Eve Hatch’s life is comfortable and steady. She’s in a job that is just ok, she lives close to her best friend Willa, and she loves her little one bedroom apartment. Her life doesn’t have any surprises, until she has a one night stand and gets pregnant. Her best friend who is struggling to get pregnant has trouble with the news and her brother, Shep, steps in to help Eve. From notifying the father-to-be to navigating pregnancy, Shep steps up. Delivering surprise lunches, listening to her complaints, and well, being her best friend. Suddenly she finds him kind of hot. Is it just pregnancy hormones or does Shep feel the same?

I discovered Cara Bastone by listening to her Audible Original novels and loved her ready to love characters and the way her humor shines through in her writing. Ready or Not may not usually have found itself to my TBR but because I’ve laughed my way through a couple of her novels I wanted to give this one a try. I am so glad I did! This was a true friends to lovers slow burn romance. Pre pregnancy, Eve’s life was kind of a hot mess. Her best friend’s goofy older brother Shep became her rock and she wasn’t the only one who saw him become more and more attractive. His faithful friend act was sweet and her growing attraction to him and his obvious feelings for her were a joy to read. And yes! There was some laugh out loud scenes in this novel too.

I think we all have a bit of an Eve inside of us. We feel like our lives are not quite as great as we’d like them to be and aren’t quite certain how to get ourselves over that hump and live our dreams. This made me like Eve so much which made reading this novel so pleasurable. Throw in a hero like Shep who was described as goofy and likable, which at first made me picture a Labradoodle, and then see him slowly transform into leading man material was unexpected and very attractive. I felt all of those mixed emotions with Eve and ate up each detail as it was revealed. I couldn’t find anything to dislike about this novel and plan to spend a credit getting the Audible book so I can experience the magic of Cara Bastone’s writing again.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest.

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