Planning Perfect Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A warm, openly ace-spectrum YA rom-com about a Jewish teen planning her mom’s orchard wedding, held back by a heroine a lot of readers find hard to like and a romance that turns up very late.

Best for: Readers who want asexual and Jewish representation written from the inside, who enjoy Gilmore Girls style family chaos, and who are willing to stick with a prickly, anxious narrator until she grows.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5: closed door YA, with no on-page sex reported by any reviewer)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.3/5: a 3.47 Goodreads average across 988 ratings, with a narrator who splits the room)

Tropes: Friends-to-lovers, long-distance friendship, wedding planning, ace-spectrum heroine, perfectionist heroine, blended family, mother and daughter story, found family, summer romance, coming of age.

Planning Perfect by Haley Neil is a standalone young adult romantic comedy from Bloomsbury YA, published in February 2023, a contemporary sapphic romance set mostly on a Vermont apple orchard, where sixteen-year-old perfectionist Felicity Becker has forty-seven days to plan her mother’s wedding and keeps running into the one thing she can’t put on a spreadsheet: what she feels for Nancy Lim, the long-distance friend whose family owns the venue.

It sits at 3.47 across 988 Goodreads ratings and 218 written reviews, it drew a positive Kirkus review, and Publishers Weekly called it a “gleeful rom-com.” The star spread is the more interesting number. Three stars is the biggest slice at 37%, and the reviews explain why: people love what this book represents and argue about whether they could stand the girl telling it. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Planning Perfect About?

Planning Perfect is YA contemporary first and romance second, and that order matters. The book is about a teenager learning that she can’t control everything, and the romance is one of the things she can’t control. It’s also a family book. Felicity lives in Boston with a cheerful, chaotic mom, a grandmother with opinions, and Eric, the easygoing fiancé who’s about to become her stepdad. Friday nights mean Shabbat dinner. Her anxiety is on the page, and so is her therapist.

Felicity is short on two things: patience for people who don’t plan, and any clear idea of what dating would mean for someone on the asexual spectrum. She has just lost the Junior Committee election to a laid-back lacrosse player, and she’s sure that has wrecked her college prospects. Nancy, whom she met at a symposium for queer teens, assumes none of the things Felicity assumes about herself. The book stays in Felicity’s single first-person POV the whole way, which means you live inside every spiral. That’s the source of both its warmth and its most common complaint.

What Makes This YA Sapphic Rom-Com Work

Ace representation that says the word: This is the element reviewers praise most often by a distance. Readers on the ace spectrum write that it made them feel seen, and several point out how rare it is for a YA book to name asexuality outright rather than hint at it.
Jewish family life on the page: The weekly Shabbat dinners and family traditions feel lived in rather than decorative, which is why the book shows up on our Jewish sapphic books list as well as our ace list.
The Gilmore Girls dynamic: A type-A daughter and a free-spirited mom is the comparison readers reach for first, and the grandmother rounds out the three generations.
Anxiety and therapy treated as normal: More than a dozen reviewers in the visible sample mention the anxiety rep, and a few single out how matter-of-factly the book treats going to therapy.
A slow friends-to-lovers build with a kind love interest: Nancy gets described as patient, funny and communicative, and stepdad Eric is the supporting character readers name most warmly.

Book Synopsis

Felicity Becker likes a plan. She has color-coded binders and a five-year outlook, and she has just watched a boy who never prepares for anything beat her for Junior Committee president. When her mom finally gets engaged to Eric, Felicity sees a chance to prove herself. She’ll plan the wedding. If it’s good enough, it could even help her land a prestigious event-planning internship and patch the hole she’s convinced the election blew in her future.

There is one small problem with the timeline: forty-seven days. Her mom wants something relaxed and doesn’t care much about details. Her grandmother cares about all of them. The venue comes through Nancy Lim, the friend Felicity met at a queer teen symposium and has mostly known through screens, whose family runs an apple orchard in Vermont. So Felicity spends her summer there, hunting for mismatched china, shopping for dresses and trying to keep a wedding from falling apart in a place where she can’t control the weather, the guests or her own head.

Being near Nancy every day starts to change things. Felicity knows she’s on the asexual spectrum, but she doesn’t know what that means for a relationship, or whether wanting one is fair to the other person. She also isn’t used to accepting help, from Nancy or from anyone. The wedding date keeps getting closer. The question is whether she can let some of it go before she pushes away the people she’s doing it for.

