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My Review:Title: Fake Wife
Author: Stacey Lynn
Series: Crazy Love,
Published by: Loveswept
Release Date: January 9th 2018
Format: eARC
Pages: 219
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 AtoZ Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Winter Switch 2017/18
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:
Blurb:This marriage is strictly business... until the temptation gets way too real.
Corbin:
I loved my grandma, but I don’t need her money. All I care about is keeping the house—the only place that’s ever felt like home. That, and screwing over my dad, who wants to turn the property into a mall. There’s only one catch: To receive my inheritance, I have to get married within six months. Me, the guy who’s never dated a girl for more than six minutes. Now I need to find a woman I can trust. So when I’m rear-ended by a Prius, I figure it’s a sign that I’m supposed to meet gorgeous, down-to-earth Teagan Monroe.
Teagan:
First I lose my job. Then I come home and find out—in the most graphic way possible . . . yeah, that way—that my boyfriend is a cheating jerk. And then I speed off and nearly kill Portland’s sexiest bachelor. Corbin Lane should be pissed. Instead, he offers me more money than I’ve ever seen in my life to marry him and live together in a mansion for two years. No sex. No feelings. Just cash—enough to make all my dreams come true. Then we go and break all our rules . . . and I realize I’m falling in love with my fake fiancé.
I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.
3.5 stars — This one started off really strong, and then somewhere along the way I started losing my enthrallment with it. It did pull me back in for the ending though. I started this one after midnight and stayed up late needing to read one more chapter, so it was very compelling to begin with. Part of that is that I just really enjoy Fake Relationship tropes…I don’t know what it is about them, but I always love seeing a couple slowly fall in love when forced to act in love I guess. And this one started off good in that direction, but it didn’t completely follow the formula…which can be a good thing, mix it up right? But along with a few things that ended up bugging me, I guess I needed more familiarity in the formula or something.
Both Corbin (and I can’t help but say Korben Dallas every time) and Teagan started off as extremely likable characters. I felt for both of them, when they met they were both struggling with shiznit, kwim? I mean Corbin had just lost his grandma, and was floundering in grief and then the complication of her will stipulations on top of that. And Teagan was dealing with the loss of her job and then her cheating boyfriend. I was really pulled in by both of them, and they were very sympathetic characters. And I loved the way they met, and how their first interaction went. I loved that Teagan was both enthralled by Corbin, but her star-struckedness didn’t make her naive and silly…she was still skeptical of his proposal and relatively safe about it…though I suppose in the end she does still go with him out of the city. But regardless, I appreciated her almost down-to-earth-ness.
But I think it was Corbin’s temper and mood swings (which are fully acknowledged) that started my descent into less enthrallment. I know Teagan called him out for being a dick, and eventually he apologized, but the problem is that I didn’t understand what brought on these mood changes. We typically weren’t in his POV when they happened, and although we get a bit of an impression that he’s concerned about his attraction to her when he’d wanted to keep it business, that just wasn’t enough of an explanation for me. And that kept happening again and again…it got a little frustrating. Add in his family drama that was initially hinted at, and later explained, and I think I just wasn’t always understanding what his motivations were.
And while I know I was reading an ARC, and there very well could be another editing/proofing pass before publication, I found myself stumbling over sentence structure on occasion (meaning I would have to go back to the beginning of the sentence to remember what the sentence was about). And not only that, but sometimes I just didn’t understand what was being said. Maybe I was tired? But as with not getting Corbin’s motivations for his moods, there were other little things that happened in the story that I just didn’t follow…
One final thing, this one had quite a bit of drama that centered on them not talking to each other and making assumptions about the others feelings. While this is to be expected a bit with two strangers, it stretched on WAY longer than I personally like. I just got frustrated with them and wanted to roll my eyes. However, I really appreciated the way the ending played out…there were hurt feelings and overreactions on all sides, but unlike the rest of the book, they didn’t last too long.
OK, back to the good stuff! Teagan was kind of adorable. I loved her ambitions, and would have loved to see more of her interacting with horses since it was her passion. And obviously I loved her love of books… 😛 And she had a bit of sass to her that made me smirk, and I loved the way she was always herself. I also appreciated how she dealt with Drake. And when Corbin wasn’t being a dick, he was kind of adorable too. I loved how passionate he was about his work as well, and I loved his memories of his grandparents.
And their chemistry started off a bit slower for me, but when it heated up, hoo boy did it heat up. Steamy scenes — two thumbs up!
I’m also pretty intrigued by Corbin’s friends, Trey and Caitlin…I sense stories there. I loved how they interacted with Corbin and tried to keep him on a good path.
So yeah. A bit of a mixed bag. Lots of good, but lost a half star in the middle with all the drama drama… If it wasn’t for the strong beginning and end, I probably would have rounded down instead of up.
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