I Think They Love You

I Think They Love You (pub. date January 28, 2025) is Julian Winters’ adult rom-com debut, and it’s lovely. Winters has written many YA novels, including Right Where I Left You, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and several others that I need to get to.

Told from the perspective of Denz, whose Instagram is “notthatdenzel” and who is the only son of the Carter family, which runs the Atlanta event-planning business 24 Carter Gold. He specializes in social media and promotion, while his older sister Kami is a driven event planner. They are put into competition with each other when their father announces his retirement, and wants to give family a shot at CEO before bringing in someone from the outside. His family, including aunties, who are all part of the family business, don’t think he’s serious enough for the job, as he’s been enjoying his mid-20s life of no strings and too many lemon martinis, after his ex Bray went to London after graduation because he couldn’t wait for Denz to make up his mind about coming along.

They run into each other at a coffee shop, Denz already late with a task for the company that was his responsibility, and he finds out that Bray is back in Atlanta, goes by Braylon now, his father passed away, and he’s executive director of a LGBTQ+ youth center. Bray needs a favor from Denz to get more funding for the center, and Denz needs a fake boyfriend to show his family he can be serious, until the CEO position is decided.

And so begins their second chance romance. Winters fleshes out their first relationship, which lasted most of college, through flashbacks, but the second one is satisfying all by itself, without their shared history. They set up rules and a timeline, which of course get broken by mutual consent.

It is super-cute, funny, and the spicy scenes are hot. I loved the supporting characters–Denz’s best friend Jamie, sisters Kami and Nic, Denz’s parents, aunties, and cousins. I suspect a follow-up book possibility for a couple of characters.

It was completely weight-neutral. There were no negative descriptions of body size, as I’ve come to expect from Julian Winters, as Right Where I Left You was explicitly fat-positive.