by Lily Menon
Lyric Bishop is a psychologist studying romantic chemistry and she’s hit a snag. Mainly, her own love life is a failure so how can she act like she’s cracked the code to a good relationship when she can’t even help herself? Luckily, her long time BFF and roommate Kian Montgomery is there to help. When he also finds himself in a dating rut our duo tries some fake dating tutoring to cure their romantic ills. Surely, nothing could go wrong. Right? Let’s find out.
Read if you like: romance in STEM, friends to lovers, opposites attract, slow burn, tropes within tropes, sweet and confident guys, and awkward in love leading ladies.
Lyric and Kian are a staple the lives of all their friends and family. But they are more like peanut butter and pickles than your classic PB&J… they have a lot of differences but somehow… they just work. (Not that I know about PB & pickles, but my sister loved it.) And that is their biggest problem. They are so comfortable with their friendship that they don’t want to ruin anything and are complete denial beyond their automatic response of “that would be a disaster.” When they both are feeling at a romance dead end, they come up with an absolutely horrible plan to ‘help’ each other out by sharing their dating knowhow. This all happens alongside ongoing escapades with their friends and family.
Fun, right? Ehhh.
What we get is the slowest of burns with the most clueless of couples as they weave through a bunch of dating tropes. I have never wanted so much to physically manifest two fictional characters so I could smack them and yell “pay attention” to their brilliant, yet stupid faces. It took forever for these scientists to figure out what was going on with each other. I started to wonder if the book wasn’t going to have a happily ever after. They were a bit too clueless when they had been living together for years and can readily anticipate each other’s’ needs and moods. Nope we get basically this on repeat:
Oh, my friend whom I’m (surprisingly, how? It’s not like EVERYONE we know has been mentioning it for years.) falling in love with is acting weird… they can’t possibly be having THE EXACT SAME REACTION AS MYSELF! Nope, can’t be that. I’ll just maybe… avoid them. Yeah, that will totally work.
I will say that all the side character plots were well planned out. While there were many, all the characters were well developed and it made the book feel like everyone came from a cohesive world with unique perspectives. So that was fun, but a lot. However, with the slow pacing it was nice to have things being actively resolved since our couple were floundering inside their own heads. The poor dears.
So, while The Sizzle Paradox was sweet, funny, and spicy the timing caused me to fizzle while I was waiting, and waiting on the sizzle.
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