The Romance Rivalry by Susan Lee Published by Harper Collins on May 13, 2025
Genres: Contemporary Romance
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I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
She’s read every romance…except her own…
Irene Park loves romance novels—so much so she’s made a career of them as an online book reviewer with a massive following. But Irene’s real life dating story? Non-existent. So when she starts her freshman year of college, she sets her sights on finding true love using the one thing she really understands…romance book tropes.
If only it were that easy.
Enter Aiden Jeon, Irene’s online book review rival and biggest nemesis. When Aiden challenges her to see who can find love-by-trope first, he becomes the one person standing in her way to getting everything she wants both professionally and personally, too. So when the competition takes an unexpected turn, forcing the two of them to have to partner in the ultimate trope, fake dating, Irene is not prepared for everything she believed about romance, and Aiden, to flip on its head.
As Irene tackles the challenges of college life, struggles to figure out what she really wants for herself, all while trying to win the race for love, Irene realizes the answers may not be found in a romance novel. Happily Ever Afters seem so easy on page. But for Irene to find her ultimate HEA, she’ll have to get her nose out of the book and become the main character of her own story.
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I knew I had to grab this book when I read the blurb, and I am so glad I did. The main characters in The Romance Rivalry are both popular book reviewers online, and if you could not guess based on the title, they have a bit of a rivalry. Irene goes to college and imagine her surprise when she bumps into her online rival, Aiden. They are at the same college, the same class, and even wind up partnered together on a major project.
If schoolwork was not enough, they start a competition to see how many dates each can have with other people that fit different romance tropes. Sparks are flying though and this enemies to lovers might just have someone falling. The plot had me hooked and I loved the evolution the characters went through. As expected from a romance book reviewer we do get a few name drops throughout the story and I loved that Black Dagger Brotherhood was mentioned a few times. Overall, this was a wonderful college romance with a dash of enemies to lovers.
