Robyn Moore is a firefighter, plays the field and has never been in a relationship. Lexi Lynch is an artist and has been roommates for four years. They are good friends and Robyn has not thought there could be anything more until Lexi tells her I never said I was straight. Small acts of kindness and encouragement bring their simmering feelings to the surface.

I like that the author has each struggling with their own issues. Robyn has daddy issues from his dying on the job as a firefighter and feeling it is easier to shut out love. I was more invested in Lexi’s struggling with ADHD. Her half-sister Sam from Truly Wanted (Oct 2022) helps her realize that ADHD may have gone on undiagnosed and impacting her art career. Sam also struggles with ADHD. I was disappointed slightly that we never know if she seeks out an official diagnosis or medication. Although other helps and strategies are included.

The switch to romance is an easy step and bumps to steamy quickly. Good communication skills help avoid easy mis-steps. This is the second in the Truly series and while I enjoyed the first one I liked this one more. I like that Sam and Brooke from the first book feature in the story too. I did miss some of the Irish words that popped up more in the first book. Other than the word hob (top of cooking stove), I wouldn’t have know the setting is in Ireland. Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC and I am leaving a voluntary review.

Truly Enough by J.J. Hale can be read as a standalone, or a follow on to Truly Wanted (the first in the series). I read Truly Wanted prior to this book and enjoyed seeing previous characters featured here.

Lexi is an artist who is struggling with her artistic flare, the commission is so mundane and holds no interest. Missed deadlines and the never-ending bills have her questioning her future.

Robyn, Lexi’s flatmate of four years, is a firefighter living on one-night stands with emotions cut off and her feelings hidden. After seeing the hurt her mother went through after the loss of her father, a firefighter killed in action, she is resolved not to bring the same heart ache to a partner. Robyn lives for her job and the structure it brings despite the continual nags from her mother to settle down.

An invite to a family wedding anniversary puts Robyn in a bit of a spot until Lexi has an idea to play her date for the evening.

Truly Enough has a good storyline and pace covering topics such as demisexuality and ADHD which are well written. The characters back stories are believable, and their chemistry felt real drawing you into their world from the beginning. This is only J.J. Hale’s second book, the writing could have been tighter in my opinion but didn’t dispel from a good read with some sentences that melt your heart. I look forward to more of her work.

A copy of Truly Enough was provided by Bold Strokes Books via NetGalley for an honest review.

It's a bread-and-butter classic: friends-to-lovers, fake dating, and a little bit of a firefighter romance thrown into the mix. Can't argue with that! This was sweet and fast—a little too much "telling" in places (they are nothing if not self-aware), but I'll very gladly take self-aware characters over ones who constantly miscommunicate.

Some positives:
- "Truly Enough" is the second in a series, but it is (...truly...) a standalone, so you're safe jumping in wherever.

- The characters are really good about having honest conversations—there *is* some level of miscommunication, but it's limited, and there's a much higher level of honesty. And consent! Enthusiastic consent!

- I just read another fake-dating romance in which the characters sort of...forget to have sensible conversations about how the whole thing is going to work, and more to the point how they're going to get away with it ending, so I love that that's something that Robyn and Lexi think about from the beginning...even if they don't always have satisfactory answers.

- Interesting to see possible ADHD as a plot point—again, I just read another f/f romance (...not a fake-dating one this time...) in which that was a factor. I like seeing neurodiversity and varied identities starting to play more of a role in romance, and it looks like there might be another rise in those subplots at the moment.

Some neither-positive-nor-negative-romance-novel-specific questions:
- How often does fake dating happen in real life? Tell me. Have you ever fake-dated someone? Did you fall madly in love with them (or their sibling or best friend or mortal enemy)? How did it turn out? Because this is one of those things, like self-made billionaires, that seem to come up a lot more often in romance novels than in real life.

- How often do people in real life swear off love forever because their parents or grandparents had a great love, and then one person died and the other is sad, and now the younger person is like "I CANNOT BEAR THAT PAIN"? I've seen people swear off romance because they're heartbroken (especially people on dating apps—in particular, men who have been "burned before"), but never because of secondhand grief. Except in romance novels. Again, tell me: have you seen this? I am so curious.

- What is the firefighting equivalent of a lesbian U-Haul joke? There must be something about bringing a fire truck to a second date.

