How to Excavate a Heart

"I went into this book hoping for a cute holiday romance and while certain parts of the story were definitely cute overall, I felt let down. Shani was a very difficult character for me to like and a huge part of that was how combative she was with her mom and her distracted behavior at work. I think at Shani's age the rude behavior without any prior bad behavior on her mom's end felt very weird. She's in college but is acting like she is a moody teenager whose hormones are all out of whack. Every time she was mean to her mom without prompting, I disliked her more. She treated May pretty awfully too on several occasions and that made it harder to believe they fell in love so quickly. <br/><br/>Then there is the issue of her getting the opportunity of an internship yet can't focus on anything other than a new relationship. I felt like the story would make more sense if the characters were younger. This could also just be a pet peeve of mine - when I feel like coworkers are not putting in an appropriate amount of effort into their jobs. <br/><br/>Also, there were too many cringy jokes that I felt were way too over the top. I think if the characters had felt a little more age appropriate, I would have really enjoyed this book! But as is I had too many issues with Shani's character and because she was the main character it was hard to move past it.<br/><br/>Thank you to Edelweiss for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review."

"Amazing!!!!!!! "

"it was good! included asexual-ish awakening and put light on sexual assault in relationships (not violent/descriptive) and also fish!!!"

"I really liked it, I didn’t love how much MC was obsessed with being a stereotype but the plot and lovable characters really made up for it."

"Super cute. "

"This book reminded me of how important is not to lose hope, I read this book during a very difficult time for me and it’s just crazy how I can identify myself with so many things in it, this is a masterpiece and I’m looking forward for more from this author. BEAUTIFUL AND AMAZING JOB."

"Yep, I read a winter-set romance in June because it was the only romance novel I had. Did I enjoy it despite the time that I read it? Yes. It was a little generic in terms of the setup, but it was fun, and the relationship between Shani and May was pretty cute, and they had good chemistry. I think the main benefit of the book was the representation, with both Jewish and LGBTQ+ representation. There was also a lot of emotion and development for the characters, and it’s one of the heavier romances that I’ve read due to this. The DC setting was also amazing, and that corgi will forever be the best part of the book. I did feel the romance moved a bit too quickly, even for a romance where the leads were bitter around each other in the beginning, since there was a lot of pages still left after the first kiss, and also a lot of periods where the leads would avoid each other for many chapters at a time, which annoyed me to death. I also got a bit lost in the last 20 pages and felt that they got repetitive, but I think that was more me being like “uggh I’m tired and almost finished with this book.” Maybe I should’ve saved this for the actual Winter season, and it’s not really a new favorite for me, but I would still recommend for people looking for a fluffy and emotional YA sapphic romance. "

"How can there be so much cute in one book?! It’s so awesome to have a book that has a character as sweet as Shani and how she really warms the ice queen’s heart! Perfect stuff!"

"Had some highlights, enjoyed most of it, wasn’t my favorite, at times boring."

"This was delightful."