Picking Daisies on Sundays by Liana Cincotti Review: A Sweet Second-Chance Fake-Dating Rom-Com

Picking Daisies on Sundays centers on Daniella Daisy Maria, a fashion student and self-described hopeless romantic who runs into her former childhood best friend and longtime crush, Levi Coldwell, for the first time in four years. Levi — portrayed as a patient, quietly devoted literature major who has long masked his own feelings for Daniella — asks her to play his fake girlfriend at his sister's wedding. She agrees, immediately regrets it, and the story unspools from there. The novel is a romance that stacks multiple familiar tropes — second-chance, fake dating, and friends-to-lovers — into a single narrative, with a wedding-party setting (including, per chapter summaries, a softball game that puts both protagonists in uncomfortable proximity) serving as the pressure-cooker for their evolving dynamic. One passage from the book captures its emotional register plainly: "I'll buy you flowers every day for the rest of my life if it makes you this happy."

Cincotti wrote the novel while in her twenties and originally self-published it before a traditional publisher, Forever, acquired it for a forthcoming edition. That trajectory — from self-publishing to mainstream imprint — situates Picking Daisies on Sundays within a wave of digitally native romance authors whose reader bases preceded their print deals. The book is the anchor title of Cincotti's Heartstrings series, which also includes Don't Be In Love and the novella Daisy & Levi's Christmas Special. Publishers and booksellers have positioned it alongside Lynn Painter and Jenny Han, two authors closely associated with breezy, emotionally earnest young-adult and new-adult romance — a framing that signals both the book's tonal register and its intended readership.

The novel's most noted asset in available source commentary is the relationship between its two leads. Sources describe Levi as a character who "silently adores Daniella while masking his deep feelings," and the slow-burn tension between that restraint and Daniella's own insecurity — her fear that she is simply not Levi's type — provides the central emotional engine. Common Sense Media describes the book as "sweet and fun" and notes that it "puts a light twist on romance tropes, adding in the flair of both a high-couture fashion student and a college literature major who are looking at what comes next." The humor runs alongside genuine warmth: themes of anxiety, young love, and friendship bonds are flagged by multiple sources as giving the narrative more texture than its breezy premise might suggest. Common Sense Media also characterizes it as "fun, thoughtful."

The same source that praises the book's charm is candid about its limits: Common Sense Media calls it "charming if a bit predictable." Readers well-versed in fake-dating and second-chance romance conventions will recognize the structural beats before they arrive, and the novel does not appear designed to subvert those expectations so much as to execute them with warmth. That is a legitimate consideration for readers who have moved through a great deal of the genre. Additionally, Common Sense Media characterizes it as "a light summer read, perfect for the beach" — language that sets accurate expectations for scope but also signals that the novel does not attempt heavier emotional or thematic territory.

Picking Daisies on Sundays is aimed squarely at readers of new-adult and contemporary romance who find comfort in familiar tropes rendered with sincerity. Its protagonists are college seniors navigating post-graduation uncertainty alongside romantic confusion, making its concerns — self-discovery, the fear of misreading a lifelong friendship, the question of what comes after school — specific to that life stage. Readers who enjoy the emotional accessibility of Lynn Painter or the nostalgic warmth of Jenny Han are the audience the book explicitly courts, and sources suggest it delivers within that lane. Those seeking genre-bending ambition or unconventional structure will want to look elsewhere, but readers in search of an emotionally earnest, humor-inflected romance built around two characters with genuine history are the natural fit for this one.