Fake Engagement/Fake Dating | 5.5.23
Real stakes get upped when the engagement is faked
I am a well-documented lover of the fake dating trope (shenanigans! lies! forced proximity!) and of stakes in romance. What’s higher stakes than having to plan a wedding (from personal experience, even while trying to be chill, it’s not for the faint of heart) with a person you might not even like that you have no intention of going through with? The drama! Also, fun coincidence that the books I chose for this week all have the same color scheme.
Never Fall For Your Fiance by Virginia Heath. Hugh Standish, Earl of Fareham, will never get married, and despite his mother living all the way in America with her second husband, she still manages to get on his nerves about it from afar. So a few years back, he invented a fake fiance, along with a fake series of tragic events and illnesses that extended their betrothal to ensure that he could keep the ruse going and his mother across an ocean. Unfortunately, his mother is done waiting, and has gotten on a boat to plan his wedding to this wonderful (if tragic) woman, and now he has two options: admit he lied and break his mother’s heart and trust, or find a fake fiance for real to dramatically leave him midway through his mother’s visit and give him a fake heartbreak that will further extend his bachelor days until he can invent a new fake fiance later. After a chance meeting with a plucky but poor woodcut engraver, he makes her an offer she can’t afford to refuse: be his fake fiance for a few days before fake-running-off with his best friend so he doesn’t have to have an awkward conversation with his mom.
Minerva Merriwell has been supporting herself and her two younger sisters for a long time, ever since their awful drunk of a father abandoned them, and she desperately needs to money Hugh is offering her for an allegedly short if not painless few days of deception. However, she’s a deeply nice person and Hugh’s mom is also a deeply nice person, and she thinks that Hugh, despite his insistence to the contrary, is also a nice person (deeply remains to be seen). Antics ensue, we learn why Hugh’s so deadset against marriage and why it’s actually a big misunderstanding (with an impressively progressive arrangement for the time between his parents, unbeknownst to him), and of course, everyone lives happily ever after.
So. I’ve also read book 2 of this series, and I’ve picked up on a trend that means I won’t be reading the third: Virginia Heath’s characters are way too nice. That set up? The deeply complicated shenanigans inventing a fake fiance and a fake runaway bride (that never ends up happening for Reasons, but it was still a part of the plan)? So fun! But it’s immediately undercut because despite the scheme and the scheming, both Hugh and Minerva are just… nice. They make only lightly bad decisions, the stakes are relatively low and solved with minor conflict (and all the conflict there is is largely external), and the tension lags as a result. I said this a few weeks ago when I reviewed the ARC for Finn Rhodes Forever, but it remains true: I like my characters (and plots) with a little more bite to them. Virginia Heath pulls a LOT of her punches, despite her narrative set up being perfect for a lot more pain, and while I know that’s some people’s jam, it’s really not mine. It made for a frustrating read for me, a person who is maybe a little bit of a sadist as a reader. But it was well written and the romance is swoony, so if you’re into cinnamon roll characters and plot stakes that are a little low, this is an author for you.
Rating: 3.75/5
How hot? 🔥🔥
A Daring Arrangement by Joanna Shupe. Funny enough, this book is kind of similar in overarching plot to a book I recommended last week, Lauren Layne’s Marriage on Madison Avenue, it’s just the historical version. Except instead of friends faking an engagement, it’s a banished English heiress who desperately wants to return to her lower class love back in England and a thoroughly unsuitable NYC financier and stock expert with a penchant for over the top public escapades. They meet for the first time when he brings a bunch of horses to the second floor of a fancy restaurant for his birthday party, and she proposes a ploy to him while he’s drunk off his ass (and, notably, riding one of the horses).
Lady Honora (Nora) Parker’s father had banished her to NYC after discovering her love affair with a local poor artist (she ruined herself, see, expecting to be allowed to be with him), telling her to find a rich husband there before she’d be allowed to come back. So she figures, fine, I’ll find the worst fiance ever and he’ll have to relent. Unfortunately, Julius Hatcher, the aforementioned drunken horseman, has other ideas after they agree to be fake engaged, because what he needs is a fancy rich girl to make him seem more respectable. So instead of getting a ruinous rake, Nora gets a polite and doting one. It’s a battle of the wills between two strong-minded protagonists who are far more than meets the eye, and it’s an adventure absolutely worth the read.
Rating: 4.25/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
A Proposal They Can't Refuse by Natalie Caña. Our only contemporary in this roundup follows the arranged-via-blackmail engagement of Kamilah Vega, a Puerto Rican chef attempting to save her family’s restaurant, and Liam Kane, the co-owner of the whiskey distillery next door who’s trying to win a national competition before the other co-owner, his grandfather, passes away from cancer. Who blackmailed these two long-time tolerant-at-best-of-each-other business neighbors into getting engaged? Their grandfathers, who happen to be lifetime best friends. Liam’s grandfather wants to see him settled before he dies, and Kamilah’s grandfather agrees they’re perfect for each other. And what’s the blackmail part of it, beyond the obvious emotional stuff? The grandfathers own the building that Kamilah’s family’s restaurant and Liam’s distillery are in, and threaten to sell it away if they don’t agree to the match. So Liam and Kamilah decide to draw out the engagement that they both agree will never result in a marriage long enough to save their businesses and make their meddling grandfathers happy.
They end up teaming up on more than just faking an unlikely love connection (considering everyone knows they kinda hate each other), though, with Kamilah teaching Liam to focus on the story of his whiskey rather than just the distillation particulars, and Liam helping Kamilah convince her parents to give the flagging family restaurant a much-needed upgrade to stay alive in a changing, gentrifying neighborhood.
The best part of this book is honestly the meddling grandfathers. They are a HOOT, and I love how involved they both are not just in the budding romance, but also in everything else. I think this book could have gone a bit harder in some places/with some character choices, but overall this was a thoughtful and rewarding read.
Rating: 4.25/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books where the central romance plot is about a sexually experienced character teaching pleasure (for science, of course, unless…) to a curious and consenting student.
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!