3.5/5

If you are looking for a relatable story for this time in history this would be the right one! Obviously the author pulled it together pretty quick and I think that was evident. Lacked some depth that I wish was there but overall a cute romance to read in lockdown and some extra hope for those still looking for that someone! hank you NetGalley for the advanced copy!

5 Stars

I received a copy of "Love in Lockdown" from Avon Books UK and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and I am so glad I had the opportunity to read it. I absolutely loved it. It was adorable, funny, and a really nice light-hearted story that many can relate to during these unprecedented times.

"Love in Lockdown" made me laugh out loud which was truly wonderful as I haven't read a book yet this year that has made me laugh so much. As a result I felt this book deserved a full five star review.

The book takes a look at isolation, how to remain safe, and helps us see how everything has changed for everyone globally. Life has changed significantly for everyone and this book captures the effect of isolation perfectly. The book focuses on the process of being on lockdown as opposed to the actual virus itself. The message to readers is simply be kind to others, help those who are in need, and above all love your neighbors.

The characters were very well written with Sophia and Jack at the forefront. Jack lives above Sophia and one night they start talking to one another outside from their balconies and within a few days they find themselves excited being unable to wait until their next balcony "meetup". As their relationship begins to develop they also start to form friendships with others from their neighborhood all from a distance.

For those who have felt the loneliness of isolation and missed social interaction, "Love in Lockdown" is a must read. I can't wait until publication date so I can purchase a physical copy of the book as it has earned a place on my to be kept forever bookshelf.

Love in Lockdown! After all of the world has experienced some kind of lockdown during 2020 due to Covid-19 I enjoyed reading this wonderful rom-com that felt so close to my heart, and I’m sure to most readers out there it will be the same.
The lockdown due to this pandemic posed so many challenges and the author portrays them with their characters in a very nice way. We have a neighbor love story of two persons that have never seen each other, Sophie, a teacher with epilepsy, and Jack, a bartender that suffers from kidney disease and therefore is totally isolated. The book explores the impacts on mental health, anxiety, and depression, the challenges for medical workers and their families, the challenges kids and elderly had and also the impact on those once in a lifetime events such as weddings!
This is a wonderful read, in which you get to love the characters, however it does not shy out of all those complicated topics I mention above. This is book about love and community even through trying times! 🥰

Thank you to #netgalley and the author for an ARC!

This contemporary romance in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic follows Sophia and Jack who are neighbours in the same block of flats, one level apart. They “meet” by chance when Jack hears Sophia crying below on her balcony, and due to the lockdown soon become friends. The story focuses firmly on the community spirit that we all adopted during the first national lockdown in the UK and reminded me of the community spirit that my own neighbourhood adopted, helping each other out as we could to ensure we were all safe.

This book was the first time I’ve read something that is based solidly in the time that we are currently experiencing and was made more poignant and real for me by the introduction of the second national lockdown in England which began as I was reading it. At times I did struggle to maintain my interest, however I think that that was more due to my own personal preference as I don’t usually read contemporary romance.

Overall, I found this book to be well written and charming, I loved the inclusion of the quirky neighbours that Jack and Sophia have, the developing romance between Jack and Sophia, and the positivity surrounding the lockdown situation which made me think about how I too could see the lockdown with more positivity. I therefore give this book 3 stars and look forward to reading more of Chloe James’ work in the future.

Love in Lockdown is the first novel I've seen about COVID-19. I'm sure there will be many more. For it to be published in November 2020, it must have been written both quickly and as events unfolded, although there is an epilogue which feels as tough it were added later. I'm not sure how much staying power Sophia and Jack's story will have but it was a pleasant way to pass a few hours, and it was an interesting look at lockdown in England, particularly for someone like me who lives elsewhere in the UK.

What a cute story! Perhaps I enjoyed this story even more as we all still right in the middle of this pandemic and it makes you think about what really matters.

Sophia is a teacher and during lockdown she gets to talking with her upstairs neighbor Jack... a man she has never met. Due to health reasons he is shielding and never leaves his home. Throughout this story their friendship grows to something more even though they have never even seen each other. It’s so cute and touching and all the smaller characters in this book also play a role in making the story extra special and making you think of how important friends are when you are going through hard times or unknown times like a pandemic.

As the global pandemic strikes, the country is put into lockdown. Jack is self isolating in his flat alone and one evening he hears crying from the balcony below his. Sophie had her world turned upside down and is trying to put the pieces back together when lockdown strikes. Soon they are regularly chatting on the balcony and a firm feature in each other’s lives. But will all that change when lockdown ends? Can you really fall in love with someone you have never seen?

“Love in lockdown” seemed the perfect book to pick up as the second lockdown started. It’s a light and easy read. The concept of falling in love with someone you never met but who lives above you was fun. I enjoyed the book but the pace of the plot really slowed in the middle of the book and I got impatient to reach the end of Jack and Sophie’s story. The “will they/won’t they” tension was absent for me. The characters in the community around Jack and Sophie were my favourite parts and the were some heartwarming moments that definitely raised a smile.