My Review

The best thing about this book is that it doesn’t whisper. Felicity is ace-spectrum, the text says so, and the story takes her questions seriously: what she wants, what she thinks she owes a partner, and whether she gets to have a romance at all. That’s rarer in YA than it should be, and when ace readers say this book made them feel seen, I believe them. The Jewish family texture is the other real pleasure. Shabbat dinners and three generations of women arguing around a table give the book a home base that a lot of wedding rom-coms never bother to build.

The supporting cast does a lot of the lifting. Eric, the soon-to-be stepdad, is the character readers mention most fondly, and Nancy is easy to root for because she communicates like a person rather than a plot device. The orchard is a cozy place to spend a summer, and the forty-seven day deadline gives the book a pace Kirkus singled out as fitting a girl who runs on stress.

Where it struggles is Felicity herself, and this isn’t my private gripe. It’s the single most repeated criticism in the reviews. In the visible Goodreads sample, roughly seven of the eleven or so lower-star reviewers call her self-absorbed, condescending, judgmental or plain exhausting, and one says she’s unpleasant for most of the book. Around that sit the structural complaints: the anxious loops repeat, the middle drags, and the romance stays on the back burner so long that a few readers say it only resolves in the last pages. Family threads with the mom and grandmother get raised and then tidied quickly, which is the same “tidy resolutions” note Publishers Weekly made.

One expectation to reset: the cover and the blurb sell a romance, and readers mostly got a coming-of-age story with a romance inside it. Felicity’s arc is about accepting help and learning her worth isn’t her résumé. If you came for a swoony friends-to-lovers, lower the dial. If you came for a teen growing up in real time, you’re in the right place, and the irritating early chapters are the point.

My honest note: A rare and well-handled ace and Jewish story wrapped around a narrator who will test you. If a difficult heroine sinks a book for you, this one will be a slog, but if you can give her the first half to grow, the family and the orchard make it worth the visit.

Element	In Planning Perfect
Central relationship	Felicity Becker and Nancy Lim: an anxious ace-spectrum planner and her easygoing long-distance friend, friends-to-lovers
Core tropes	Friends-to-lovers, wedding planning, ace-spectrum heroine, perfectionist heroine, blended family, summer romance
Setting	Boston and a family-run apple orchard in Vermont over one summer
Heat level	1/5: closed door YA, no on-page sex reported
Series	Standalone. Complete story with a hopeful happy ending
Content notes	Anxiety and panic, therapy, family conflict and pressure, discussion of sex and asexual identity (not shown on page)

How Spicy Is Planning Perfect?

A 1/5, and that’s description, not criticism. A search turned up no romance.io entry for the book, which is normal for a young adult title, so the number comes from the publisher’s age ranges and from what readers report. Publishers Weekly lists it for ages 12 and up, Kirkus puts it at 14 to 18, and across the reviews I read, nobody mentions any on-page sex. The romance runs on friendship, worry and conversation.

The one thing worth knowing in advance is that sex comes up as a topic. Felicity worries about whether she can give a partner what they want, and the book talks about boundaries openly. It’s handled gently and nothing is shown. If you want other YA sapphic romances at this same closed-door level, Say Yes to the Cheerleader and The Henna Wars both sit at 1/5 on our scale.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you’ve been waiting for a YA heroine who is openly ace-spectrum, you want Jewish family life on the page, you like messy mother and daughter stories, and you’re patient with a narrator who has to grow before she’s easy company.

You may want to skip it if: an unlikable protagonist pulls you out of a story, you need the romance front and center, you have little patience for repeated anxious inner monologue, or you want every family conflict resolved on the page.

In short: important, warm representation inside a coming-of-age story whose heroine you’ll either forgive or won’t.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

There’s no viral moment around this book and no BookTok or Reddit footprint that turned up in my searches. What it has is quieter and steadier: 988 Goodreads ratings over three and a half years, a trade publisher behind it, and wide library distribution. It’s in public library catalogs across the US, on Hoopla, and at least one reviewer listened through Libby, so a lot of its readers are finding it on library shelves and in curated ace and Jewish reading lists rather than through social media. Advance readers are present but not dominant. Four of the roughly thirty visible Goodreads reviews disclose a publisher or NetGalley copy, and NetGalley shows 18 member reviews. I couldn’t get StoryGraph’s rating or did-not-finish figures for this one, and Amazon’s star spread was not available to me either.

