Wish You Were Her

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Synopsis

Book Lovers meets Notting Hill with a slice of You’ve Got Mail in Wish You Were Her, the brand new rivals-to-lovers romance from bestselling, award-winning Elle McNicoll.

18-year-old Allegra Brooks has skyrocketed to fame after starring in a hit television show, and she’s the overnight success that everyone’s talking about. They just don’t know she’s autistic. Now, all she wants is a normal teenage summer.

Her destination for escape is the remote Lake Pristine and its annual Book Festival, organized by the dedicated but unfriendly senior bookseller, Jonah Thorne.

In small towns like Lake Pristine, misunderstandings abound, and before long the two are drawn into high-profile hostility that’s a far cry from the drama-free holiday Allegra was craving. Thank goodness for her saving grace: the increasingly personal emails she’s been sharing with a charming and anonymous bookseller who is definitely not Jonah Thorne . . .

An unforgettable romcom about finding the one person who makes you feel yourself when the whole world is watching.

Synopsis source: StoryGraph

Review

Genre(s): New Adult, Romance
HB&W Rating: 4 stars
View on StoryGraph | Goodreads
Buy on Barnes & Noble, Amazon
Releases August 26, 2025

This is my first book by Elle McNicoll and I really enjoyed it! I am a big fan of hidden disability stories getting attention and as a neurospicy woman myself (ADHD), I related to a lot of what the autistic characters in this book experienced. I don’t know if the author herself is autistic or not, but she writes about it with kindness and gentleness in a way that also helps to explain some of autism’s nuance to neurotypicals.

From a genre perspective, this is a small town, enemies to lovers epistolary romance and the You’ve Got Mail comparison in the book’s blurb was on point, though I’d hesitate to call this a romcom…romance, yes, comedy, not so much. I loved the bookish setting, the majority of the story centered around a book store and a book festival. While I haven’t read any of the author’s previous work, there is a cameo from the characters in Some Like It Cold, but I didn’t feel like I needed to have read that first to enjoy this, it’s completely standalone. I really loved Jonah and found him very endearing and I respected the way Allegra stood up to bullies and set boundaries, something this people-pleaser always struggled with.

There were a couple things I found a bit off-putting but not enough to prevent me from appreciating the story. First, I felt like the author went a little too on-the-nose with some of her autism portrayal. Second, the swear words used in dialogue toward the end of the book felt incongruous with the characters as they hadn’t been using them all along and the overall feel of the book was more wholesome. I’m no stranger to swearing, so the words themselves didn’t bother me, but more the fact that they didn’t feel authentic to the characters. Lastly, this book leans on the miscommunication trope, which I typically hate. While I found it as frustrating as ever in this book, it also felt authentic to the characters due to rejection sensitivity common in neurodivergent people.

Quick note regarding the cover, since this is an eARC. I saw that there were two different covers online for this title and it looks like the primary contender is this almost cubist rendering of a couple embracing versus the more common cartoon drawing that’s more in line with the author’s other book covers. If I had to choose my favorite, it would be the cartoon drawing. It’s more in line with the author’s other titles, as I said, but also more common to the romance genre. I’m not sure if I saw the other cover in the store that I would pick it up to read, and that would be sad because it’s a great story.

Ultimately, the romance was sweet and rewarding, the story was pretty wholesome, spice level was at a 2 (on page but vague), and the autism rep was well done and will hopefully build empathy in neurotypical readers of the book. Miscommunication is a necessary element to telling this story but it was a little OTT at times, but I still enjoyed the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for an eARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Until next time,

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