So I might just be in love with this.

When you see a book involving pandemic, especially given that we’re still living through it, parts of you might not want to read it because...yeah it’s difficult. Even through a book, it’s difficult to keep living the same horror we see on the news, especially if reading is your escape from it all.

But this book, to me, symbolizes hope.

This is the first lockdown book I’ve read, because I’ve studiously been avoiding reading any pandemic fiction, but Sophia and Jack intrigued me and I absolutely had to pick this one up.

Sophia and Jack are neighbors on different floors. They meet by chance, when Sophia’s having an emotional moment on her balcony and Jack hears her from the balcony above. And thus, as simple as that, strikes up a wonderful friendship between the two of them.

Slowly but surely, the other people in their building get drawn into a large group of hope and coping, each of them contributing something to stop each other from going out of their minds during the whole lockdown. Even Jack, who can’t leave the house at all, finds a way with Sophia’s assistance to provide what I call a tele-friend service!

Sophia is so bright and bubbly, full of hope and she’s a character that just goes with the flow and I loved that about her. As problems pop up, she weaves around them in her own optimistic way, and given that it’s become so difficult to see a beacon of light, it was refreshing to read that!

Jack is stuck at home, but he’s fun, easy-going, and even stir-crazy, he’s trying to make his neighbours’ lives a little better. There’s the basket he exchanges with Sophia, and the conversations he has with Greg, Bertie and the rest of them. Then he’s also become an uncle for the first time, and that was wonderful to see too!

Sophia and Jack, through these conversations, began to fall in love with one another and even through the obstacles, they still manage to find time and space for one another. I loved reading this because the book wasn’t completely about the romance, and it sure as hell wasn’t romanticizing the pandemic. They don't even see each other's faces until the absolute end!

I absolutely loved the way the author weaved in all the other neighbours’ experiences from Sophia and Jack’s alternative POVs, and Bertie’s story made me cry a little. All in all, this was a great read for anyone looking for a little hope and simple romance in the time of a pandemic!

[Thank you NetGalley and Avon Books for providing this book to me in exchange for an honest review!]

This book was super cute. I thought it might be too soon to read about a lockdown, but I was wrong. This was surprisingly upbeat about how the neighbors in the building take care of each other in time of need. It all starts when Jack hears Sophia crying on her balcony. They strike up a friendship, share their experiences with illness, families, and their futures and they start to fall for each other. When Jack needs something to take up his time after being furloughed and unable to leave the house, Sophia get's an idea to start a community check in. It starts with simple phone calls and grocery visits to helping each other out further. Overall this is a great light read about how uplifting lockdown could be.

The lockdown of 2020 brought so many changes and uncertainties and this fictional story captures them perfectly.
Jack and Sophia are neighbours in an apartment block but they're unaware of each other until lockdown. During the Thursday night clap for the NHS Jack hears Sophia crying on the balcony below. This is the beginning of a relationship conducted entirely at a distance due to both lockdown restrictions and Jack's medical need to shield. Throughout the story I was reminded of so many aspects I had forgotten about - the toilet roll shortage, the fears, the frustrations along with the new found reliance on zoom! The most importance aspect though is shown through their friendship. That, along with their relationships with family and community are at the heart of the book.
A lovely heartwarming story that is also a perfect time capsule showing our living history.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I'll be posting my review on Goodreads and Amazon

Chloe James tackles the Covid-19 pandemic with gusto in this novel. We are introduced to the main characters, Sophia and James, in alternating chapters pre-lockdown. There's a prescient shadow over these early moments, as we get to know the characters and settle in for the inevitable and titular lockdown. It's effectively setting up where the story will be going, but things don't fully launch here until they get to meet in their neighboring apartments. It's ironic, given the title and the early chapters, that when the pandemic of it all does start to fade into the background and the focus becomes their relationship that the story sparks.

Love in Lockdown is a timely contemporary romance story that follows Sophia and Jack as they navigate the changing conditions of the COVID Pandemic. Sophia is out on her balcony for the weekly neighborhood "clap" to show appreciation to essential workers when the reality of it all causes her to become emotional. Jack, who happens to live in the balcony above hers immediately tries to console her and the two strike up a friendship. Since both of them are at high-risk and have to remain isolated, they find comfort in getting to know each other without actually meeting in person and soon find out that love can happen when you least expect it.

I was hesitant to go into this book because it felt a bit out of touch with the reality of COVID. However, I was happy to find out that this book, although extremely cheesy at times, does a good job at capturing the struggle of the pandemic and the ways people can come together and support each other during tough times.

