Dean Chapman was in the process of getting married when a stranger objected in the middle of his wedding. Sure, he wasn’t really in love with his bride-to-be but she fit his plan for his life. Now, unmarried and single, Dean learns of an assignment at work that could lead to a big promotion. The only problem is that he needs a significant other to pull off the assignment. Dean panics and claims he is already dating someone new and now he has to come up with a fake girlfriend. Enter Solange Pereira, the objector from his wedding who is still worried that she ruined Dean’s life. Can they pull off this fake relationship?
First off, I have to apologize to my friend Alli who recommended this book to me. She raved about it and thought it was so funny and sexy and had nothing but nice things to say. I read it and thought it was meh. Sorry, Alli!
The main thing that didn’t work for me was that the book didn’t feel genuine to me. Like I’m reading this great dialogue and the characters are flirting with each other and being sexy and I should be loving this but I was just not buying it. I can’t describe it but, for me, there was just something off about everything. I thought Dean and Solange had zero chemistry and I had a difficult time believing the romance. Also, I found myself cringing more than once during the sexy parts because I was so embarrassed by what these characters were saying to one another.
The book is told from dual points of view. Normally I like that because I always enjoy reading what each character thinks about the other. However, here I found Solange and Dean’s voices to be so similar that half of the time I got confused as to whose point of view I was reading and I had to go back and double-check. Also, the point of view changes throughout each chapter so it’s not like each chapter was a different point of view which might have made it a little bit easier for me to keep track of.
Honestly, I think this author’s writing just does not mesh with me. I tried to read the first book in this series The Worst Best Man and I DNFed it because I could not get into it. I just don’t think this author is for me.
That being said, what I did like in the book was Solange’s aunts and all the scenes with the families. The way that they were all there for one another was great. I also loved how everyone in the family was so close to one another but no one was really overbearing.
My final rant is, and this is probably just a me issue, but one of Dean’s main reasons for fake dating Solange is that it will help his job because he wants to make partner at his law firm by the time he’s 30. As someone who went to law school and works in the legal industry, it drives me crazy when people say they want to be a law firm partner by age 30 because that doesn’t really happen in real life. Most people, if they go to law school right after college, graduate from law school at age 25. If they want to be partner by age 30, that only gives them 5 years and you can’t really make partner in 5 years. Most individuals become partners in their mid-30s. Also, later in the book Dean says he’s been working for his firm for 8 years which means he started working there when he was 22. Unless I missed something that explained that Dean is a genius who graduated from college and law school 3 years early, this timeline does not make sense. I just don’t understand what’s happening here.
Although this book was a miss for me, plenty of people love it, including my friend!
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