ARC Review: Love in Focus by Lyla Lee

Thank you Forever and Netgalley for providing me with an Audio ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

When her seven-year long relationship suddenly falls apart, relationship advice columnist Gemma Cho is convinced that real love doesn’t exist. As a bisexual woman who’s had zero luck with both men and women, she’s ready to give up on her own romantic prospects when she gets paired up with Celeste Min, a world-renowned photographer, on a highly visual, potentially career-saving piece on modern love.

Celeste is extremely talented, sexy, and gay, and would be the perfect collaborator and rebound for Gemma if it weren’t for one major fact: she’s Gemma’s ex, the one that broke her heart in college and moved to a whole another country before Gemma could even make sense of what went wrong between them. Despite working on a project together about what constitutes love and romance in the modern age, when it comes to their own affairs, both Gemma and Celeste are tripping over each other’s feet…and into each other’s arms.

Heightened by their shared love for love and the unmistakable sparks that still fly between them, Gemma and Celeste struggle to keep their relationship strictly professional. For the sake of her career, Gemma needs this piece to do well. And for the sake of what’s left of her beaten up hopeless romantic heart, she wants to fall head over heels for Celeste again. But can she trust Celeste to feel the same this time around?

Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (4)

The book was a fun read! The characters had great and believable chemistry from the start. I hadn't read any second chance romances, I think. so this was probably the first time reading about exes falling back in love. The interesting thing about second chance romances, is that you can already tell that they care about each other from the start. They have a different friendship bond due to their history. That's different from when you read about people meeting each other for the first time.

It makes me happy to see this book getting published. Especially to see more Asian queer rep. Representation matters!

I read an audiobook of this book and I m really liked the narrator for Gemma. Which is good, considering most chapters were from Gemma's pov.

I have to say that I wasn't whether to give the book 3 or 4 stars at first. But, I did really enjoy myself a lot, reading this. So, I ended up going with 4 stars.

What I didn't like about the book were Celeste's chapters. The change of narrative perspective threw me off every time. I'm curious why the author chose to change between first and third person. But for me, it didn't really work. To me, it created more of a distance between the reader and Celeste

Lastly, the Celeste voice actor was in my opinion not as good as Gemma's. Maybe it was because of the third person perspective, but Celeste sounded more expressive. While Gemma sounded monotonous at times.

I gave the book 4 stars, because overall I liked the book a lot! It's such a cute read, while also being angsty. I think I'm really into Sapphic adult romance!

So, although I had some criticism, I would totally recommend it.

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