Genre 📚: YA/NA Contemporary, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Literally all the tropes (Main ones being Rivals to lovers, Fake dating)
Rep ✔️: Korean American main characters
CW ⚠️: Anxiety
Rating ⭐️: 4/5
Anytime a book has fun with clichés in a meta way, it’s an instant not-so-guilty pleasure for me. I loved I Believe in a Thing Called Love (K-drama tropes) and Better Than the Movies (movie tropes), so I was happy to keep the trope train going with The Romance Rivalry. Here, FMC Irene is a popular romance book reviewer, and she feels threatened by an upcoming reviewer and his army of loyal followers. She hopes for a fresh start and a chance at her own HEA in college, but to her horror, her reviewer rival Aiden attends the same school.
When Aiden finds out about Irene’s plan to use romance tropes to fall in love, he proposes that they turn it into a competition and see who can find love first. From there, they go on a series of dates with people, working through every trope in the book: age-gap romance, secret identity romance, grumpy/sunshine, all of it. While this is happening, Irene and Aiden gradually go from rivals to friends to, you guessed it, lovers. The competition aspect kept the story exciting and fast-paced, made all the more cute with the couple’s cheerleader besties Jeanette and Charles.
Though the concept itself was strong, I would’ve liked more character depth. Irene had severe anxiety that I deeply related to, and Aiden had a rough relationship with his family, but beyond that, it was pretty surface level. Still, this was the perfect light read after having read several heavy books. And a true love letter to the romance genre.
**Much thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Romance Rivalry will be released on May 13, 2025.
Sara Bechtol 