Love at First Set by Jennifer Dugan

Love at First Set Reviews

• 
  Anouk♡ - semi hiatus

  Hoping this will spark my inner gym rat to come out
• 
  Creya

  This book started off strong, but I had a hard time staying invested after the halfway mark. While I laughed a lot at first, the drama inevitably ensued. The third act breakup was a little much for me, as both women assumed the other did not want to talk and essentially ran from her problems. I did enjoy that the book delved into other relationships aside from Lizzie and Cara’s, such as their toxic relationships with their mothers. Overall, a cute read. I am sure there are many readers who will adore it.
  
  “‘You deserve someone who wants to make every day of your life the best day of your life, whether that means some stupid grand gesture or just grabbing your favorite candy bar when they stop to get gas. Someone who doesn’t just know how you take your coffee, but the movies you like, the songs; someone who wants to know what makes you tick. Don’t settle for anything less.’”
• 
  zaylee sorrengail riorson 🎧💌🪽

  — 4.75 stars ✮
  
  I really need to stop reading these silly little romance books and expecting to be okay afterwards. (I’m not, i am severely ill). ANYWAYS, let’s talk about this amazing book. I will try not to give spoilers, but if you consider quotes from books spoilers, then this is your warning.
  LIZZIE ❤️‍🩹💞
  Oh my god. I loved her. She was everything and more. When I said Harry wrote Matilda for her, I was not lying!! Lizzie is a lesbian gym rat who has always thought of the gym as being her home. She dreams of owning a gym one day. She also makes it a habit to not get attached to people. She’s not one for commitment at all. She made some dumb decisions in this but she’s only human and I forgive her. The only thing I hated was her self-esteem and how she constantly brings up the difference in social statuses. I love how she gets called out on it though and works on it. She’s so relatable, it makes me sob.
  “I don’t have a safety net; I am the safety net.”
  “Being on my own is a lesson I learned early and harshly, but I’m used to it. I’m good at it.”
  “I’m not the person you stay and fight for, never have been.”
  “I’m tired of being something people regret.”
  “They shout around me, like I’m not even here. And isn’t this how it always is? Just me in the background of everyone else’s lives.”
  “Because what’s love without trust?”
  “And dude, rich people. They really are like a whole other species, aren’t they?”
  “God forbid a rich kid gets held accountable for something.”
  “People who aren’t there for the bad times don’t deserve the good. People who hurt you on purpose don’t also get to celebrate with you. It’s not being toxic or holding a grudge, it’s actually just healthy. At least that’s what my therapist says.”
  I want to give her so many hugs and tell her she’s worth everything and can do anything in life because she absolutely can.
  CARA 💞💕💘
  CARAAA. If you can’t tell, Cara is also everything to me. Literally when I say I hate rich people, she’s the exception. She is just someone who is trying to figure out who she wants to be instead of who everyone else expects her to be.
  “I don’t even know who I am. Do you know how surreal that is? I’ve been so wrapped up in doing what everybody else thought was right, my entire life.”
  “Do you ever feel like your whole life is something that’s happening to you? Like you’re just being swept from one point to the next on an ocean of other people’s expectations?”
  JAMES
  I have a love-hate relationship with him. But I can’t deny that he made me laugh out loud so many times. Also I love him and Ramón.
  STELLA & GEORGE
  I hate them. They can go die in a hole. They don’t deserve to exist. I hope they get hit by a bus. 🫶
  LIZZIE & HER MOTHER
  Pure fucking pain. I could not read anything that went down between them without crying. Lizzie deserved better.
  “I’m sorry,” I say again, forever apologizing.”
  Forever sobbing over her mommy issues please leave me alone.
  LIZZIE & CARA
  They are so perfect. I want to be them. I want to be with them. I just want to be in their fucking presence, okay?
  “Cara never felt like anything I wanted to get away from. Ever.”
  That’s the only quote I’m putting from them because I will NOT spoil everything. If anyone needs me, i will be in my room crying the rest of the night. 🥲
• 
  River

  2/5
  
  Thank you Pride Book Tours for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.
  
