Spoilers Ahead: 

This book revived me in ways I didn’t expect it to. There’s no way anyone should go about their lives without having read this book. It’s immediately one of my favourites, and I wish I could go back and red it all over, again and again. I had the audiobook, and the narrator of it made the book so much better! 

So we follow Kitty as her boyfriend, Archie, proposes to her. He proposes to her with pizza (?), and because of the nasty divorce between Kitty’s parents, she vowed that she wouldn’t ever get married. They’ve been together for years, and so he knows the qualms she has about marriage, and she has no interest in getting married. She says yes, and it all moves so quickly, and she finds herself having a panic attack at work. Leo, her work arch-nemesis, finds her and he helps her. 

She calls the marriage off with Archie when it all gets too much. He’s livid, and Kitty doesn’t want to lose him, so she compromises with him. She says if they can make it through 3 months of no contact, until the end of the summer, to sort out their feelings for each other, then they can see if she can get over her fear of marriage, and they can get back together. So, they take a break, and no contact. 

Kitty moves her stuff into her friend Tristan’s house, and then they start sharing together. Kitty doesn’t want to tell anyone she knows about the engagement, but somehow ends up bumping into Leo again. When he offers to take her to collect her things, and she finds a used condom in the bins, she knows that he had sex with another woman, because they never used them. He “didn’t like the feel of them” (eye roll into another dimension) and when she called him, he said that they were on a break. She was heartbroken. 

She tries online dating, but it isn’t for her. Tries picking up people in the pub, and that’s even worse. Luckily, as a toxic man tries to guilt her into doing things for him, Leo is there and pulls him off of her. Her and Leo make a deal, which drunk Kitty doesn’t remember until Leo reminds her the next day… 

They are going to have a rebound fling. Leo is recently divorced, and still madly in love with his wife, Isabelle, and so he doesn’t want anything, and Kitty wants to get back at Archie and sleep with someone else, and they are both heartily attracted to each other, so they decide to sleep together. Leo has one condition, and that is that they don’t catch feelings, and she only fucks him when she wants to, not because she wants to get back at Archie. 

The rest of the summer is spent her working towards her big pitch for her company (which Leo is also working for, although he secretly hopes that her company will win, and prevents his boss from stealing her ideas) and also going on dates with Leo. It’s all to help her get ready for marriage, and she starts to find herself. She starts seeing a therapist, and she helps her to talk about her family life and everything happening with Archie. When her and Leo are having a picnic in the park, she spots Archie, and and she runs after him. He’s holding another girl’s hand, but they hug. 

Leo is absolutely livid - he’s infuriated by her need to talk to Archie, even after he treats her like shit and didn’t even wait a day to jump into bed with someone else. They have an argument, where he is essentially just saying every way in which Archie lacks as a boyfriend, and Kitty brings up that he won’t move on from his wife. They have a heated make-out session, even after they say that the deal is off, and then they’re fine. 

Unsurprisingly, Kitty starts to catch feelings for him, even after he said that he wouldn’t love anyone but his wife. They do start having sex, as Kitty wants to do it for herself. Her and Leo’s agreement comes to a close (after he’s brought her home to meet his entire family?) and she breaks off her engagement to Archie, after learning that he’s never really cared for her, he only liked holding her lack of money against her. He didn’t listen to her, and only her own needs, so she decided to go and do things for herself for now. 

She and her company wins the proposal! It’s a massive thing for them, and they’re all so pleased. Leo comes in to congratulate her, and he tells her he’s leaving for London, to be closer to his ex-wife. She’s pregnant, and they want to try and give it a go. She’s upset, but lets him go. 

Three years later, both her and Leo are up for the same award. Kitty wins, and he congratulates her. They end up having sex again, and Kitty knows that it will always be him, although he seems like he doesn’t care - he’s using it as a last goodbye. She runs back to her room, but he follows her. He tells her that he won’t ever love anyone like Isabelle, and they leave it there. Next time they see each other is at the airport, where he gets off his flight to tell her that he will never love anyone like he does her, and they decide to make a go of things. 

I simply adored this book. It had everything I could ask for in a romance novel. The tone was humorous, and Kitty was genuinely funny, and she wasn’t forced to be either. The whole book had a very natural voice, and it made for a really good read. I loved the characters - especially Kitty, as I find she’s very relatable - and I liked Leo for most of the book also. Towards the end he was a bit of a knob, but I’ll get into that later. I loved the fact that there was a genuine connection between Kitty and Leo; it was believable, and not based solely on sex. This book followed them getting to know each other on an intimate level, which I think is so much more important and poignant than it just being sex-based. It felt like I was genuinely watching their love bloom, an outsider looking in, knowing that they love each other. It was spectacular. Archie was portrayed fantastically - a narcissistic man who you realise is bad over time just as the main character does. I love that technique, and it worked beautifully in this instance. I love the friendships in the book, the personal goals, the character growth of kitty (better than any book I’ve ever read before) and the fact that Kitty doesn’t have to change herself and like marriage to be happy. 

It’s little, nit-picky things that are keeping it from 5 stars - for the majority of the book, it was definitely going to be 5 stars, but it got to the end and I couldn’t keep it up there anymore. I loved the characters. As I said, I absolutely adored Kitty, but she kept saying that she “knows that look” and it got a little bit annoying after a while - especially as she was wrong most of the time. Also, Leo, babe, what are you doing? You’ve got this girl who’s head-over-heels for you, and you’re obviously the same for her, and yet you’re going back to your wife who left you because you couldn’t have kids? The whole of the book he’s a smart and kind person, and towards the end, he’s as thick as pig shit. It annoyed me how he would say that he loved Kitty, and act liked he did also, but then tell her that he would only love his wife? It makes no sense!! And it’s so disappointing because I loved his character up until then, and then there was all this rubbish about how the couldn’t be together, and I’d just had enough. I like the fact that it showed her growth after 3 years, showing how she had grown without needing to rely on a partner, but I think the ending was a little longer than it needed to be. It was great book, but then it just got to be too long, and it ruined the rest of it for me. 

Undoubtedly, this book is a must-read! I would definitely recommend for the romance fans!!

Update!!
I decided, after several arguments with myself, that I was being too harsh for the grading, and it’s definitely worth the 5 stars!!