🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Text Appeal yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
A wrong number text. A small town that notices everything including who’s not sleeping over at whose place. And grandmothers who hand out needlepoint pillows that say “Don’t Be a Cunt.” I have listened to this book three times now and I laugh out loud every single time.
The Wrong Number
Riley just moved to the tiny town of Port Stewart to reinvent herself as a writer, and almost immediately starts getting texts meant for Connor. Connor recently changed his number to get some peace from being the town’s golden boy, and the universe handed his old digits straight to Riley instead.
The texts are coming from Ava — Connor’s high school sweetheart and ex — who’s convinced Connor is just being childish and ignoring her on purpose. When that theory falls apart, she lands on a new one instead: this must be Connor’s secretive new girlfriend texting back. Riley, meanwhile, has no idea who any of these people even are.
Port Stewart is exactly the kind of small town where everyone has an opinion about everything, and Riley — the new girl — gets cast immediately as the rival to Ava, the hometown hero.
Once the mix-up sorts itself out and Riley and Connor actually meet, a good chunk of their relationship still plays out over text, which I genuinely loved as a device. It’s funny, it’s awkward, and it builds their dynamic in a way that feels true to how people actually fall for each other now.
Grandma Martha and the Crew
Riley’s real entry point into this town comes through Connor’s grandmother, Martha, after a voicemail meant for Connor lands on Riley’s phone instead — Martha’s gotten hurt and needs a ride, and Riley can’t exactly leave an elderly woman stranded at the park. So she goes and picks her up. Martha, along with her best friends Nora and Joyce, are without a doubt the best part of this entire book.
They sit Riley down for coffee, hand her a weed cookie, and get her thoroughly, gloriously high while she spills the whole tangled story of Connor and Ava. Martha’s crew also makes needlepoint pillows that say things like “Live Laugh and Fuck Off” and “Don’t Be a Cunt,” which tells you everything you need to know about their energy.
It’s also Martha who orchestrates the actual meet-cute, sending Connor over to move Riley’s car — leading to one of my favorite exchanges in the whole book: “I heard we were dating and thought we should meet.” “People already think we are together, why don’t we let them continue thinking that.”
The Fake Dating Arrangement
Connor convinces Riley to fake date for a month, and that’s where the real chaos kicks in. His mother Denise is openly Team Ava and actually cries upon meeting Riley. There’s a genuinely painful, hilarious moment where Connor tells his mom Riley loves spicy food — she does not — and Riley eats an entire scorching meal without complaint, sweating through her clothes and crying while insisting she’s totally fine. Simply because she does not want to make it seem like they don’t know anything about each other.
We also learn Connor’s dad was a genuinely terrible person — a cheater, a liar, a thief, and someone who beat his kids before he finally left, which turned out to be better for everyone. There’s also a strong suspicion that Connor and his brother have a half sister out there somewhere, the result of their dad sleeping with the principal’s wife.
The Town Gets Involved
Small towns notice everything, including the suspicious lack of overnight cars parked outside either of their houses. At Ava’s welcome home party, Connor slides his hand into Riley’s coat pocket under the guise of “exploring what’s inside,- to keep himself distracted” getting suspiciously close to her pussy in the process — close enough that his own brother asks if he should really be doing that in public. It was such a great, laugh out loud moment. The next morning, half the town apologizes to them for ever doubting the relationship, then asks them to kiss. They can’t back down of course. They kiss. It is, predictably, amazing.
At Connor and Ava’s high school reunion, an old classmate named Brian makes a move on Riley and grabs her when she tries to decline dancing with him. Connor steps in to protect her. Brian punches Connor twice before Connor finally swings back — and somehow Connor is the one who gets arrested, because the police chief happens to be Brian’s dad and has had it out for him for years. This is another fallout from Connor’s dad.
Connor’s mom Denise shows up at the station, absolutely demolishes the chief, lies about having Martha and the whole crew waiting in the car and threatens to bring them in, and gets Connor released on the spot because the chief doesn’t want to deal with their antics.