  I really wanted to love this. I adore reading, promoting and talking about sapphic books with all my heart, however this one just missed the mark for me.
  Unfortunately, I couldn't connect to any of the characters. I found them annoying and ended up not caring what happened to them. The entire third act/last part was incredibly melodramatic and never once seemed real. There were huge arguments and then even more huge arguments that then got very quickly resolved in an unsatisfying way.
  
  I'm sorry to say that this really wasn't the book for me. I'm so upset that I didn't like it more!
• 
  lauraღ

  “Stop running, Cara, and let me catch you. I promise I’ll be yours forever.”

  
  2.5 stars. I love rom coms, I really, really do, but there are certain romantic comedies that are written with this tinge of unreality, where the characters don't act like actual human beings, and everything about the character motivations and character actions and the writing just seems to be in service of a plot that wants to be funny and full of hijinks. This was that. I wish I could take Lizzie and Cara, the exact characters they are, with Lizzie's biceps and gym ambitions and mommy issues, and Cara's sweetness and flight tendencies and insecurities about having to live up to being the good child, and airlift them into another story with another plot. A lot of things about this didn't work for me. Some things did, and I really did enjoy these characters, and some of their moments together were really cute, so that was a tiny saving grace.
  
  Our main character is Lizzie, the front desk worker at a gym which she loves, and she hopes to use her position to eventually manage a gym of her own in the future. Her best friend, a personal trainer and son of the owners, wrangles her into attending his sister's wedding, where she drunkenly gives a pep talk to a hot girl in the bathroom, convincing her to leave her fiancé. The hot girl, of course, turns out to be James's sister and the bride-to-be, and the book deals with the fallout of Cara deciding to leave her fiancé, and Lizzie trying to hide her involvement in that decision from everyone. And of course, along the way, they fall in love. I thought it was such a cute premise, especially to have a romance blossom from a bathroom peptalk. But all of the ways that this tried to be comedic really were not working for me. There are a bunch of shenanigans surrounding James and the fact that he wants to keep his new relationship a secret from his family, so he pressures Lizzie into lying for him and keeping his secret, and he also tasks her with distracting Cara. Part of the plot does deal with how spoiled he is and how he takes advantage of her, but it was just honestly annoying to me that it went that far in the first place? Like, would any remotely self-aware human being not realise that they are being obnoxious and they are asking too much of their best friend and just flat out being ridiculous? It was in service of the comedy, but it was just silly. And the fact that he cared so much about Lizzie breaking up Max and Cara... why? I mean, the book told us why, but it felt absurd. All of the conflict was really manufactured, and it snowballs into really melodramatic events in the third act. And I'm sorry to keep harping on about it, but nothing much about this was actually funny. Like, the drunken shenanigans in the beginning? Just make me cringe a bit.  
  
  I really did like Lizzie and Cara; I thought they were really adorable. They had such a good meet cute, and and chemistry during their first talk was amazing. This was a single POV romance, which I usually love, and I did like it here, but something about Lizzie's narration style sometimes got on my nerves, and I wouldn't have minded getting to read from Cara's point of view once in a while. But I do understand why it was written like this, and again, I enjoy single POV. I did feel slightly cheated because I wish that there was more gym stuff, more emphasis on Lizzie working out and being strong, maybe getting to throw Cara around a little bit. There was a little of that, but I'm greedy and I wanted more. I also wanted there to be more involvement from Cara's friends, and for us to see a little bit more of how she reconnected with them. That just seemed to be resolved really quickly and smoothly. As for Lizzie's mother, I do enjoy tackling themes about abusive parents, but this was written in such a flat way? I don't know. It's not like I needed to get her mother's life story and reasons for why she's so horrible, but something about that whole plotline felt very cookie-cutter. And again, the resolution that we got felt unsatisfying. 
  
  Listened to the audiobook as read by Lori Prince, and it might be my least favourite book from her so far? She's a narrator that I really like, but a lot of Lizzie's prose is written with this sort of sarcastic, snarky, sometimes self-deprecating tone, and I just didn't like the voice that Prince did for it. It felt really over-dramatic/over-acted most of the time. I almost wonder if I might not have enjoyed this more if I had read it, as opposed to listening to the audiobook. I suppose I'll never know. I did still like her other voices, especially for Cara. I didn't hate the author's writing style, so I might read from her in the future. But I will probably stick to her adult stuff, because I can't imagine enjoying her YA more than this.  
• 
  Gabriella Lindsey

  I straight up did not have a good time. James sucks. Cara sucks. My girl Lizzie needs therapy and new friends.
  
