This was a such a fun read, full of character that you will fall in love with instantly and will have you in tears with laughter. The author did an amazing job at perfectly combining humor and romance with an element of suspense that kept the pages turning. I also loved that as the story evolved and developed it revealed the complexity of each characters and their pasts, exposing a depth that will further endear you to their story. I highly recommend this book to all readers.

Hmm...this book gave me mixed feelings – it was like it was written by two people. The beginning didn't do much for me but as the story starts to unwind it got better and i did enjoy myself by the end of it.

The plot it self was good; it had a lot of mystery, surprises and funny banter between all the characters.

For my first read i wasn't wowed but i'll probably try this author again. This story gets 3,5*.

Review copy received by NG for an honest review***

The Love Scam was a funny rom-com that manages to utilize many romance tropes (as intended) while establishing a fairly interesting plot.

Rake Tarbell - previously wealthy and childless - finds himself in Venice, with no money or memory of how he got there, but to make matters worse, he's presented with Lillith, his daughter, by the charming but mysterious Claire Delaney. Rake has a lot of questions, Delaney has many of the answers, but there's more to this story than it seems at first glance.

The story was funny and romantic with a touch of mystery, and I could honestly say that it had a good plot. Lillith was definitely my favorite character. I enjoyed this book far more than Danger, Sweetheart, but that isn't to say that it doesn't have it's own problems. For one, the writing style was kind of weird, but more importantly, the romance wasn't very well built. It felt quite abrupt, especially on Delaney's side.

Other than that, the story was quite funny, it had a nice plot, and I would recommend this book to others who want to read a fluffy romance.

I really did not know what to make of this book. I think I must have been expecting something similar to the Betsy series and this was not that at all even though the same snarky humor was interwoven throughout the whole book, it just fell flat for me. I spent most of the time confused by the storyline and having to jump back and forth in time did not help at all! So, for me, it was just okay. I have read so many of the books Ms. Davidson has written and have loved all of them! Definitely not one I will be keeping or rereading!

I didn't realise this was the second book in the series until after I had downloaded it from Netgalley. Although I haven't read the first book about brother Blake, I don't think it made much difference to my enjoyment of this book - which, sadly, was limited. It was merely okay. I enjoyed Davidson's early Undead series books, but after a while they became a bit silly. That's what I felt about this book. The author was trying hard to make it funny by including a whole lot of tropes, all of which are listed at the end, but I think she tried too hard and it all fell flat. I didn't care enough about the characters, and the scenario was just too far-fetched for me to be interested.

***Disclaimer: This e-ARC was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Huge thanks to them. ***

Oof, what to say about this book. Let me start with this: I love what MaryJane Davidson set out to do - writing a romcom completely made out of tropes and taking the piss out of them? Fantastic idea, I love some ridiculing of the things I secretly swoon over. But the execution lacked a lot for me.
Foremost, I just didn't believe the romance. There was no real chemistry and I didn't really understand why they fell in love.
And while I enjoyed some parts of the book (read: Lilith), and did frequently like Rake's POV, I also find it a tad annoying at times.
This walked a fine line between being funny and being obnoxious and most of the time, it was the latter for me.
Sadly, not my cup of tea but overall, I can see a lot of people loving this.
I also think I wouldn't have been as confused if I'd read the first installment in this series which apparently chronicles the same story but from other characters' POV, if I understand correctly? So maybe that was the issue.
Still, a quick and entertaining if somewhat lackluster read.

4.5 stars. This was great! Rake took a little getting used to, as did some aspects of the writing style, but once all of the pieces of the story were in place, I fell in love with the banter between Rake and Delaney and got a kick out of the crazy shenanigans they were dealing with. I laughed out loud often, I cared about what happened to the characters, and I enjoyed how everything wrapped up in the end.

This seems to happen concurrently with the first book, Danger, Sweetheart. I definitely preferred Rake to Blake, frankly. I think I picked the right brother by starting with this book. (Language, sex)

First, my bad: I started reading The Love Scam without realizing that it’s the second book in a duet, and that many of the events would have made more sense if I’d previously read Danger, Sweetheart. Once I realized that I probably should have set aside The Love Scam and gotten a copy of Danger, Sweetheart, because there were so many plot developments and interactions between characters that completely passed over my head. But I was so far into The Love Scam already that I didn’t want to stop … anyway, the moral of the story is that these two books really need to be read in order, and I fully admit that my enjoyment of the second was almost certainly diminished by not having read the first.

