“Friends to Lovers?” Meets “GBBO” - A Review of Sandy Barker's Someone Like You

Though this book, the fourth in Sandy Barker’s “Ever After Agency” series has been sitting in my TBR pile since it was released last fall, the fifth (and final) in the series fell into my lap as an ARC and I had to read this before I reviewed that one (obviously). It’s not that I didn’t want to read this - I’m a fan, or at least fan-adjacent, of Barker’s cutesy OTT British-y romcoms, especially this series, which features Poppy Dean, Australian transplant and one of London’s most charmingly self-deprecating matchmakers at the elite Ever After agency. As the FMC in the first book of the series - Match Me if You Can - she's the glue that's held Barker’s five story arc together. This time, however, Poppy shares the narration with Gaby Rivera, an American transplant who has begrudgingly agreed to help Freya, her bestie, who just so happens to work with Poppy and has featured as a minor character in the three matchmaking adventures thus far, find love for their other bestie, Raff. While Raff is, at the start of the book, Gaby’s work husband, he’s just been crowned winner of Britain’s Best Baker, and is uncomfortably thrust into the spotlight of his 15 minutes of fame, becoming an unwitting and unwilling sex symbol on the very day that the woman he was going to propose to dumps him via text. Ouch.

To say Raff is aloof, even for a Brit, is an understatement. Though he’s taken a big step by forgoing his lucrative career as a marketing director by joining his aunt’s baking empire, thus following his long-held dreams that were long-ago crushed by his distant parents, he’s not big on change - in his career or personal life. He’s a hopeless romantic who doesn’t realize that women, and a fair number of men, are now throwing themselves at him, especially as he’s received a glow-up that causes - you guessed it - Gaby to look at him in a way that screams less we’re practically siblings and more we’re practically siblings in a Flowers in the Attic kind of way. This, of course, is problematic in the general I-can’t-risk-it-all in the friends-to-lovers trope, but more so in this novel, as Freya’s solution to Raff’s lovelorn depression is to set him up on dates. There's the caveat he’s presented her with, however: he can’t know that he’s on a date. So, a little tricky for matchmaking to say the least. Gaby, still in denial about her fledgling feelings for her newly hot bestie, is roped into Freya's, and Poppy’s, the lead matchmaker on the case (again, the glue across all the love stories in the EA universe), scheme and lures Raff into these meetings, most of which are disasters due to Raff’s aforementioned cluelessness. Until they’re not, that is. 

Inevitably, Raff hits it off with someone else. Julia, a match, unbeknownst to him, who is everything Gaby isn’t: posh, wealthy, lithe, blonde, and famous. And, because this is an almost-sickeningly-sweet-but-errs-just-on-this-side-of-cute (so I’ll allow it) romcom, her realization that she has BIG FEELINGS for her bestie hits on the night that he meets the ostensible love of his life. As though this wasn’t bad enough, she blurts out an invitation for Raff to come home with her to Seattle for Christmas AND the wedding that she’ll be attending - now with a complicated plus one - when she finds out he’ll be alone for the holidays. And what a travesty that would be!

A trans-Atlantic flight later and cue the one bed trope! Though Gaby’s family home should be large enough to accommodate her, Raff, and her increasingly troublesome feelings for him, especially as she’s promised Freya and Poppy that she wouldn’t confess her nascent love for Raff lest she keep him from finding out if this new match could be THE ONE, it’s a romcom, so some sort of cutesy shit is going to hit the proverbial fan. And hit it does. In the form of her cousin / bride-to-be, who’s staying with Gaby’s family to escape her Momzilla and her sister, who’s also just come to a realization of her own, that her husband is a douche canoe who doesn’t deserve her. As chaotic as the Christmas wedding and family mishegoss is, Raff clearly loves the, well, love that Gaby has for her family and them for her. As a stiff-lipped Brit who was tossed aside by his parents when their careers trumped the less glamorous grind of, well, parenting, Raff is charmed by Seattle, its denizens, and, especially, the madness of the Rivera clan. And especially especially with Gaby, who can only hope that he’s starting to see her in the same way she’s just cottoned on to.

However, Gaby’s hopes are dashed by the growing romance, alive and well despite being continents apart, between Raff and Julia. Here’s where Barker doubles down on that chaos and forced proximity, by staging a snowstorm that essentially shuts down the wedding that’s been a year in the making. Feelings are simultaneously pushed to the backburner while being cranked to a boil as Raff and Gaby come together to save the wedding, including a scene in which the former, of course, has to create the Christmas themed wedding cake to shame all other Christmas themed wedding cakes. When Gaby tries to assuage Raff, in the middle of a meltdown, that any cake will do, he essentially confesses that he needs the cake to be perfect for her family, who have welcomed him more than his own ever could, and, more importantly, for her.

Swoon away, reader. We’re supposed to. It seems like these feelings might be mutual after all, especially after Gaby kisses Raff in front of her entire family - ostensibly to stave off a female admirer - after a week of insisting that WE’RE. JUST. FRIENDS. Hold that swoon, however. After Raff and Gaby exchange perfect Christmas presents that show just how perfect they are for each other, he takes a phone call from Julia, or, rather, Jules (ah, the nickname. If that’s not a sign of true love, I don’t know what is), and Gaby, now bereft of all hope, flees her own home. After a roundabout and, admittedly, drawn out scene in which Raff has tracked her down (having intuited where she went because he’s, you know, perfect for her), their mutual feelings are confessed to and they have slightly spicier than a Hallmark movie but still admittedly tame kiss that seals the deal and cements their future as more than just friends.

On the whole, I think I would’ve enjoyed this book more when I was supposed to - wrapped in a chunky cardigan in front of my faux fireplace while “White Christmas” plays on a loop in a the background - given the whole holiday plot. That said, it was a passably enjoyable friends-to-lovers romance, short on spice, which I know it will be going into a Barker novel, but with cleverly enough drawn characters to make me look past this. Couple that with the fact that the EA world, namely Poppy and her own romance with her shit-hot and rich-as-sin husband Tristan (and, more importantly, Saffy, their cat who loves him as much as she despises Poppy), plays out in the background and we get to see more of these characters who are old friends at this point, so it’s worth a read, even if the weather suggests otherwise.

Rating: 3.5 / 5 Shared Sleeps in a Childhood Bed