  Thank you netgalley but this one was not for me.
• 
  natka_bookish_life

  yea well… początek i koniec są warte wspomnienia, ale na tym się kończy…
  
  niestety to kije drugie spotkanie z autorką i po raz kolejny się zawiodłam
• 
  Natalie

  I wanted to love this so much but ultimately, this felt just ok. I struggled through the first half after seeing how James and Cars both used Lizzie to cover up for their lack of communication skills and mutual respect / boundaries, so it was hard to like either of them. Truly I just wanted BETTER than both of them for Lizzie.
  
  The second half picks up once the romance and coupling is kind of in full swing, and while I think many will resonate with Lizzie’s intrusive thoughts, after a while it just felt like a drag for me, killing the romantic sparks and playfulness. I did find some of the banter between Cara and Lizzie to be cute and their meeting in the bathroom was actually one of my favorite scenes.
  
  However, my original gripe with James and Cara really not being worthy of Lizzie rears it’s head in full force in the final 30%. They repeatedly let other people in their lives talk down to Lizzie. This is seen with Sherry, one of Cara’s friends, both James and Cara with their parents and how they treat Lizzie, and on several occasions, James himself in how he speaks directly to Lizzie, often commenting on her lack of resume or how Cara has nothing to stick around for, implying his ‘best friend’ Lizzie isn’t enough.
  
  Frankly it all felt really toxic and I just wanted Lizzie to leave all of them behind and as for the gestures at the end…they needed to come from James and Cara, not Lizzie to them. Overall because I just couldn’t find the best friend, James, redeeming or Cara, the love interest, as someone interesting or kind to Lizzie, I just couldn’t really get on board.
  
  I will say, i thought the gym aspect was interesting and would have loved to see more of that, of Lizzie with clients all working towards different goals, to really see her passion come through. I also thought the self-esteem issues and complicated family dynamics added made this intriguing, especially in how we see Lizzie deal with all this. I felt for her character so much and the scenes with her mother were so sad to read through, but felt realistic. Though the wrap up of these issues was a bit lack luster and quick, I can also see how trying to go the full mile in doing them Justice would have come at the suffering of the romance.
  
  Rating: 2.75/3, rounding up to 3
• 
  Dilayra Verbrugh

  I loved this book so much!
  
  It's a sapphic adult romcom. It was so funny, chaotic and messy (in a good way). I also read the audiobook and I think that made it even better!
• 
  disco

  In this house we don’t say “I love you,” we say, “I have learned your random food quirks and I support you.”
  
  Anyone who considers Annabelle(2014) their comfort movie is alright by me.
• 
  Sabrina Grafenberger

  For the most part this book was a fun and light rom com, but the third act was way too melodramatic and some things started to feel unrealistic.
  
  The plot and conflict leaned too much on the miscommunication trope and James and Cara's mother, Stella, didn't feel like a real person, but rather like a cartoon villain. She was very one-dimensional and downright evil. With the way she plotted and lied I was half expecting her to cackle maniacally and rub her hands in an evil manner at some point. Aside from Stella I also didn't like James. He was awful, selfish and manipulative.
  
  It pains me to even mention it, but I need to get it out: I don't understand the author's obsession with The Conjuring Universe. Annabelle was mentioned ten times, Conjuring was mentioned five times and there were a few jokes about exorcising and demons. It was funny at first, but it got annoying after a while and sorry not sorry I think these movies are overrated.
  
  To end this review on a more positive note (I am giving it three stars after all): I loved Lizzie as the main character. She was messy and chaotic but also very relatable and funny. The chemistry, banter and serious conversations between her and Cara were great.
  