MaryJanice Davidson has a somewhat unusual stream-of-consciousness writing style that took some time for me to adjust to, but once I did I decided I really liked it. The Love Scam felt a little bit like one of my favorite childhood books, The Westing Game, in that there’s a big complex caper and each character has a role to play in it but only the person pulling the strings at the top sees the whole picture. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the resolution of that plot—it felt really fast and I’m not sure everything made sense—but again, I might have understood more if I’d read Danger, Sweetheart. I liked the characters of Delaney and Rake, though eight-year-old Lillith was somewhat beyond belief with her near-psychic powers and calm maturity. (Though, to be honest, the entire book is decidedly over-the-top and beyond belief.) While the book is billed as a romance, the Rake-Delaney relationship feels like a comparatively minor and rushed part of the story.

Overall, I’d say The Love Scam is maybe not my kind of book—I generally don’t do slapstick—but there’s every chance I’d like it more if I took the time to read Danger, Sweetheart and then re-read this.

I really enjoyed this cute and fun RomCom.
Rake starts out confused and out of sorts with his surroundings and stays that way for much of the story. Claire seems to know more than she lets on, but isn’t ready to give away her secrets.

I think as the reader I sometimes felt just as off balance as Rake, but I enjoyed the ride. Definitely not the usual predictable story and not told in the usual way.

“I wouldn’t have said no to another kiss, though. You’re the best kisser.” He saw the unwilling smile bloom. “You are! You fiend, you knew it all along.”
“I did not!”
“You’re always walking around with your lips hanging out, flaunting them, being all oh my God please don’t tickle me again.”

I started it not realizing that it was the second book in the Danger series and there are many references to book one. But that just made me want to go back and catch up on what I missed.
-4.5 Stars-

This is a hard-to-read mess of a story, and I started skimming about a quarter of the way into it. The book starts with confusing prologues that are annoyingly vague and might have made more sense if one had read the first book in the series (though it was not clear when I requested this from NetGalley that there was a previous book that runs parallel in time with this one, and honestly I don't think it would have made this story better).

The main character is named Rake Tarbell. That alone should have stopped me in my tracks. Rake? I guess that was meant to be funny because he was a rich playboy, but of course with a heart of gold and the ability to speak five languages. He wakes up in Venice and can't remember how he got there, his accounts are wiped, and he might have a young daughter. Plus there is Delaney, a strangely attractive woman who seems to know more than she is letting on and she giggles, folks. Mapcap is the best way to describe this story, nonsensical is another option.

Why didn't someone edit this? The format is so confusing. Sometimes the dialogue is in parenthesis and italicized but sometimes these parenthetical statements are Rake's and then Delaney's inner snarky thoughts. Also, at first it's just Rake's inner dialog that we get and then at some point it shifts to include Delaney. Actual dialog in quotations is often not attributed to the speaker, so it's hard to tell who is saying what. Argh!

Meanwhile Rake can't believe he's gone like three days without having sex and Delaney, against her better judgment, of course, is falling for this guy whose mama taught him to have a moral compass and it's finally shining through when he's been told he might be a father, has been stripped of his comfortable life, and keeps getting giggled at. Oh and I believe the fact that he's enamored with water taxis is supposed to endear us to him. Didn't work.

The romance part of this was underwhelming, and I just could not suspend belief or even comprehend what was going on enough to give this more than two stars.

Highly entertaining, fun and emotionally thrilling journey filled with interesting and engaging charters, witty dialog, heartwarming twists and sweet passion. Was a great read from beginning to end and so hard to put down.

This author always makes me laugh out loud...she’s a knee slapped for me. It’s been a while since I read her. It was good to read her again.

The Love Scam by MaryJanice Davidson is strangely interesting. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the characters and what is happening in the story line. It seems to be a game of cat and mouse but who is the cat and who is the mouse is not clear; but the reader is compelled to continue on to find out what is actually going on. Once the story line catches direction the story gets exciting and continues to a satisfactory conclusion with all the oddness dispelled and all the answers clear and concise and all the characters clearly identified. I had some problems with the way the author dealt with some of her explanations of the Italian language usage and some other references. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Rake & Blake might be brothers but they are worlds apart yet they both love their mother and they will do anything to keep her safe. So when Blake decides that their mother needs help he doesn’t give Rake a choice but nothing goes to plan. Rake wakes up in Venice and he has no idea how he got there and even worse all his money is gone. And he might just be a father & his saviour is a woman that seems to know too much about him. Delaney knows that she has to see this case through no matter how she feels about Rake he is the means to get to her dream. She knows that she has to find out more about Rake and to see if he will be a good father to Lillith as she promised her friend that she would look after her daughter. Rake can’t believe that this clever little girl could be his daughter he is freaked out but he doesn’t care whatever the test says. He knows that he has to find a way to get through to his brother Blake as he knows that something is wrong and he needs to find a way back to his family. Can they figure this out and will everything work out in the end? A good read. I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

