ren ♡ 's Reviews > Best Fake Fiancé

“You’re the sun and I’m the moon,” he says slowly, carefully. “You shine and I reflect, and that’s how we always were. Without you I’m a dark, cold, dusty rock hurtling through space.”

Best Fake Fiancée was a nice and enjoyable read but compared to the first book, it felt lacking. This isn’t to say that it was a bad book… just not as memorable as the first.

♡ Plot: ♡

Daniel Loveless (29) is a single father of an adorable seven-year-old named Rusty. When his irresponsible baby mamma comes back into his life, demanding full custody at a court hearing, he panics and blurts out that he’s engaged to his childhood best friend, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ McManus (29).

Thus Daniel and Charlie have to navigate a fake engagement but it's not so easy when their feelings aren’t so fake at all...

♡ Characters ♡

Daniel and Charlotte have an opposites attract dynamic that worked really well. Daniel was the responsible one (well, after he became a dad) and Charlotte was the ditzy one with a venturesome spirit. As far as these characters go, they’re definitely going to be the least memorable for me in this series. There was nothing terribly exciting or boring about them, just average characters is all!

Rusty’s really into wombats right now. Last week I told her that she couldn’t have one as a pet, and ever since then, she’s been casually mentioning various wombat features that would just happen to make them perfect pets. For example, their poop is square, so it’s stackable.

RUSTY WAS DEFINITELY THE STAR OF THE SHOW. I was so tempted to give this book 5 stars just for her because she was so cute! I loved her zest for life and her curiosity made her such a ball of sunshine! The way her uncles dotted on her was so heartwarming too.

Of course, the Loveless brothers brought a lot of fun and banter to the story. I’m super curious about Levi’s book. I already know I’m going to love him. It’s always the quiet ones that sneak up on you, ya know?

♡ The Romance ♡

For me, the childhood friends to lovers is a difficult trope to get right and I can totally understand why many readers dislike it. Because Daniel and Charlie already had a ‘moment’ years back, their relationship was also kind of a second chance romance, so the mutual feelings were already established and I think that was my problem with the romance here. Everything about Daniel and Charlie's relationship was way too smooth sailing for me. This also meant the romance sort of fizzled out in the middle and the author had to rely on some drama to spice things up.

I thought perhaps adding some moments of mutual pining or feelings of yearning leading up to the fake relationship in the beginning would’ve made the romance more interesting.

♡ Other thoughts / Criticisms ♡

What really let this book down for me were the decisions the characters made, namely Charlie. With Rusty’s custody battle on the line, you’d think these characters would be err on the side of caution… but NOPE. Custody Battle? Don’t know her. Charlie acted more like an irresponsible fun Aunt half the time. Don’t get me wrong, I like Charlie, I just found it frustrating that she chose to be so irresponsible when there was a custody battle looming over their heads. There was also no real establishment about Charlie being a mother figure to Rusty which was rather odd. Sure, she baby sat but that’s completely different to being a mom.

Lastly, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Rusty’s mother. I have no doubt that cold vindictive bitches like her exist in real life, but I felt like her character had no real motivations other than being a plot device to push the main characters together thus making her seem very one-dimensional.

I feel like I’m a bit harsh with this review considering I gave the first book 5 stars. OH WELLS. Best Fake Fiancee was still an enjoyable read but it ultimately fizzled out towards the end due to its heavy reliance on plot devices. Anyways, the next book is Levi’s which I already know I'm going to love.

Rating: 3/5


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How do I adopt Rusty?? SHE'S THE CUTEST KID EVEERRRRR 😭😭😭

short rtc... when work isn't killing me