Overall I didn't mind this book and it's a cute story that gives an uplifting twist to a bad situation.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read this eARC.
This book is about Sophia and Jack. They live in the same apartment building during COVID lockdown and they talk from the decks of their houses. They form a relationship without ever meeting and this book follows their romance as well as the friend/neighbor group.
Let's start with the positives. I really liked the chronic illness rep. Both of our main characters have different chronic illnesses (her- epilepsy, him- a kidney disease) and they have varying levels of impact on their day to day lives, but both have significantly changed their lives. I liked the main conflict. I felt like both characters acted responsibly, though this book does have a lack of communication both in the main conflict and the secondary conflict. I liked the side characters and truthfully thought they were more dynamic than our main characters.
I felt like the main characters and the romance was just dull. I can't think of a better word for it. It lacked anything to really draw me in and there wasn't much of a spark in the relationship. When the aforementioned conflicts happened, I didn't really care if they resolved it or not. I was way more interested in what was going on with Sophia as a teacher and her community helping. I also really didn't like the epilogue. Maybe its because we're still in it, but for life to just resume and be completely normal shortly after quarantine felt unrealistic and cheapened the health issues that our main characters (mainly Jack) suffered from.

SPOILERS AHEAD:
The main conflict is that Jack is still married. He tells her once he starts having real feelings for her (good job) and she cuts ties for awhile (good job). Then later he overhears her talking to her ex and it sounds like she wants to get back together, but its a miscommunication issue. In the end, they live happily ever after and COVID is a memory, though not too distant.

What an adorable book! This is such a weird time in our world and I love that James took the effort to make something adorable about this oddity.

I love the concept that two individuals are falling in love merely through conversations through their balconies.

There were a few moments where I teared up. Clapping daily for those who work in the medical fields was such a heartwarming addition to this novel.

Thank you Netgalley and Harper Collins UK for the advanced copy. I enjoyed this book quite a bit.

For me this book was light, easy reading. It felt very similar to the flat share in terms of the unique development of a romance but unfortunately it just wasn't as good. I felt the author did a lot of 'telling not showing'. It was lovely to see the community coming together because of lockdown but this seemed very fairytale to me. I do however think it would make a good movie.

I rolled my eyes when I realized that I'd downloaded the first romance (I know of) where the pandemic is key but you know what- this is a charmer. Sophie retrained as a teacher after leaving the law. She's also lost her ex, her mom is on the front lines, and she's got epilepsy. It all gets a bit much one day and she finds herself crying on the balcony where she is heard by Jack. Jack's got kidney disease and an ex in Greece. The two of them find themselves bonding, sending treats and necessities up and down via a basket system Jack rigs. You know they're going to fall in love. I liked this more than I expected because, even with all the darkness there could have been, James kept it light. You will root for these two. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

Utterly charming. This was just the book I needed to read. Warm, funny likeable characters who epitomised most of us and how we have felt this year during lockdown. Some parts were lighthearted, and some were painfully poignant. This book really showed how valuable family and friends are when there are restrictions and how communities can cone together to look after each other. I loved it!

I do kind of wish I hadn’t read this in lockdown. I think it made it feel a bit cliche/gimmicky maybe? I’m not sure, it just didn’t gel for me. I didn’t love the writing style which felt very tell and not show and I just never felt connected to the characters.

I think the obstacle/plot twist that came between Sam and Sophia to be trivial and I didn’t really see it as a big issue. I also cannot imagine how their balconies would be set up that they would not have been able to lean over and see each other.

It was a very optimistic and cheesy book, it wasn’t really for me. However it was readable and sweet and I’m sure that others would enjoy it.

There were lots of neighbours coming together to support each other and it gave a sense of community which is nice. It was sweet to have a romance come out of a negative situation, but it was very sugar sweet.

Here it is. First covid lockdown book. I believe one of many to come.

The story is about neighbors Sophia and Jack. They have never met in person. When pandemics start, they meet on the balcony and begin to chat. Sophia is a teacher who leaves the house every day to spend time with few students that, for one or another reason, cannot stay at home, while Jack is stuck at his apartment because of high health risks. They bond through conversations.

Characters are likable, very caring, and attentive, it was easy to root for them. Great story about healing, letting the past go to free space for new things to come. Sweet side characters. Some of them felt a little too intense and dramatic. Overall it was a delightful read.

However, I was missing some dynamics. It felt uneventful, boring, and a little too long. While this book addressed emotional and social challenges during this challenging time, it missed out on others, like, the financial or physical aspect.
But the biggest challenge I had with this was that I could not relate to this story because it felt too good to be true (in that cute fairy-tale type). After reading this, I am wondering - am I the only one who does not have a friendly relationship with my neighbors? We are in a semi lockdown for a while now, and I honestly have not been in any lockdown related contact with them. We pass each other with a short greeting and move with our own life. Maybe it is because we are mainly young people with smaller children, and we are trying to think more about how to navigate working from home with being a teacher, nanny, caterer, and parent. I just could not relate to this story. Possibly, because I live in the north. We tend to be more closed up.