Breakaway Books

Authored by Amy Lea; Published 2022; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

There’s a certain charm to niche romance novels. Farmers falling in love at first sight? I’m sure it’s adorable. Ice skating rivals turned lovers? Swoon. I happened to come upon Set On You, a rom com with strong gym rat vibes, right after I started lifting weights myself. I am an amateur at best when it comes to strength training, but I was pretty proud that I understood the incredible sin of stealing another gym goer’s squat rack.

In Set On You, fitness and body positivity influencer Crystal meets firefighter Scott at the gym, and it is not love at first sight. Fortunately, their grandparents’ overwhelmingly cute courtship forced them back together, and soon Crystal discovers that Scott is not the jerk he appeared to be at first. To love this book, you have to be really interested in two things: body positivity and social media influencers. If those elements aren’t topics you want to meditate on, I’d skip this one. They are the water in which this romance swims, and, as one who is sometimes prone to rolling my eyes at influencers, it tested my limits a little bit. The central obstacle of the book, the one that causes the real rupture between Crystal and Scott, is centered on interaction with social media, and I did find that hard to relate to. 

That being said, my lived experience isn’t reflected in most rom-coms I read, so it didn’t cause me too much heartburn. There’s a lot to love about the novel: The grandparent love story is guaranteed to charm, as is most of the Crystal’s slightly kooky family. Her family was, for me, a real highlight of the book. They were weird, and in ways that weren’t always attractive but did feel relatable, even if the focus on social media didn’t.

Scott is a brawny firefighter, which, if a little over the top, is perfect for an escapist rom-com. But as much of the book is about her falling in love with him, it’s also about Crystal remembering how to love herself and how to deal with days when she’s not so in love with herself. This form of messaging about body positivity is realistic—not expecting shiny delight every day—-and serves as a blow against the toxic optimism that can be downright cloying in fitness circles. 

Set On You is light read, as long as the social media-ness won’t send you over the deep end. But, as long as you’re not a cranky old lady like me, you’ll love it.