E-galley Review: Nothing Like the Movies (Better Than the Movies #2) by Lynn Painter

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Nothing Like the Movies by Lynn Painter
Series: Better Than the Movies #2
Published by Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers on September 24, 2024
Genres: YA Contemporary Romance
Pages: 448
Source: the publisher
Format: E-galley
My Rating:
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Blurb:

In this highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling Better than the Movies, Wes and Liz struggle to balance their feelings for each other with the growing pains of being a college student.

For a few beautiful months, Wes had his dream girl: strong-willed girl-next-door Liz. But right as the two were about to set off to UCLA to start their freshman year together, tragedy struck. Wes was left dealing with the fallout, which ultimately meant losing Liz in the process.

Flash forward months and months later and Wes and Liz find themselves in college, together. In a healthier place now, Wes knows he broke Liz’s heart when he ended things, but he is determined to make her fall back in love with him.

Wes knows Liz better than anyone, and he has a foolproof plan to win her back with the rom-com worthy big gestures she loves. Only…Liz will have none of it. Wes has to scheme like a rom-com hero to figure out how to see her. Even worse, Liz has a new friend…a guy friend.

Still, Wes won’t give up, adapting his clever plans and going hard to get Liz’s attention and win back her affection. But after his best efforts get him nowhere, Wes is left wondering if their relationship is really over for good.

My Review

So I loved the first book, Better Than the Movies, and when I heard there was a sequel, I was so excited! The characters are now in college, so normally I’d consider this more New Adult than YA, but since it wasn’t really a sexy type of story I will keep it in the YA category since that’s what the first one was. So of course we were left with an HEA for the first book. Which means something had to have happened to get our two lovebirds, Wes and Liz broken up. While we know the basics of what it is pretty quickly into the story, the author has left the bread crumbs for all of how it played out sprinkled throughout the story, to keep you full of the angst you need for both characters.

As usual the author also has so many great side characters in the story, friends, family, teachers, coaches, etc. They help to round out the story, and lead the story in some places. At first I didn’t understand why Liz just couldn’t give him another chance very easily. Of course we don’t get the full detail of that until they have decided to kind of give it a try. Liz tries to use one of her friends as her fake boyfriend to keep Wes at arms’ length. But of course her friend is a great guy who goes with it at first, but once he gets to know Wes he likes him and kind of feels for him as well.

It was great being back with these characters and seeing how they would work things out now that they were a little older and they had changed based on those past experiences that led them to this point. The bet that Liz and Wes have so that if he wins she will give him a date, just wow, that was such an intense and sweet way for him to win. And even though Wes knows he wants Liz back, it isn’t like he’s fixed all his problems now and is ready for it to all go perfectly smoothly. I love that both of them had things to work through in order to finally get back to their HEA.