Friends to Lovers by Sally Blakely is an adorable slow burn summer romance/beach read with dual timelines following Joni and Ren as they connect over time and are friends and there for one another as each of them grow up. Joni and Ren are longtime family friends, including the sharing of a summer home during childhood. When they are not dating others, they come together to be each other’s dates for weddings, even when they live across the country from one another.

There are cute moments where you can tell that there is a spark between them or that Joni and Ren understand each other better than their various love interests over time. But the timing is never right, things never quite work out. And despite them being out of communication from the last time they saw each other until coming back together for a family wedding one last time at the summer home and having to fake the friendship that seems to have fallen apart, the same sparks seem to fly.

I loved how these characters were described, the amount of care that went into crafting both of them as individuals and as a pair, and the timelines intersecting at the perfect times to allow us to understand why the Joni and Ren we meet at the beginning of the book have gotten to this place and whether there’s any amount of salvaging their relationship (platonic or romantic) by the end.

I absolutely adored that this book included playlists throughout and that it included a playlist at the end. This was a really cute detail and was really well done.

The audio narration by Patti Murin was perfect and enhanced the story.

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