Make-Believe Wedding by Sarah Mayberry

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Title: Make-Believe Wedding
Author: Sarah Mayberry
Series: The Great Wedding Giveaway #9
Published by: Tule Publishing
Release Date: July 28, 2014
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 220
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2022 Bookish Resolutions DTTH, Lenoreo's 2022 COYER Spring
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Everyone in Marietta, Montana, is in love and getting married - at least that’s the way it feels to Andie Bennett the night of the Valentine’s Ball. As she watches the man she’s loved from afar for half her life dance with another woman, Andie allows herself a moment of sheer fantasy as she fills out a stray entry form for the Great Wedding Giveaway. Andie channels years of fantasy and yearning for Heath McGregor onto the page, but she never intends to actually enter the Giveaway. Only a crazy woman would do that. But fate has other ideas….

When Heath learns he and Andie are last minute finalists in the Great Wedding Giveaway, he’s completely baffled. How on earth could anyone make such a ridiculous mistake? When it becomes clear that Andie will be humiliated if the slip-up becomes public, Heath does what any good friend would - he suggests they pretend the engagement is real until the Giveaway is over and then quietly “break up” when no one is paying any attention. It’s the perfect solution, except Heath very quickly realises that pretending Andie is his is no hardship at all. In fact, it may just be the best thing that’s ever happened to him…

My Review:

4 stars — Well that one read up really fast!  And it was exactly what I was looking for, a solid contemp romance.

Andie and Heath were pretty typical of what I expect from this kind of romance — small flaws but generally pretty easy to love.  Andie had spent a lot of time with insecurities about herself mostly wrt the fact she didn’t look like Heath’s typical woman, and that probably got older for me now than it would have 10 years ago…but at the same time it didn’t take over the narrative.  I loved that she was pretty confident in herself in all areas of her life outside of her love life.  She was a smart and capable electrician, she had no problems with her outdoorsy hobbies — all that was refreshing.  And I appreciated seeing her play the balance of standing up to her brother, while not pushing him away.

Heath was one of those guys who probably had a bit of an unfair reputation because he just hadn’t met the girl who wowed him.  I enjoyed how once his eyes were opened, he didn’t hem and haw about it too much.  I mean, he was shocked for sure, but he recognized that what he was feeling was different than with other women he’d dated.

And they had great chemistry once those doors had been opened!  I definitely felt the connection.

The giveaway stuff was probably a teensy bit hokey, in that everyone raved about their entry and it seemed solid, but not rave-worthy.  But it was still cute and satisfying for my romantic heart.

Shout out to Lily as well, she was a pretty great friend.  Can’t help but wonder if she has her own love story, there definitely felt like hints.

All in all it hit what I was looking for, which was something easy and quick.