ARC Review: “Love, Comment, Subscribe” by Cathy Yardley

Love, Comment, Subscribe (Ponto Beach Reunion #1) by Cathy Yardley

Publishing Date: October 1, 2021

Genre: Romance, Contemporary, Fiction

Page Length: 335 pages (electronic review edition)

Synopsis:

Back in high school, Lily Wang wanted to be popular, but she considered herself lucky to be part of a tight group of oddballs and honors students called the Nerd Herd. Now, at twenty-eight, she feels like she’s finally on the cusp of succeeding as a beauty influencer—if she can hit five million subscribers, brands will take notice and she could get her own makeup line.

Fellow Nerd Herd alum Tobin Bui has had a lot of success as a YouTube gamer. But the road to online stardom has been rocky. First, he disappointed his parents by dropping out of college, and now, after years of pranks, skits, and playthroughs, he’s struggling to come up with new content to satisfy his ever-growing fan base. His agents say he needs cross-audience appeal, a new twist.

When Nerd Herd frenemy Lily approaches Tobin about teaming up to do a video to bolster her brand and reinvigorate his, he agrees. But when their first collab video goes viral, their relationship heats up too. With the whole internet watching, will these two former misfits finally realize they’re perfect together? (description from Goodreads)

Review:

With a synopsis that had enemies-to-lovers, I knew I had to pick up Love, Comment, and Subscribe. I was very excited to read it! The novel follows two former best friends Lily Wang and Tobin Bui who both have their perspective YouTube channels and have lived separate lives since high school. Lilly is a Beauty YouTuber who is starting to grow her following but she’s having trouble getting the sponsors/viewership that it would take for her to create a makeup business. Meanwhile, Tobin is known for his creative prank and gaming videos. He has a mask a large following and his agents are trying to get him away from doing youtube and focus on more TV and movie content.

Lily and Tobin connect again when they decided to collaborate with each other’s channels trying to help stir their creative block, change up their videos, and gain new audiences. The collab between the two gets off to a rocky start. The videos inspire them to be more creative to try new things and be bolder with the YouTube content that they’ve been putting out so far. We also see the opposition of support systems that Tobin and Lily have. Lilly’s parents support her YouTube career fully and while Tobin’s parents’ things act as if it’s just a phase and that he can’t make money long term being a video creator.

Not only is the witty banter really cute but I really enjoyed the video collaborations they come up with. Tobin bounces out Lily’s goofy side and Lily helps Tobin come by down to earth whenever he feels a bit frantic. I like the commentary about content creation and all work that goes behind making these forms of media content. I also enjoy the fact that you know even though these people in this story get these deals from sponsors they have to question if it’s actually beneficial or not.

This is a novel where the characters show a lot of growth. It made me laugh out loud and smile at the humorous bits. I love the romance aspects and it does deliver on the steamy bits too. A great mashup of frenemies and enemies-to-lovers!

Final Verdict:

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.