The audio edition came out two weeks after the hardcover, on 28 February 2023, from Recorded Books. Laura Knight Keating narrates, and it runs 8 hours and 57 minutes. Audible shows a 4.0 average from just 5 ratings, too few to mean much, and one blogger found the narration pleasant without adding much to the book.

Prefer audio? Listen to Planning Perfect on Libro.fm, the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The ace representation, first and most consistently. Around sixteen of the thirty visible Goodreads reviews bring it up, and “seen” is the recurring word from ace readers. The Nerd Daily’s reviewer, who identifies as biromantic and ace, says the same. The anxiety and therapy rep is the second theme, named by about thirteen reviewers. Then the Jewish rep and Shabbat dinners, the Gilmore Girls comparison, and the supporting cast, with stepdad Eric getting the warmest notices. “Cute” is the word readers use most for the romance, about a dozen times. Kirkus called it engrossing and emotionally dynamic and praised Felicity’s growth, which is worth noting next to the reader complaints: the professionals liked the same girl many readers didn’t.

What readers argue about and complain about: Felicity, above everything. Readers call her rude, self-absorbed and judgmental, and the complaint is about how long it takes her to change, since most agree she does change eventually. The romance is the second theme: it’s pushed so far back that several readers say it resolves only at the very end, and a couple felt Felicity and Nancy lacked spark. Third: pacing, with repeated worry loops slowing the middle. Beyond that, family and grandmother conflicts left half resolved, a predictable ending, and one reader who found a high schooler planning a wedding for an internship hard to believe. The mom splits people too. Some readers adore her free spirit, while at least one found her frustrating rather than charming.

The standalone question worth asking first: it is one. Planning Perfect resolves on its own and needs nothing else. If you like Neil’s voice, her earlier YA novel Once More with Chutzpah (2022) sits noticeably higher at 4.01 across 768 Goodreads ratings. It also follows an anxious Jewish teen, on a trip to Israel, though it isn’t sold as a romance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Planning Perfect a standalone?

Yes. It is a single, self-contained YA novel with no series attached, and nothing carries over into another book. Haley Neil’s other YA novel, Once More with Chutzpah, is unrelated.

How spicy is Planning Perfect?

A 1/5. It is a closed-door young adult book, Publishers Weekly lists it for ages 12 and up and Kirkus for 14 to 18, and no reviewer reports any on-page sex. The romance is about feelings and boundaries, not heat.

Is Felicity asexual?

Yes, she is on the asexual spectrum, and the book uses the word directly. Several reviewers also describe her as biromantic, and her questions about what dating could look like for her are a central thread.

Do Felicity and Nancy end up together?

The ending is a hopeful, happy one for a YA romance, but it comes very late. More than one reviewer says the romance only resolves in the final pages, so do not expect a long stretch of them as a couple.

Is there an audiobook of Planning Perfect?

Yes. Recorded Books released it in February 2023, narrated by Laura Knight Keating, at 8 hours and 57 minutes. One listener calls her voice easy to listen to, though the audio does not change how the book reads.

If You Loved Planning Perfect, Read These Next

Readers comparing Neil to other YA sapphic summer stories name You Don’t Have a Shot by Racquel Marie, which runs a similar anxious, high-achieving heroine through a summer camp at the same closed-door heat. If the family warmth and cultural identity are what got you, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating pairs a messy romance with a heroine whose friends don’t take her identity seriously. And for a lighter, funnier YA rom-com with more spark between the leads, She Drives Me Crazy trades the wedding for a fake-dating rivalry. If it’s the wedding planning you want, in an adult and much spicier register, D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding is the obvious next stop.

For more like this, browse our ace-spectrum sapphic books list, the lesbian YA books guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Planning Perfect wants to be a funny wedding rom-com and a serious book about asexuality, anxiety and letting go, and it mostly manages both. The ace representation is open and kind, the Jewish family life feels real, and the supporting cast is easy to love. It’s also anchored to a narrator who tests readers for a long time, a romance that waits until the end to land, and a middle that circles the same worries. If you’ve been looking for an ace-spectrum heroine in YA and can give Felicity time, it’s worth it. Check Planning Perfect on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Planning Perfect ranks as a heartfelt ace-spectrum YA family rom-com. It’s strong on representation and warmth, held back by a divisive narrator and a late romance. Read it for Felicity’s growth and the family rather than for the love story.