  I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Lori Prince and her performance was outstanding.
• 
  Jen

  This one started out really strong but the storyline went off the rails about a third of the way through
• 
  Anne Hartley Pfohl

  Well, this is a first. I did not like this book and I don't care to finish it. In order for me to enjoy a story I have to like someone in it. I have to care. With this one, I just dont.
  The characters are manipulative, narcissists, weak, and completely self-absorbed. The premise of the book is the problem from the start. Two drunk strangers meet in a bathroom and one talks the other out of going through with her marriage. And they are supposed to be the main characters in a love story? No thanks.
  I love this genre, I have loved every Sapphic rom com I have read. This one is terrible.
• 
  Maddie

  I did not like this one at all. I found both main characters very annoying. I didn't really feel a romantic spark between them either. I see that this author mostly writes YA books and that makes since. This writing felt like a YA book. I have never read any other books by this author. But I think she should stick to writing YA books.
• 
  mili

  7/10
  
  actually started off really promising but then just got messy tbh
  
  yes im gonna write again how im annoyed when people drop brands in their books i just hate it (cant it just be sports top does it have to be an adidas one or cant it be a tshirt not a nike pro tshirt specifically etc) - it always pulls me out of the story
  
  it was cute i guess but kind of not really 3d enough
  
  like the love was so quick and then everything was just weird idk idk (about the mom, parents, brother, friends...)
  
  vague i guess is the word im searching for here? not complete for sure
• 
  Remi

  2.75? I... I struggled with this book. These are some crazy immature adults, It was frustratingly annoying most of the time, and maybe it's cause all of their parents suck but idk. The plot has potential and then someone is manipulating someone or saying something weird it was hard to ignore.
• 
  Crystal

  Vague spoilers below, I guess, if you can really be spoiled on such a book.
  
  I received an ARC from my job at a bookstore.
  
  Frankly, I didn't enjoy this book. If you did, I'm happy for you. But this was not my cup of tea at all. Overall, I would describe it as "meh", and if pressed for a longer answer, I would say "honestly, bad."
  
  For an adult debut novel from a YA author, the only thing for me that really set this apart from being YA was that the characters had sex. Not that the sex scenes were particularly interesting or good, it was just thrown in for the sake of...two women boning a lot...?
  
  The main character has barely any personality to her, and at the best of times she's just some gym obsessed fitness nut, and at the worst of times, she comes off as a bratty teenager. She throws an honest to god temper tantrum at one point and acts like a literal child—I'm only reminded these are adults because it takes place at a bar.
  
  The major conflicts don't even get resolved until the book is almost finished, and the main character's mommy issues (one of her four defining character traits, along with working out, having an inferiority complex, and liking women) aren't resolved like...at all. Sure, her mommy issues come up once every 20 pages so you forget repeatedly that it's even a Thing, but the big showdown is between her girlfriend and her girlfriend's parents. While her mom is...written out off screen. Because that's a totally great way to resolve the issue of an abusive parent, right...?
  
  Not to mention her mother is an alcoholic, which again is mentioned so infrequently and briefly that you completely forget by the time she's getting drunk and making a fool of herself and literally getting blackout drunk. You know, normal things that people with alcoholism in their family do when they've made a point at other parts in the story to say that they don't want to be like her and turn their "addictive tendencies" towards working out. (Spoiler alert: that's not as healthy as you think it is.)
  
  There are a lot of things I didn't like about the book, one being how casually "queer" and "queerness" is thrown about in a way that makes me, a lesbian, actually uncomfortable. Sure plenty of people in the LGBT+ community are fine with it, but plenty of others aren't. It felt weird to label things as "queer" or exploring "her queerness" instead of...y'know, her sexuality? Like most people would say? Another thing was the amount of jokes that seriously bordered on transphobic. Why was there such an insistence on making jokes about Lizzie being a man or having balls...? That's creepy, in my opinion, and also really really gross, and most of all, comes off blatantly as written by a cis author. This book is a hot mess in so many ways I could write a review longer than the book itself on what's wrong with it, but I'm not going to do that.
  
  End result, for having a cute premise it's rushed, messy, and overall not an enjoyable time in the slightest. If you like cheesy romance with plenty of drama ripped straight from a YA novel, then this is for you. And again, no judgement if that is what you're looking for, but it wasn't for me. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.
• 
  jess

  I am worried that there are real people that act like this.
• 
  susana ♡

  This was a meeess! I had so much fun with this book, but oh my God, it was so messy. If you like plots with lots of drama and secrets, this is for you.
  
