Written in the Stars Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A genuinely funny sapphic fake-dating rom-com with an award to show for it, let down by an ending that stops instead of landing.

Best for: Readers who come to romance for dialogue and warmth, who want an explicit sapphic rom-com with no coming-out plot, and who can forgive a third act built on two women refusing to talk.

Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io’s “explicit open door”)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 3.83 Goodreads average across nearly 70,000 ratings, and a loudest complaint that comes from the readers who loved it)

Tropes: Fake dating, grumpy-sunshine, opposites attract, blind date gone wrong, holiday romance, dual POV, career divide, an enemies-to-lovers edge, Pride and Prejudice retelling, found family.

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur is the first book of the Written in the Stars trilogy, a debut contemporary lesbian romance published by Avon in November 2020 and set across one Seattle winter, in which Elle Jones, an astrologer with a huge horoscope following, agrees to keep faking a relationship with Darcy Lowell, the actuary who spent their blind date telling her that her career is nonsense.

It has a 3.83 average across 69,967 Goodreads ratings, a 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance, and mainstream press coverage almost no sapphic romance of its era got. It also has a review section that argues with itself more than a 3.83 suggests, and not where you would expect. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Written in the Stars About?

Written in the Stars is a contemporary sapphic fake-dating rom-com, and it is also, without saying so anywhere on the cover, a Christmas book. It runs from late November to New Year’s Eve, and Amazon files it at number 185 in Holiday Romance, which describes the reading experience better than the astrology in the title does. The timeline matters: the fake relationship exists so Darcy can survive a family Christmas.

Elle is the sunshine half — a professional astrologer whose family treats her work as a joke, which is precisely why Darcy dismissing it stings. Darcy is the grump, an actuary who quantifies risk for a living and has arranged her personal life to contain none. Her brother Brendon runs a dating app with Elle and cannot leave either of them alone. Dual third-person POV is what lets you watch Darcy’s defences from the inside while Elle still reads them as contempt.

What Makes This Sapphic Fake-Dating Rom-Com Work

The banter: Chemistry and dialogue are what reviewers name first and most often, and it is not close. Entertainment Weekly said Bellefleur’s one-liners “zing off the page”, and the Goodreads consensus agrees with the trade.
Fake-dating mechanics that hold: More than ten reviewers single out the execution specifically — the arrangement has a reason to exist, a deadline and escalating public stakes rather than dissolving after two chapters.
Sunshine and grump with real fuel: The antagonism comes from Darcy insulting Elle’s livelihood on page one, so the hostility is specific and personal rather than generic bickering.
No coming-out plot: Readers repeatedly flag this as a relief. Both women are out, and the conflict is about risk and family rather than identity.
Characters people like: On StoryGraph 84% call the characters loveable and 77% say the development is strong, a rare pair of numbers for a rom-com.

Book Synopsis

Elle Jones does not need a blind date. She needs her business partner to stop arranging them. Brendon Lowell has decided his sister and his co-founder belong together, and he sets them up with the confidence of a man who has never been wrong about anything. He is wrong. Darcy Lowell arrives for dinner, works out within an hour that Elle makes her living writing horoscopes for hundreds of thousands of strangers, and says what she thinks of that. Elle leaves.

The problem is Brendon. He will not accept the date as a failure, and the only thing that will stop him is a relationship he can believe in. So Darcy tells him it went well. Then she has to tell Elle what she has told him. What they negotiate is a fake relationship with an end date: they will be together through the holidays, they will be seen together, and on New Year’s Eve they will part amicably and Brendon will leave them both alone.

Neither of them has thought this through. Darcy’s family expects to be shown things, so the performance has to be good, which means proximity, which means Elle learning what is underneath the actuary. Elle believes in signs and compatibility and the idea that people can be read; Darcy believes in probabilities and has priced the risk of being known at more than she can afford. The question the book is actually asking is what either of them does when the calendar runs out.

My Review

The dialogue is the reason to read this, and I want to lead with that because the rest of this review is more qualified. Bellefleur writes conversation the way the best rom-com screenwriters do — fast, specific, funny in a way that reveals character rather than pausing it. Elle and Darcy talk past each other for the first third and it is a pleasure every time. The text-message sections are doing real work too; a lot of the escalation happens there.

