Title: My Big Fat Fake Marriage
Author: Charlotte Stein
Genre: Romance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Connie has always distrusted nice guys. In her experience, they’re just waiting to reveal some horrible secret. And then she meets big, adorable, Henry Samuel Beckett—editor extraordinaire, lover of bow ties, sweet and so cheery she struggles to believe he’s real.
Until Henry Samuel Beckett—or Beck, as he’s known to most—tells her the secret underneath his sunny surface: He’s been single all his life. But in a moment of panic, he’s told everyone at his publishing house that he’s married. And when Connie, an aspiring writer herself, can’t help defending him, she ends up being the fake wife he doesn’t actually have.
When they head off on a writing retreat, surrounded by people convinced this must be a ruse, both of them can’t help but agree. Until they share their first kiss, their first touch, their first time in only one bed. Side by side, every night, as the simmering tension builds…Connie starts to wonder if this might be real after all.
I have to be honest: this felt like a badly-disguised, cliched bit of porn. The characters felt more like tropes than actual people—Connie/not really Connie and her extreme skepticism of all men, Beck’s nerdy/oblivious personality—without much of a believable explanation as to why, so I could buy into the whole thing. This just really wasn’t a good fit for me.
Charlotte Stein’s new novel is My Big Fat Fake Marriage.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 