'All the Right Reasons' by Bethany Mangle

5 stars!

Book Blurb:

"The Bachelor meets Gilmore Girls in this laugh-out-loud young adult romance about a girl who joins her mother on a reality dating show for single parents—only to fall for a contestant’s son.

Cara Hawn’s life fell apart after her father cheated on her mother and got remarried to a woman Cara can’t stand. When Cara accidentally posts a rant about her father online, it goes viral—and catches the attention of the TV producers behind a new reality dating show for single parent families.

The next thing Cara and her mother know, they’ve been cast as leads on the show and are whisked away to sunny Key West where they’re asked to narrow a field of suitors and their kids down to one winning pair. All of this is outside of Cara’s comfort zone, from the meddling producers to the camera-hungry contestants, especially as Cara and her mother begin to clash on which suitors are worth keeping around. And then comes Connor.

As the son of a contestant, Connor is decidedly off-limits. Except that he doesn’t fit in with the cutthroat atmosphere in all the same ways as Cara, and she can’t get him out of her head. Now Cara must juggle her growing feelings while dodging the cameras and helping her mom pick a bachelor they both love, or else risk fracturing their family even more for the sake of ratings. Maybe there’s a reason most people don’t date on TV." 


Review:

This was a cute and fun quick read of a YA rom-com. The talented author, Bethany Mangle, is a Korean-American adoptee and has a disability called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), and it’s wonderful to see the representation in this book; the main character is biracial, and the love interest is disabled with EDS.

It was great fun to watch through Cara’s perspective as her recently divorced Mom becomes the leading lady in a dating show, where single fathers and their children compete to potentially become her new Stepdad and stepsibling. All the wild, unbelievable antics of a reality TV show mixed well with family drama and a mother-daughter relationship.

Readers with strained relationships with a parent should know that Cara’s relationship with her father is justifiably terrible.  

'All the Right Reasons' will be available on February 15, 2022.

#NetGalley - I voluntarily read a Review Copy of this book. All opinions stated are solely my own and no one else’s.