  Is there anything gayer than a girl meeting another pretty girl and instantly losing the ability of speech? I don’t think so. Lizzie was the blueprint of sapphic girls. She was a mess around Cara because of how attracted she was to her. It was so adorable! I really loved the romance in this book. Cara starts being a runaway bride, so meeting and falling for Lizzie was totally out of her plans, but they were so good together. Lizzie’s friendship with James was also great, though I kind of resent him for the things he said to Lizzie towards the end. As I said, the plot thickens and gets really tangled.
  
  Messy plots always promise an explosion at some point, and this book isn’t different. There is a big explosion of secrets, rebukes and bad blood. Cara and James’s mother is the absolute worst, and so is Lizzie’s mom, tbh. I’m very glad they all moved on from their toxic families and focused on each other, the family they chose. Lizzie and Cara are adorable together and the ending made me the happiest person ever.
  
  ARC provided by Avon and NetGalley. Opinions are my own!
• 
  Chrystopher’s Archive

  This is an enjoyable queer romcom with some chewy themes like emotionally abusive families and class issues folded in. It’s messy and chaotic and fun. The banter between the characters is next level, but thins out in the last quarter of the book.
  
  Something I really liked about the book is that there was very little dancing around the fact that the leads were attracted to each other. Also, this is a romance between a high femme and a more casual femme (I wouldn’t go so far as butch) and at least at first the dynamic is that the former pursued the latter. I feel like I haven’t seen that a lot in wlw romance and I really appreciated it.
  
  Another thing I liked is that, although as I mentioned there’s plenty of messy drama, it’s not all one-sided, and by the end both characters have apologized multiple times for very real transgressions.
  
  The narrative style is first person point of view at its best and the book was blessedly readable for me which was a feat, as I’d been in a bit of a slump when I picked the story up.
• 
  Dilly

  i am officially giving up on reading jennifer dugan’s books. i’ve read a few and have come to the same conclusion each time. it’s a nope from me and in this one especially. the whole time all i see repeatedly is “man”, “dude” “bro code bro code bro code” (the last one is an actual quote from the book), ‘i’m poor’, ‘i want to open my own gym but can’t so i do the next best thing: work for someone else’, ‘i like her but there’s no way she’d go for a poor, ordinary, ugly person like me.’ and i got so sick of it i dnfed.
  
  sorry abt the mini rant it’s just so frustratingly boring and i could NOT stand it.
• 
  Melissa Rae (raenydayreads)

  This irresistible adult debut from beloved YA author Jennifer Dugan is a queer romcom for fans of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care and Written in the Stars, in which a woman gives a drunken bathroom pep talk to a hot stranger, only to find out it’s the bride-to-be she has convinced to leave her fiancé the night before the wedding.
  
  YOU HAD ME FROM THE FIRST WORD
• 
  Mia

  3.5 stars
  
  Love at First Set is sapphic adult romance debut by Jennifer Dugan and this book was adorable.This has fun plot, Lizzie and Cara have great banter and chemistry, it was very easy to read.Definitely recommend if you love a good romcom!
  
  Special thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for sharing this ARC with me in exchange for an honest review,
  
• 
  Lindsay

  Lizzie dreams of owning and running her own gym one day, but right now she works at one owned by the parents of her best friend, personal trainer James. James manages to convince Lizzie to be his plus one at his sister's wedding and Lizzie proceeds to drink too much and give a pep talk to a beautiful woman that she finds crying in a rest room. What Lizzie doesn't know is that she's just talked the bride, James's sister Cara, out of getting married. In the wake of the wedding disaster, Cara begins hanging out at the gym where Lizzie and James work and begins to spark a friendship with Lizzie which proceeds to turn into something much more.
  
  Lizzie and Cara are both disasters in different ways. Lizzie is paying all her abusive mother's bills which leaves her little to live on, and this makes her deathly scared of losing the best paying job of her life, even when her boss (James and Cara's mother) is terrible to the point of abusive. Cara is financially good, but is realizing that she's been cruising through her life to the point where she's ended her relationship and taken a break from her job. She's in her mid-twenties with a blown-up life, an unsupportive family and no friends. Neither Cara or Lizzie are in a good place for a relationship, but a relationship develops nonetheless.
  