The second thing it gets right is the reason for the antagonism. Darcy does not dislike Elle because the plot needs friction; she dismisses Elle’s entire career in the first hour, and Elle’s family has been dismissing it her whole life. That gives the grumpy-sunshine dynamic a spine most books in this register lack, and makes the reversal mean something.

Where it struggles is the last fifteen percent, and this is not my private gripe — it is the single most repeated criticism in the reviews, on Goodreads and Amazon and in the blogs. The ending is rushed. Readers ask for an epilogue over and over and say the book needed another twenty pages. The third-act break before it is the weaker half of the problem: multiple reviewers point out that the crisis runs entirely on two adults declining to say a sentence out loud. There is no bonus epilogue on the author’s site either. I looked.

Here is what makes the book unusual, though. That complaint comes overwhelmingly from readers rating it four and five stars, not from its detractors. The one-star reviews object to something else entirely — that Darcy’s opening cruelty is never earned back, that the chemistry felt contrived, that the prose tells rather than shows. The rushed ending is a complaint from people who wanted more book, which is the most forgivable kind there is, and the StoryGraph did-not-finish rate is only 3%. People finish this one.

One expectation to reset: the astrology is decoration. The title, the cover and Elle’s job promise a book organised around star charts; what you get is affectionate Easter eggs. If the zodiac hook drew you, calibrate. If it put you off, relax — and know you are getting a Christmas book instead.

My honest note: One of the funniest sapphic rom-coms Avon has published, with a final act that does not do it justice. If you read romance for the middle, this is a four-and-a-half-star book. If you read it for the landing, take half a star back.

Element	In Written in the Stars
Central relationship	Elle Jones & Darcy Lowell — astrologer and actuary, fake girlfriends on a deadline
Core tropes	Fake dating, grumpy-sunshine, opposites attract, dual POV, holiday romance, meddling sibling
Setting	Contemporary Seattle, from a ruined blind date in November to New Year’s Eve
Heat level	4/5 — romance.io’s “explicit open door”
Series	Written in the Stars book 1 of 3 — complete arc and an HEA; each book follows a different couple
Content notes	Graphic sexual content; infidelity, alcohol and a toxic relationship at moderate level; emotional abuse, biphobia and abandonment at minor level (StoryGraph); past child neglect (romance.io)

How Spicy Is Written in the Stars?

A 4/5. romance.io puts it in the “explicit open door” band — one below the top rating, reserved for books where the sex is both graphic and constant — and StoryGraph readers file sexual content as this book’s one graphic content warning. The scenes are unambiguous and on the page, several reviewers call them the best thing in the second half, and there are not many of them.

The element worth flagging in advance is not a kink, it is a wait: the book is well past its midpoint before anything explicit happens, because the fake relationship has to become real first. No reviewer I found names any specific content beyond straightforward open-door sex. If you want this exact band elsewhere, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care and D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding both sit at the same 4/5.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read romance for banter and voice, you want an explicit sapphic rom-com where nobody has to come out, you like a fake relationship with a real deadline attached, and a Christmas setting is a feature rather than a tax.

You may want to skip it if: a third-act conflict built on nobody saying the obvious thing infuriates you, you need an epilogue to feel a romance has finished, you were promised astrology and want it to matter, or holiday romance is a genre you actively avoid.

In short: the funniest hundred pages you will read in the subgenre, attached to the twenty least satisfying.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

