Attached at the Hip by Christine Riccio

The quick cut: A twenty three year old girl who just graduated from college applies for a survival show and ends up on a romantic experiment version. Chaos ensues when she doesn't know who to trust. 

A real review:

 Thank you to Wednesday Books for providing the arc for an honest review. 

 It seems like the more that technology evolves, the harder it is to connect with others in a real way. Everyone has become focused on portraying an image, rather than being themselves. When Orie graduates college and can't find her next step, this becomes a primary issue on a romantic experiment version of Survivor. 

 When Orie graduated college, she expected her real life to begin: fairy tale romance and all. Instead, she's stuck in a life she doesn't recognize, living with her parents and being a social media influencer with her sister. She's always been a Survivor TV show fan, so she applies and gets on! There's a twist though: this is a new spinoff with a romantic twist called Attached at the Hip. Will she survive, win, and find love? 

 I'm not a survivor fan at all. In fact, the only shows of that genre I like are the Mole and it's equivalents. This book definitely came with a lot of fun character interactions and ridiculous melodrama. The lead character Orie has her moments of extreme dislike though, especially if you're not a Survivor super fan. 

 Orie is in that post college graduation phase where everything feels fake because life never comes together afterwards as cleanly as you expect it. I wish they prepared you better on what post college life is really like and the grunt work you have to do to jumpstart a career. That confusion she's feeling is very realistic. 

 The problem with Orie is that she's insanely self absorbed in a way that is quite misleading. You think she's stuck not knowing what to do when in reality she thinks life should come to her. This is why she ends up in so many sticky situations that are bad for her. If you want a life, be willing to do the work and build it for yourself. She gets there EVENTUALLY, but the road there is very cringe worthy. 

 Orie has two romantic interests here that I won't name because I don't want to spoil the antics. I will say the chemistry with both is hot, but one is a lie and one is real. Figuring out which is which gets easy fast and I do wish they made that harder to detect. More fun for the reader at least. 

 A cute romantic survival with a twenty something lead character. 

My rating: 4 out of 5