  I loved both of these characters, even if they're incredibly frustrating at times. I think the author does a really good job at communicating how trapped they both feel. She certainly communicates how useless they both are when it comes to each other. Even so, it comes together well, even if it opts to sweep some confrontations under the rug that in real life would be unlikely to be satisfying. (Lizzie and her mother, Lizzie and Cara with Cara's parents).
• 
  LGBT Representation in Books

  Trigger Warnings: Cursing, addiction/alcoholism, alcohol/drinking, classism, toxic parents, sex
  
  Representation: Gay, Queer, Bisexual
  
  Love at First Set is a sapphic contemporary romance. The gym is Lizzie's life--it's her passion, her job, and the only place that's ever felt like home. Unfortunately, her bosses consider her a glorified check-in girl at best, and the gym punching bag at worst.
  
  When their son, Lizzie's best friend, James, begs her to be his plus one at his perfect sister Cara's wedding, things go wrong immediately, and culminate in Lizzie giving a drunken pep talk to a hot stranger in the women's bathroom, except that stranger is actually the bride-to-be, and Lizzie has accidentally convinced her to ditch her groom.
  
  Now, newly directionless Cara is on a quest to find herself, and Lizzie, who is desperate to make sure her bosses never find out her role in this fiasco, gets strong-armed by James into "entertaining" Cara. Cara doesn't have to know it's a setup; it'll just be a quick fling before she sobers up and goes back to her real life. After all, how could someone like Cara fall for someone like Lizzie?
  
  The more Lizzie gets to know Cara, the more she likes her, and the bigger the potential disaster if any of her rapidly multiplying secrets get out. Now it's not just Lizzie's job and entire future on the line, but also the girl of her dreams.
  
  You absolutely HAVE to read this gem! Ironically enough, I read part of it while at the gym. This story is very funny and chaotic. And I love a good messy queer! The audiobook has great narration- Lori Prince does an excellent job bringing these characters to life! Like most romances, there’s always a third act break-up, which I hate but the resolution/HEA in this story makes it totally worth it!
  
  I absolutely loved the writing style for this book and think the author should write adults more often! The characters are flawed and relatable. They feel like humans you know if your daily life. I couldn’t believe how this mother is such a b*tch! My only suggestion would be to have included some of Cara’s perspective but I also loved being in Lizzie’s head. Maybe a sequel from Cara’s side???
• 
  kelseyandherbooks

  First things first, I'm not totally sure how seriously you should take my five star rating. Don't get me wrong - I loved this book. BUT, I freaking adored the audio narration and I can't confidently say if I'd give the book a five star rating had I read the physical copy. Lori Prince's performance was outstanding - I laughed out loud so many times, partly because of Jennifer Dugan's writing and partly because of how Prince delivered the lines. I truly can't say enough good things and highly recommend this format if you're able!
  
  Aaaaaanyways, as I was saying, I did really love this book. Lizzie is my favourite kind of chaotic bisexual - funny and self-deprecating and sarcastic and scared and flawed. Her relationship with James was such a highlight and I loved how she eventually opened herself up to be loved and to love in return. Lizzie and Cara played so well off of one another and I love how Cara constantly reminded Lizzie of her worth. The conflict near the end felt right for this couple and the hoops they needed to go through in order to come out the other side, but I could have done without the altercation with James. I feel like Lizzie needed someone on her side for the duration of the story, someone she could trust completely, and I was disappointed in James's actions during said conflict.
  
  All in all, I enjoyed this book so much more than I expected to and I am now very excited to work through Dugan's backlist!
• 
  Mini_bookreader

  DNF at 30%.
• 
  Kate Foliage_and_Fiction

  DNF 37%
  The narrator screaching during Lizzie’s random outbursts is so cringy I can’t even focus on the content of the book.
• 
  Shannon

  This was a solid three star read for me. There was a LOT of dysfunctional/toxic family aspects to the story which I felt overshadowed the bisexual love story a bit too much (in my opinion). I wanted to love it more than I actually did which was disappointing since I've loved this author's YA romances.
  
  The gym setting was different and fun though and I did like the main character Lizzie a lot as she's trying to chase her dream of running and designing her own gym despite a needy alcoholic mother and horrible bosses. Good on audio narrated by Lori Prince. Many thanks to NetGalley and Avon for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!
• 
  Abby Salter-Christian

  4 stars for this book, which I absolutely adored 😭♥️