It is a truth universally acknowledged that when there is a hot person, there is also someone with a crush on them.

Mia Yoon has a plan for everything. Get a full ride to her dream film school in Los Angeles, behind her mom’s back, and escape her middle-of-nowhere hometown—check. Produce her own dating show starring other people and their crushes—check. But everything goes off the rails when she has to enlist the help of her own secret crush, Noah Jang, a boy she’d rather hate.

Despite being a campus celebrity voted “most eligible student bachelor,” Noah can’t remember the last time he was in a relationship. And he’s perfectly content with that, thank you very much, especially since just the word feelings makes him uncomfortable. But he can’t stop staring at Mia, who keeps glaring at him in class. And when she asks him to be on her dating show—as one of the contestants—he can’t say no.

As Noah goes on more and more romantic dates on The Cuffing Game and Mia watches from behind the camera, something feels off. With the showrunner and contestant slowly falling for one another, can the show still go on?

Lyla Lee can always be counted on for a feel-good rom-com that will make me smile. This one was no different.

Initially it is presented as what appears to be a loose retelling. The prologue starts with the classic, “There are ladies here to tempt me” line, and seemingly diverts from there. Both Mia, and Noah are classic Type A, workaholics with strong opinions. However, Noah is more social media savvy and has garnered his own fanbase based on his devil-may care persona while Mia is an intense first year eager to prove herself.

This is Lee’s first double POV novel, and she does a good balancing Mia and Noah’s POVs and give us insight to how much they have in common, and how their insecurities. Admittedly, Noah’s POV drew me more than Mia’s. Hers is a common one for leading ladies, her ambitions and desire to be professional hiding how much she cares for everyone. Noah was one I related to as an introvert. Turns out he had unaddressed anxiety, but his desire to stay behind his phone because he can control and edit himself to be his best combined with how easily he gets emotionally drained from socializing- I get it.

The secondary characters aka the various cuffles (their reality show term for couples) were all distinct and adorable. Lee really makes you invest or at least, aww as each one admits to their feelings, giving you the vicarious thrill of love blossoming.

Furthermore, the whole reality show angle did make it a compulsive read as I was eager to see what drama might happen next. Yet she/Mia managed to keep the show relatively un-toxic and nonexploitative unlike the professional reality shows of Love Island.

One big flaw to the narrative was while the beginning makes its own spin on Noah, and Mia’s characters with light references to the original P&P (Mia’s middle name is Elizabeth, she has four younger sisters matching the original Bennets, and a traditional, pro-marriage mother), the climax takes it cues from the original with a mid-act misunderstanding when Noah confesses his feelings to Mia, and a troublemaker who whisks Mia’s free-spirited roommate (the Lydia of the situation) away.

It heavily relies on the original P&P and makes the readers come to conclusions based on that prior knowledge. Kyle (who’s the Wickham of the book) is vaguely implied to have done shady things leading to his expulsion from Noah’s frat, but it’s never stated what. We can only surmise why Kyle is shady, but we don’t have much evidence within in.

The misunderstanding between Mia and Noah was because Mia couldn’t reconcile how he could develop a crush on her so quickly, and because of how his behavior came across as douchy on the show. However, that latter reason falls short because we don’t really get to see how Noah is edited to look on the show, and because the readers get so much insight into his head plus the heart to hearts he and Mia had shared, I wasn’t able to see why Mia was sticking to her first impression. Thus it felt like it was forced in because of the novel than this book’s own foundation.

Overall, a fun read paying homage to Austen and the reality tv we devour, albeit a cozier, heart-warming version.

4 stars.