What I wanted more of:
- This one's a short list: firefighting! Fire! This is as conventional as my reading tastes get: when there is a lesbian firefighter in a romance novel, god damn it, I want firefighting. (I don't want to date a firefighter, thanks. I am too anxious a person for that. But in a book? Send the fire hoses in to put out the heat. Wait, no, that metaphor might go in weird directions...) I fully recognize that this is a me problem, and that firefighters do all sorts of things other than fighting fires, and that if every firefighter romance ever had dramatic blazing buildings, they'd all start to run together, and the proportions of fires in romance would start to rival the proportions of self-made billionaires in romance novels. Or...or it would just become climate apocalyptic, which I'm less interested in reading, actually. But as far as the more conventional parts of my reading tastes go, if I'm going to read a book with a (swoon) lesbian firefighter, then I'd like to see turnout gear, a fireman's pole, a ravaged structure or two. Otherwise, the firefighter who cannot risk love because she has seen the pain of love lost...she might as well be an accountant who cannot risk love because her parents' marriage was ruined by her accountant father's lack of work-life balance.

(A short *list*, I said. Not a short *opinion*.)

Oh well. Still burns fun and fast. May the flames of firefighter romance never die...

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

This is the second book of Hale's 'Truly' trilogy.

This time we're following Sam's sister Lexie and her roommate, Robyn.

In order to keep her mother quite, firefighter Robyn pretends to date artist Lexie. But will this charade become something real?

This was a quick, enjoyable read. I noticed a marked improvement in Hale's writing from her previous book to this one. I liked how this gave us demisexual representation, something rarely seen in romance novels.

Looking forward to the final book in the trilogy.

I finished this book floating on clouds of smiles. Yes, HEA, friends to lovers, but not before some very interesting life-learning experiences. Of the two main characters, one was demisexual and the other had ADHD. One was a firefighter and the other, an artist. One was a lesbian lothario and the other had never been with a woman.

Before we got to the HEA, we saw how they learned to cope
with their weaknesses, deal with them, learn about themselves and about each other.
Lexi and Robyn were good friends and had been roommates for a long time. The author did a great job of creatively explaining how ADHD and demisexual fit into the relationship and the emotions and emotional conflicts that resulted. How did these two lovelies overcome issues to find love? How did they recognize the difference between friendship and love? How did they learn trust?

The story was quite an interesting journey. It had some understandable angst, as it helped them to recognize and reach realizations and understandings. It was topped off with some intimate and steamy love scenes.

I found this book refreshing as it had a different take on a familiar theme. I look forward to more from J.J. Hale.

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this entertaining book

robyn and lexi two very different people sharing an apartment....robyn is a firefighter and lexi is an struggling artist

but as lexi starts to struggle with her art robyn steps up to support her and thats when things start to get interesting

a fun quick read with some hidden depths in there

I absolutely DEVOURED this book in one sitting.

Robyn, a firefighter, and Lexi, an artist, have been roommates for four years. When an attraction starts to build between them, can they make it work and not ruin their friendship and living situation?

I love the ADHD rep in this book - I related to it a lot. The characters were adorably opposites - grumpy/sunshine - and complemented each other well. I'm not often a lover of friends to lovers tropes but I feel like it worked so well in this story - especially with one of the characters being demisexual.

I'm looking forward to so much more from this author as I'm sure I will devour it as well.

This story has been complex because it wants to justify how two women go from being roommates for four years to becoming something else, putting the fact that one of them is demisexual as the cause of the initial lack of sexual attraction. But that discovery is made by the protagonist in the course of the story, it is not something that she has previously assumed. It is because of the changes she notices in her relationship with Robyn that Lexi discovers her sexual choice.

And this transformation or discovery that Lexi experiences makes the story a bit dense in some of its parts. The other protagonist, Robyn, does not have sexual behavior within the canons either, although this can be debatable, of course. She is a bit marked by the loss of her father when she was little, she has followed in his footsteps by becoming a firefighter and her personal relationships are fleeting, due to the trauma that her father's death caused her.

But somehow, Lexi's transformation helps Robyn overcome this relationship phobia, all with the invaluable help of the two women's families.

So, except for the slight punctual density of the descriptions, the story is interesting and quite instructive.