Easy as Pie by Carina Taylor is an excellently penned Contemporary RomCom IF you are a fan of the best-friends-to-lovers trope. It follows the trajectory of the trope perfectly. The best friends reunite, their friendship is as strong as ever, but now there is added chemistry. When did that happen? Both characters work against this chemistry for about 50-60% of the storyline because they fear changing the nature of their best-friendship. Questions and anxiety plague them…why am I feeling this way? Does she feel this way? Does he? Will we succeed as lovers? If we don’t, will we be able to go back to being best friends? For Hazel, the potential negative outcome of becoming more is enough to make her do all she can to squash her growing romantic feelings for Tripp. Tripp is a lot slower to the party than Hazel when it comes to realizing his budding romantic feelings. He is too focused on finding his soul mate to figure out she’s been standing in front of him the whole time. As far as characters go, I really did enjoy Tripp as the hero, and his chapters were my favorite. Tripp is sweet, well-meaning, and an all-around good guy. I love his innate need to care for others and his protective streak towards Hazel. He is just such a sweet guy, and I rooted for him the whole time. Hazel, however, drove me bonkers. I get that I was supposed to see her as quirky and unique and fun, but too often she came off as snarky and closed-off and spazzy. I struggled to relate to her and her issues as most of the time I wanted to flick her in the forehead. She really frustrated me, and I found her reasonings to not see her feelings for Tripp through as nothing more than excuses.

For the most part, I am not a fan of the best-friend-to-lovers trope. I feel like the real action of these stories takes forever to get to because the characters are so unwilling to communicate with one another and take forever to admit their feelings. When a story doesn’t begin to get to the point until the 60-70% mark, the previous parts of the story better be worth the effort. For me, I tore through Tripp’s chapters and enjoyed them very much, but Hazel’s part of story left me wanting something else. While I didn’t love Easy as Pie as I have the first four books in this series, I do recommend this book to those who love a best-friends-to-lovers story.

I purchased a copy of this novel in eBook form from Amazon.com on September 27, 2023, in order to review. In no way has this influenced my review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.