The Real Feelings Show Up
Riley takes Connor home to look after him, and what follows is the kind of slow unraveling where you can feel exactly where it’s headed — unspoken tension, a kiss, and then a genuinely lovely, messy hookup that’s less about the heat and more about emotional honesty finally breaking through.
Meanwhile we get the full story behind why Connor’s been miserable since Christmas: he proposed to Ava, she looked at the ring in horror and said no, and he knew the second he asked that it was the wrong move. Which makes a lot more sense once it comes out that Ava is actually a lesbian, and her on-and-off thing with Connor over the years has really just been her hiding from that truth rather than genuine romantic interest.
There’s also the chowder cookoff, where Riley gets roped into partnering with Ava for Denise’s contest, forced to memorize ingredients and pretend they made it together to keep Denise from spiraling. Because now Ava is suddenly on her side and wants her to impress Denise. They walk away with an honorable mention, which feels like exactly the right amount of chaos for this book. Even more interesting because Ava won all on her own one year.. so we know the dislike Denise has for Riley.
The Big Reveal
Ava finally comes out to the whole town, in front of Denise, revealing she has a girlfriend named Katya — someone she’d already told she loved weeks earlier before panicking and running straight back to Port Stewart.
Once that’s out in the open, nobody expects Ava and Connor to get back together, which frees Connor up to take Riley home, give her an incredibly generous, orgasmic, send-off, and immediately tell her their fake relationship is officially over. He frames it as a thank-you gesture, which understandably pisses her off given the emotional whiplash. They for real split? Or what ever you would call this. She gets drunk, and that’s when Ava and Katya show up at her place, the two of them realizing in real time that whatever they’d been faking with each other might not have been entirely fake after all.
Turns out the whole fake arrangement only lasted a single week, well 6 days to be exact. But once it ends, Riley starts getting anonymous daily deliveries of baked goods and homemade mac and cheese on her doorstep. She finally catches the delivery person red-handed — Connor’s niece, paid to drop everything off. Connor’s been the one baking it all himself, sneaking vegetables into every dish, and his niece accidentally lets slip exactly where he’ll be that night. Riley insists there’s no way she’s showing up.
She shows up.
The Ending
At the bar, what starts as some bizarre speed-dating-adjacent game spirals into a full jealousy showcase, because Ava orchestrated the entire setup specifically to make Connor jealous. It works. They have a very public argument, Riley tries to leave, and Connor finally admits he’s not ready for how big these feelings actually are. He asks her to wait. She says no — she’s done waiting around for him to figure it out.
That’s exactly the wake-up call he needed. He tells her he loves her, that he can’t do this without her, that she has to stay.
The epilogue jumps a year ahead: a group chat full of the half the towns people, Ava and Katya included, all planning for upcoming wedding… Riley and Connor have been living together for six months. Her book is finally out — and Connor is fully convinced the male lead is based on him.
Best Part of This Book
Grandma Martha, Nor, and Joyce. No contest. The weed cookie scene alone earns this book a permanent spot on my list, and their needlepoint pillows might be the funniest detail in the entire story.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥 — Warm, not overly explicit. A handful of intimate scenes, but nothing especially spicy — the comedy and small town chaos are doing most of the heavy lifting here, not the heat.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Extremely satisfied. The epilogue ties together every storyline — Ava and Katya, the niece, the grannies, Riley’s book — in a way that feels genuinely earned rather than rushed.
Would I Reread It?
Yes. I’m on listen number three and I still laugh out loud every time.
The Twist We Didn’t See Coming
Ava being a lesbian completely recontextualizes everything that came before it — her on-and-off relationship with Connor, her panic over the proposal, all of it suddenly makes total sense.
The Hot Take
“Live Laugh and Fuck Off” and “Don’t Be a Cunt” are now permanently living in my head as the platonic ideal of grandma energy, and I will be thinking about Martha’s crew for a very long time.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Bookshop.org
📱Ebook
Amazon Kindle .ca | Amazon Kindle .com
🎧Audiobook
Note: Text Appeal is an Audible Original and is not currently available on Libro.fm.
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Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Genre: Romance, Small Town Romance, Comedy | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 | Narrator: Andi Arndt