Les Be Honest Review

By Sarah Robinson

Queerly Devoted

Star rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb

The highly anticipated second standalone romantic comedy in the Queerly Devoted series by Sarah Robinson is a steamy story of lesbian romance and elder millennial drama as Yasmeen explores how to become a bad*ss boss in a neighborhood that wants to shut her and her dreams down with an intriguing and infuriating woman who has never heard “no” before in her life.

After several failed businesses—including an edible panties subscription box—the eternally optimistic Yasmeen Kiani feels like her next launch has to be the big break. When she sees a FOR LEASE sign at the corner lot on her street, she decides it’s time to try, try again. While there are over 1,000 gay bars in the United States, there are less than 25 lesbian bars total (a real life fact! See the Lesbian Bar Project)…and Yasmeen has decided that she is going to open the first in her Arlington, VA neighborhood. Unfortunately, the neighborhood is not on board with her plan.

Tyler Adams has been the president of every club or organization she’s ever been involved in. Class valedictorian, president of her college sorority, even prom queen twice, including a high school she didn’t go to. Tyler does nothing second best just like her father, a real estate mogul who she has a close yet tumultuous relationship with and who owns the building she lives in. A full-time podcaster on top of helping her father lease his property out, including to a new business by a woman she finds incredibly attractive, Tyler hosts one of the country’s most listened to shows on true crime yet her personal life and sexuality are the biggest mystery to her fan base.

Tyler isn’t used to facing opposition, but Yasmeen is no stranger to having to fight for what she wants and she’s about to teach Tyler that failure isn’t the end of the world—just the beginning of the war.

What Yasmeen didn’t expect was for Tyler to teach her some battles are not worth fighting…but the one for her heart is.

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Read if you Like:

💛 Sapphic romance

💛 Celebrity romance

💛 Fake dating

💛 Family drama

My Thoughts:

I picked this one because I loved the idea of two women fake dating to try to get a lesbian bar open! I adored the representation of different gender identities and the discussion of LGBTQ plus issues in this book.

It is clear Sarah Robinson is knowledgeable about issues facing the LGBTQ plus community and the DC area. I loved that readers who aren't familiar with some of these issues would learn about them through reading this book. Unfortunately, I didn't think the portrayal of mental health issues (while not as large a part of the story) was as accurate. The explanation of how mental health issues are relevant is a spoiler, but it felt like mental health issues were used as a plot device, not an actual exploration of how those issues affect people.

The romance also wasn't there for me in this story. I didn't feel like the main characters had much chemistry and we very infrequently got to see them doing anything other than working on the bar. They got to know each other but I didn't really feel like I got to see them connect.

Overall, I really enjoyed the information and representation included in this story, but the story itself didn't work for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Author Collective 20 for providing me with an early copy of this title in order to review. All opinions are my own.