The Fine Art of Pretending by Rachel Harris

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Title: The Fine Art of Pretending
Author: Rachel Harris
Series: The Fine Art of Pretending #1
Published by: Spencer Hill Contemporary
Release Date: September 30th 2014
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 241
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

According to the guys at Fairfield Academy, there are two types of girls: the kind you hook up with, and the kind you're friends with. Seventeen-year-old Alyssa Reed is the second type. And she hates it. With just one year left to change her rank, she devises a plan to become the first type by homecoming, and she sets her sights on the perfect date—Justin Carter, Fairfield Academy’s biggest hottie and most notorious player.

With 57 days until the dance, Aly launches Operation Sex Appeal and sheds her tomboy image. The only thing left is for Justin actually to notice her. Enter best friend Brandon Taylor, the school’s second biggest hottie, and now Aly’s pretend boyfriend. With his help, elevating from “funny friend” to “tempting vixen” is only a matter of time.

But when everything goes according to plan, the inevitable “break up” leaves their friendship in shambles, and Aly and Brandon with feelings they can’t explain. And the fake couple discovers pretending can sometimes cost you the one thing you never expected to want.

My Review:

4.5 stars — I can’t believe it took me so long to get to this book, it was so cute!!  It had so many things that I love in YAs!  It’s kind of funny too, a few elements reminded me of the DUFF movie a bit, so fans of the movie will probably like this book as well.

Aly was super cute and really easy for me to like, probably because I could empathize with what she was going through.  I remember feeling invisible when I was in high school as well, so I understand how you can have a good head on your shoulders in general, but feel desperate to just feel love and romance and think everyone else has something that you don’t have.  I mean, it was pretty obvious that what she was doing to try to change that wasn’t going to work, and she wasn’t going to be happy not being herself, but I still really understood what motivated her.  I appreciated that while she struggled with obstacles here and there, she didn’t get pushed too far and there were no huge crises.  It was just a journey for her to go through to better understand who she was, and be happy with that.

Brandon was super sweet too, I enjoyed seeing him struggle with his own issues surrounding love…which were kind of the opposite.  While I understood how his vow to stay away from love came to be, at times I wished I’d gotten a bit more in that area…like, was he really fine with his temporary relationships?  I suppose so.  It was just hard to get a vibe on what he was like before embarking on the fake relationship with Aly.  I will admit I wished the scene with his mom at the end had been a bit longer…it felt like the resolution came a bit quickly, but at the same time I guess he was changing a bit at a time all along, and that was just the final catalyst.

I LOVED Aly and Brandon together.  They were seriously so adorable, and they had ALL the chemistry, from friendship chemistry to more.  I could feel how torn they both were on how to deal with their feelings, and the anxiety over losing their friendship felt very real.

What I found interesting about this one is that the storyline went in a few directions I wasn’t expecting from a typical young adult book.  The road to their HEA had a few twists and turns, but I was never unhappy with it.  In fact it really helped them figure themselves out along the way.

I LOVED both sets of friends…they were all interesting and different and not without flaws, but inherently good people who cared about Aly and Brandon.  I’m super duper curious about Justin now and so glad to see his is the next book.  He was a twist that I wasn’t expecting.  He could have been a douchebag, but his story was a bit more nuanced than that (and I can’t wait for more).  I even appreciated the “villain” in this story…and I’m loathe to call her a villain, but she could have been a stereotypical mean girl, but instead we got to see glimpses of depth.

And sort of related to that, I liked that there wasn’t a lot of slut shaming or anything like that.  It could have gone there, but it didn’t really.  I mean, in some ways it’s a bit implied in the whole casual vs commitment thing, but I never felt like the casual girls were judged in that way (heck Kara could be a casual), just that they were looking for something else.  And the Lauren storyline in particular could have gone that way too, but it didn’t.

I will admit that I found the backstories with both sets of families a bit lacking.  They were good, but I think I would have been happier diving a bit deeper in both cases, though particularly with Brandon.

As a strange side note, this book had a few weird continuity issues (tiny timeline things, mixing up Fairfield and Fairwoods a few times), so if you’re the type of reader who easily notices things like that, well…they’re there.  I am unfortunately that kind of reader, and while it in no way takes away from the storyline, my stupid perfectionist mind wants to help fix it.

So yeah.  Solid YA for me, it both gave me things that I was looking for and surprised me with some twists.