By: Charlotte Stein
Many thanks to St. Martin‘s Press, St. Martin’s Griffin, and NetGalley for the ARC of this book!
Henry Samuel Beckett and Connie are neighbors. He leaves her cakes, and she goes to say thank you with a slice of a cake and she sees something she didn’t expect. Who is this guy? Well, she finds out. He’s the ultimate nice guy; the guy who has never really been with a woman before; the guy who people make fun of; the guy who told people he was married but it was fake. So Connie decides to step in and pretend to be his wife. And now they are on a writing retreat together, faking a marriage. But then there’s a kiss, and tension. She thinks he wasn’t someone more tame than her, he thinks she wants someone better than him. The tension just builds and builds. What if they are really what they need for each other?
This book has some of my favorite tropes: forced proximity, fake marriage – YES! I loved the plot, I loved the setting, and I loved the characters. Connie is sassy, witty, and just a really fun character. HSB, or Beck as he was called in the book, was a harder character to believe. Are there really men at 37 years old that are like that? Says things like Oh Fudge? That’s never been kissed? Yes, it was hard to believe his character, he was unrealistic at times, especially with the way that he spoke, but he was still likeable.
The first half of this book was very vanilla, and the second half of this book was very spicy. It went that way really quickly. The spicy scenes were well written, but it felt like the whole focus of the second half of the book was mainly the spice and not anything else. For me, I wanted more than just the spice.
So if you like sweet and spicy, this one is for you!
Publish Date: March 11 2025
Find the book here.
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