Fake It ’til You Make It by Laura Carter
This is the type of book that you need to go into with where your only expectation is to be entertained. I personally never expect a romance novel to completely change my life and be the best thing I’ve ever read, I read romance to be entertained and have a good time. Hopefully, that doesn’t offend anyone. I’m a huge romance lover, but I do hold them to a different standard to other genres. Does that make sense?
I love a fake dating book and this one takes it to the next level. Not only are they pretending to date, they’re also pretending to be different people, with each other. The lies go deep in this one, and this does create some stereotypes, but thankfully they clear these issues up fairly quickly.
If you ignore the few plot holes, like needing to provide and use passport information of the person you’re pretending to be, this book is really fun.
Synopsis: Can a fake date fix everything? On a day Abbey thought would be the best of her life – her boyfriend is surely going to propose tonight, right? – it all falls he tells her he’s met someone else. And then to make things worse, she loses her job.
In an act of reimagination, she splurges her wedding savings on renting an apartment in a building she’s always dreamed of living in and kits out her wardrobe to match.
But when her family invites her ex – a close family friend – plus a date(!!) to her parents’ vow renewal, Abbey realizes her façade won’t be enough. There’s nothing for it but to fake one more thing – a romance. And she knows exactly who to ask… her hot new neighbor…
Mountains Made of Glass by Scarlett St. Clair
If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s a Scarlett St. Clair retelling. I’ve only read two of them so far but I’ve loved them both. Even though this was not an entirely unique retelling, there are too many Beauty and the Beast retellings, it did have influences from other stories and folklore so it kept things interesting.
This is also a pretty short read so is a great palate cleanser. I think I read the majority of it in one day, which is great for a fantasy. It doesn’t have a ton of worldbuilding, but I could be remembering wrong. It’s less than 300 pages so the pace is pretty fast.
Synopsis: “Could you love me?” he whispered. The question stole my breath and burned my lungs in the silence that followed.
I wanted to answer, to whisper yes into the space between us, but I was afraid.
All Gesela’s life, her home village of Elk has been cursed. And it isn’t a single curse—it is one after another, each to be broken by a villager, each with devastating consequences. When Elk’s well goes dry, it is Gesela’s turn to save her town by killing the toad that lives at the bottom. Except… the toad is not a toad at all. He is an Elven prince under a curse of his own, and upon his death, his brothers come for Gesela, seeking retribution.
As punishment, the princes banish Gesela to live with their seventh brother, the one they call the beast. Gesela expects to be the prisoner of a hideous monster, but the beast turns out to be exquisitely beautiful, and rather than lock her in a cell, he offers Gesela a deal. If she can guess his true name in seven days, she can go free.
Gesela agrees, but there is a hidden catch—she must speak his name with love in order to free him, too.
But can either of them learn to love in time?
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