It’s Lily’s question to the contestants on the dating reality show Marry Me, Juliet, where she is a producer. When she needs a contestant to go all in on an idea, she asks them, “Are you ready to be brave?” It almost always works. It’s what makes her so good at her job. She is a fierce competitor, a Vietnamese woman whose signature lipstick color is called Blood of My Enemies. And Lily and Murray have co-produced reality shows for years. They manage their contestants. They massage the story lines. They make unforgettable television for millions of viewers. And then her life was upended, and she disappeared.

Murray is preparing to produce the newest season of Marry Me, Juliet. He’d finally been able to convince his boss to do a season with some diversity, so this Romeo is not another white guy. Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor is an Olympic gold medalist, and he is not the only person of color in the cast. Some of the Juliets are also, so Murray is happy to finally have a chance to do something meaningful with the show. It would have been better of Lily were there too, but they had worked hard to make it happen, and he was going to do everything in his power to make it a memorable season.

But then Lily shows up, in a killer red dress, and upends Murray. She’s calling herself Lily Fireball and has shaved at least a decade off her age in order to compete on the show. Murray tries to stop her, but she won’t be deterred. She introduces herself to Dylan and makes an immediate impression. While she may not be on the show to look for love, she is definitely looking forward to stirring things up in the house. And while Murray had been blindsided by Lily’s return as a contestant, he is told that he can’t let Dylan send her home until at least week eight.

And then Murray gets hit with yet another twist to this season. Because of Covid restrictions, they’ve had to cut their staff to the bones. And when the restrictions tightened a little bit more, the women were no longer able to leave when Dylan sent them home. The production staff had to keep everyone in the bubble until all the filming was completed. He had to find a place to set up the Juliets who Dylan decided he didn’t have enough chemistry with, so he set up the house at the bottom of the hill for the rejected contestants and called it The Convent.

Having all the women stay the entire time created extra drama for the show, as the women were fighting in the main house, and there were women fighting in The Convent, and they had cameras up to catch it all. But the drama was also building up behind the scenes, because Murray was absolutely, completely, 100 percent certain that he was in love with Lily. He had set up this whole season for her. And now she’s all over the set, creating drama in all the best ways.

Murray’s job is to create romance for people who are practically strangers. He knows how to guide a conversation to open someone to the possibility of love. He knows how to set the scene. He knows how to increase the sexual tension, how to use humor, how to bring people closer together without them even realizing it. He’s done it for years, and he’s very good at it. But when the one woman he loves is right in front of him, can Murray bring about the happiest ending of them all for himself? Or will he choke when it’s everything that’s on the line?

Not Here to Make Friends is a novel from Australia’s Jodi McAlister, based on her years of studying pop culture as a college professor. Her take on the backstage happenings of a dating reality show based clearly on The Bachelor is such an amazing ride. It’s smart and funny, and McAlister clearly understands the emotional ride that is a perfectly produced reality show, because she recreates that in this book.

From the first page, I was hooked. I could barely set this book aside, even to get snacks, until I got to the end. I loved these characters, and I just wanted to spend so much more time with them. Fans of reality shows will love the look behind the scenes, and anyone who loves that big reality show drama can soak it up here. This is a must read for fans of The Bachelor, and also for those (like me) who don’t really watch the dating shows but just love to read stories with big drama.

Egalleys for Not Here to Make Friends were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.