When Joss Met Matt - Ellie Cahill

When Joss Met Matt by Ellie Cahill
Published by Ballantine Books on February 24. 2015
Pages: 352
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, New Adult

Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley

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Ellie Cahill is poised to coin the term “sorbet sex” with her charming twist on the age-old ‘friends-with-benefits’ story.

Dating can be fun, but it can leave a nasty taste in your mouth. For Joss, ever since her longtime boyfriend cheated on her, she doesn’t want her last memory of a guy to be that jerk. Enter her college friend, Matt. They come up with a theory: after a bad break-up, a person needs to cleanse the palate with a little sorbet sex. Lovers for a night, but always back to being friends in the morning. The two can handle it because they have a contract: rules they wrote, rules they follow and rules they can sometimes bend. The arrangement works: everyone needs a little sorbet now and again … until it starts to be the only thing you want. And then Joss breaks the one rule they never wrote down: don’t fall in love.

I came across this book in a very, well, quickly way - one day I was looking through friends updates on Goodreads and it showed up a review saying that Ellie Cahill was a pen name for Liz Czukas, which for those who don't know wrote Ask Again Later & Top Ten Clues You're Clueless (both released last year by HarperCollins), so it was a non-brainer to request it once it was up on Netgalley. I'm pleased to say that this book does contain the best of Czukas banter and you should pick it up too!

This is story of Joss and Matt, we have the present narration which takes place before graduation of college when both are already on jobs and living independently all very grow up stuff, and the past, which goes since the freshman year when they meet each other and started a friendship that latter on turn into a friends-with-benefits thing. I have to say that Czukas is the best at doing banter-y relationships the way I liked, each interaction of Matt and Joss was beyond adorable and at each of their conversations I would end up shipping them more and more - their past selves always put a silly smile on my face, there was so many laugh out loud interactions too and cute moments, like their list of rules for the sorbet sex.

I also think this is a good bridge between YA and NA, it doesn't really have a NA feel (and by this I mean that nobody has troubled pasts and heavy steamy sex full of orgasms that will cure said troubled past). It also isn't graphic about the sex, despite we having a lot of sex scenes between Joss and Matt (since a good deal of the plot is they getting together for the sorbet sex) none of them were really steamy and I think that YA readers will not have a problem reading it, even younger ones, but I do think that readers that came to a NA novel expecting NA sex will be highly disappointed on this aspect, I particularly wasn't disappointed, I don't read erotica or much NA to feel let down if the book doesn't contain more steamy scenes, it really just read like a YA novel that is set on college and adulthood.

If there was one thing that let me down was the character development, this is a romance book, I get that, and being a romance the plot and main focus is on developing the story of these two characters and how they got together. But at the same time I really like my contemporary reads to be problems that main character have to overcome + romance + friendship/family aspects <<<< this is a winning formula, when well developed, but on this one we basically had this problems that main character have to overcome  don't exist + romance + friendship/family aspects very, very on the side, just when necessary to get the two main characters together for the said sorbet sex. Now, I liked the romance a lot, I was 100% aboard with it and I read this with a grim on my face the whole time BUT I would have liked more character development, especially since this book is from Liz Czukas, her other YA books had a little more than 200 pages and yet I felt like I got to know that characters more than I got to know Joss and Matt.

Overall it was a good book that it did what it proposed to do: present a friend-with-benefits story that turns into something more, and it did it really well, I think that lovers of rom-coms will fall absolutely in love with this story and readers that love a good friends-with-benefits story.