The unusual thing about this book is where its discourse came from. There is no BookTok origin story — it published in November 2020, before the sapphic wave on TikTok, and the title is generic enough that no organic footprint for this novel separates cleanly from the songs and books sharing the name. What it got instead was mainstream press: NPR, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly and O, the Oprah Magazine, plus Booklist and Library Journal. Then it won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Romance. Very few sapphic romances have had that much establishment attention, and it is why the ratings base is nearly 70,000 rather than the few thousand typical of the category. On Reddit it is a fixture rather than a talking point: r/sapphicbooks has one dedicated thread, from June 2026, with nine comments, but the book recurs inside recommendation threads for grumpy-sunshine, spicy sapphic and audiobooks, and in that subreddit’s beginner’s guide.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Chemistry and banter, first and by a wide margin — more than fifteen reviewers in the popular set name it, and “chemistry” is the recurring word. Then the fake-dating execution, which around ten praise as a trope done properly. Then the humour, then the sex scenes. Readers consistently appreciate that neither woman has a coming-out arc, and Lauren Sweet’s narration has its own following.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. Reviewers call it rushed, cut short, missing an epilogue — in the same breath as saying they loved the book. Amazon’s own review summary lands there too, noting that some find it ends abruptly. Second: the third-act conflict, which several describe as a failure of two people simply to speak rather than a misunderstanding. Third, and only in the lower-star reviews, the prose, called repetitive and heavy on telling. A smaller group say the chemistry never landed at all — the exact opposite of the majority verdict. Brendon is the other flashpoint: three separate reviewers find him boundary-violating rather than charming. StoryGraph readers also split on the cast, 47% saying it is not a diverse book against 34% who say it is. Almost none of this reached the trade: Kirkus flagged only that the plot does not deviate much from other fake-dating favourites, and not one of the eight outlets that covered the book mentioned the ending readers will not stop mentioning.

The series question everyone should ask first: book one finishes. There is a happily-ever-after, the arc closes, and it reads as a standalone — each book in the trilogy follows a different couple. The numbers are the interesting part. Book two, Hang the Moon, is Brendon’s and it is male-female; it sits at 3.77 across 20,674 Goodreads ratings. Book three, Count Your Lucky Stars, is sapphic again, with 29,221 ratings at 3.94 — roughly 8,500 more than the book before it. Readers of book one are skipping the middle, and the ratings say they are right to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Written in the Stars end on a cliffhanger?

No. Elle and Darcy get a happily-ever-after and the arc closes. The complaint you will see everywhere is the opposite problem: readers find the resolution rushed and want an epilogue that does not exist.

How spicy is Written in the Stars?

A 4/5. romance.io rates it “explicit open door”, one band below its most explicit rating, and StoryGraph lists sexual content as the only graphic warning. The scenes are explicit but not frequent, and they arrive late.

Is Written in the Stars a Christmas book?

Yes, and nothing on the cover says so. It runs from late November to New Year’s Eve, the fake relationship exists to survive a family Christmas, and Amazon ranks it in Holiday Romance.

Do I need to read the Written in the Stars series in order?

No. Each of the three books follows a different couple and works alone. Book two is male-female; book three, Count Your Lucky Stars, is sapphic and rated higher at 3.94.

Is there an audiobook of Written in the Stars?

Yes — narrated by Lauren Sweet for Avon, running 11 hours 11 minutes and released alongside the book on 10 November 2020. Reviewers praise her distinct character voices and say the text-message sections translate well to audio.

Prefer audio? Listen to Written in the Stars on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

If You Loved Written in the Stars, Read These Next

The closest match on this site is Kiss Her Once for Me, which runs the same fake-relationship-over-Christmas engine with a sapphic couple and a warmer, slower burn. If the grumpy-sunshine dynamic was the draw rather than the fake dating, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care gives you a sharper, angrier grump at the same heat level. And if you simply want more of these people, Count Your Lucky Stars is the sapphic third book in this trilogy and the highest-rated of the three.

For more in this register, browse our sapphic fake dating romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Written in the Stars wanted to be the sapphic rom-com that broke into the mainstream, and by most measures it was: a Lambda win, a Big Five imprint, national press, nearly 70,000 ratings. The banter is excellent, the fake-dating premise is built to hold weight, and the grumpy-sunshine reversal is earned by an insult that costs something. It is also rushed at the close, resolved by a conflict that exists only because nobody speaks, and decorated with astrology it never uses. Whether that trade works depends on which part of a romance you read for — but if it is the middle, almost nothing in the subgenre is funnier. Check Written in the Stars on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Written in the Stars ranks as a landmark mainstream sapphic rom-com — award-winning, sharply funny and genuinely warm, held back by a final act that stops rather than lands, and best approached for the banter rather than the payoff.