they would've clashed too much.

Wes fit her well. He gave her solid business advice without coming across as “I know better than you”. It made me like him a lot – happy to after his brother did me dirty. He did do a little “here, lemme throw money at you/the problem” but I'm glad Hailey stood up to him.

I liked how he's analytical, a bit uptight, wanting to do things his way and Hailey's just “lets do this”. It makes for a good balance and one that could go very far if they communicate well. Which they didn't do all the time. That was one of the things that annoyed me – especially in the third act breakup.

I did like this book but I do think it should've been worked on for longer. The pacing jumped all over the place and I found it difficult to keep up with “are you slow or fast now?” The plot also felt like it wasn't tied down too much – I like my plots to be neat. Especially in a Contemporary Romance book – which I don't read as much as other things. Like Fantasies I could accept a bit of a messy plot because there's so many things to keep track of. With Romance books you're always in the real world, so what's your excuse?

As I'm reading more romance books I become more acquainted with the terms and discourse surrounding the genre. One term I'm very familiar with is the third act breakup. Mostly I'm fine with them. The other two books handled it okay (the second one a little less, but I could just be feeling that because of Noah); this book didn't at all (handle it okay). I felt annoyed all throughout and just wanted to get it over with. Which I didn't like because I liked the book otherwise! I didn't understand why the breakup had to be that and why it took so long. I could see in the future they might run into further miscommunication issues if they don't work it out.