When Joss Met Matt: A Novel

by Ellie Cahill

In the tradition of New Adult superstar Jessica Sorensen, Ellie Cahill’s debut novel is a charming friends-with-benefits story . . . with a twist!
 
What if after every bad breakup, there was someone to help “cleanse your palate”—someone who wouldn’t judge you, who was great in bed, someone you were sure not to fall in love with? “Sorbet sex” could solve everything—as long as it never got too sweet.
 
Joss and Matt have been friends since freshman year of college, meeting one night after Joss is dumped by her boyfriend. After a few drinks, Matt humors her with a proposition: that he’ll become her go-to guy whenever she needs to heal a broken heart. In return, she’ll do the same for him. The #1 Rule: They’ll never fall in love with each other. People scoff at the arrangement. But six years later, Joss and Matt are still the best of friends . . . with benefits.
 
Through a string of boyfriends and girlfriends—some almost perfect, some downright wrong—Joss and Matt are always there for each other when the going gets tough. No strings. No attachments. Piece of cake. No problem. After all, since they wrote the rules, surely they can play by them. Or can they?

Advance praise for When Joss Met Matt
 
“Hands down, one of my favorite New Adult reads . . . Ellie Cahill is definitely one to watch!”—New York Times bestselling author Cora Carmack
 
“This is one of those books that make you forget everything around you. Prepare to be consumed by this story.”—Sophie Jordan, New York Times bestselling author of Wild
 
“Fun, sexy, and full of amazing chemistry, When Joss Met Matt is an entertaining escape that will leave you smiling with every turn of the page.”—Cassie Mae, author of The Real Thing

• ISBN10: 0553394517
• ISBN13: 9780553394511
• Publish Date: 24 February 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780553394511

Reviews

[whisperingchapters]

This 2.5 stars review was published on Latte Nights Reviews on August 17, 2015.

**Contains some spoilers**

I had high expectations for this book. I love the NA books that have those friends with benefits stories so I was hoping to love this one but sadly, it wasn’t the case.

For the first half of the book, I was enjoying myself. I was loving the story and the characters so much but then it just… I don’t even know what happened! One minute the mood of the book was light and fun and the next, it’s moody and sad. This majority of the story it is told by Joss in flashbacks, but it also has some present time. The flashbacks start 7 years ago, which I had a bit of a problem. You see, we never really get to read about Joss and Matt being together until the end of the book. All the while, it’s just them having sex and Joss pining after Matt once she realizes very late in the story that she has started to develop feelings for him. The thing is they are never together because while they do have sex, once the “sorbet sex” is done, they start dating other people. The thematic of the story was fun but it got to a point where the “sorbet sex” was getting to me and I kept rolling my eyes.

I think this is the second time I read a book that I wish the characters had never gotten together in the end. They acted more as friends than anything. I never felt any romantic pull from either of them, which made it hard for me to see them together at the end. I had never read anything by Liz Czukas. This is my first book by her under the pen name Ellie Cahill. I have heard many others raving about her YA books, which I plan on checking out some time in the future but maybe not now.

You guys may be wondering why I don’t have a content warning above the post and that is because this book is a New Adult coming of age story, meaning the main characters are in college but it doesn’t have explicit content at all. So for you young readers (above 15, maybe) you can go ahead and read this book, in my opinion.

[Leah]

Back in November I read my first Liz Czukas book Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless, which was a super sweet read – you might wonder why I’m telling you that but Liz Czukas is also Ellie Cahill and she doesn’t just write sweet, fun Young Adult novels set in supermarkets, she also writes New Adult novels. Well, I’m debating the tag of New Adult now that I’ve read When Joss Met Matt, but I’m sure when I first requested it on Netgalley, it was tagged as New Adult, but it could also, easily, fall in to the Chick Lit genre. Either way, I had heard nothing but good things prior to reading When Joss Met Matt and it’s fair to say I went in to the novel with sky-high expectations.

I’m sure most people aren’t aware of this, but I actually love books that flit from the now, to the past. Not many authors write that like, because it’s probably very hard to do right, but I love it when authors take that leap and go for it, and that’s the case with When Joss Met Matt. In the now, we learn that Matt “needs” Joss, which at first doesn’t actually make sense, until we go back to the day they met, and learn how they ended up becoming each other’s “Sorbet partners” and learning that that’s what “need” means when they talk to each other. Sorbet cleanses the palate, and Joss and Matt use it as body cleansing when either of them get dumped. Like friends with benefits, basically. A really, really long friends with benefits, with some pretty awesome rules to help it all stay good and friendly between them afterwards.

I loved When Joss Met Matt, pretty much from the first page. No, I tell a lie. I loved it as soon as Joss and Matt met, because you just knew that something special had occurred, and so we learnt. I have literally never wanted to bash two people’s heads together so frequently and I just wanted to scream at them that they quite clearly loved each other more than just for the needs of sorbet. It was a little bit like reading about an eight year relationship where they just didn’t know they were in one. The readers all knew, and Nellie, Joss’s friend knew, but Joss and Matt were oblivious, bless them. My love for those two was just insane. I literally wanted to be their friend, because they were just so awesome. All the good things I had heard about When Joss Met Matt were more than proven, I flipping loved the book and I raced through the last 90 minutes of reading, and it just melted my heart.

Sometimes you just fall in love with a book immediately, and for me that happened with When Joss Met Matt. The back and forth from the now, to the past, with key moments in their relationship being told to us was amazing; Joss and Matt themselves were just beyond amazing, and I loved Ellie/Liz’s writing. She just got the tone of the book down perfectly. A novel about friends with benefits could come off sleazy, but it didn’t at all, because it wasn’t really about that. I mean, it was, but it wasn’t. It was about Joss and Matt and their utterly complicated but actually really easy relationship. I’ve never read about a couple who are quite clearly so perfect for each other, but just don’t see it, and I was just so desperate for them to realise their true feelings. I really, really, really hope Ellie/Liz is writing another New Adult/Chick Lit book because this was simply amazing. I loved every page.