DNF... this book just didn't work for me. It was too all over the place and I just didn't find myself picking it back up.

the love scam is part rom-com, part caper, and rake tarbell is the perfect hero for this kind of story. he's rich but also ridiculous, and when he gets caught up in lilith and claire's shenanigans, well zany things happen.
this story is fizzy and charming, but there's not a lot of substance here. the plot is fun, the cast engaging, but i personally prefer a bit more heft.

still the perfect book to read while relaxing by the pool.

**the love scam will publish on august 4, 2020. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/st. martin's press in exchange for my honest review.

I received an ARC from Netgalley and I now have to add MaryJanice Davidson to my list of favorite authors. I was hooked from page one with a description of a hangover that was so vivid, it brought me back to my younger days when I was stupid enough to suffer from them: “His eyes were so gritty and the room so quiet, he could hear his eyelids sticking and unsticking as he blinked. And sometime in the last few hours, he’d eaten...a dead bird? And washed it down with another dead bird? One that had drowned in vermouth?” It’s not his only hangover. Another is described like this: “Sometime in the night, his tongue had been switched out for a wad of cotton. A dirty wad that tasted like booze. ‘My head is still attached to my body, right? It didn’t blow up or anything?’ He gingerly felt his skull, worried his fingers would sink into it like bread dough. ‘My brain feels really explodey.’”

The dry humor continues with ingeniously punctuated interruptions of sentences via italics, parentheses, and paragraph breaks. This leads to a sometimes difficult-to-follow series of thoughts, but only because they are so realistic in their simulation of the rapid-fire thoughts common to all of us. Here’s a funny example:

(in italics) Oh, now that’s too damned ridiculous. “She’s completely coherent! It’s our mom! She’d be coherent if she was dead!” (italics again) If she was—wait, that makes no—no! Stand by your senseless statement! Double down on the senseless!

The characters are memorable and lovable. The plot is amusing until near the end, when it gets a bit confusing. Really, that would be my only complaint. I got a little confused near the end: “This dinner looked like the last scene in a sitcom where everyone talks about the lessons learned and then leaves, only to reappear a week later for the next episode.” I half expected Rake to deadpan, “So, you see, the answers were inside of us all along.” Because he is self-deprecating like that, and wouldn’t be averse to using a cliche to make a point. His character is incredibly likable and sympathetic, and as it turns out, very astute. Delaney is a great conflicted hero, a little harder to like/trust because it is clear she is hiding something, whereas Rake is more or less the victim. Lilith is another hero in this story, so really, there are three heroes. And to be honest, I loved all of them! I highly recommend this book and will be looking for more from this author.

OMG! This was good!
Rake is hungover and stranded in Venice after getting completely rat arsed on Vermouth and for the first 25% of the book I felt that I was as hungover and confused as he was. The timeline jumped a few times and we see snapshots of scenes of the night before in a mixed-up order and this is exactly how my mind works after a good (or bad) night out on the tiles.
It is such a fast read and the dialogue is quick and witty. The characters are fab. I loved how vulnerable Claire is when she sleepwalks and we get a glimpse into her childhood. Lillith is super cool and smart but a little bit freaky in how cool and collected she is. Rake is adorable and a total goof. It's a fabulous cast with a great mystery. I never felt that I knew exactly what was going on but I was enjoying every minute of it! A difficult book to put down, so funny and hugely entertaining.

I found this a strange book to get into. It wasn’t very realistic, the main characters were not particularly likeable, especially at the start of the book. The writing style was a bit muddled, narrating from many viewpoints and sometimes foretelling terrible things to come, which are not as bad as expected.

Rake starts the book as too dim for words, he doesn’t know how he arrived in Venice, in a five-star hotel, which bizarrely he never goes back to, then he has a mishap that makes him extremely ill. Claire seems to be looking after him but she is keeping huge secrets, and Lillith is a clever little girl who has the knack of remaining unnoticed when necessary. She also may or may not be Rake’s daughter. They are all Americans who live in America, and there is no real explanation for why they are all in Venice.

If you can get past all the oddities of the book, which perhaps takes a third of the story, it is actually quite funny, and clicks along at great pace. Rake turns out to be much more clever than he looks, but millionaire or not he really needs to get a job to keep him from getting himself in trouble! But the star of the show is Lillith, more clever than the rest by far!

The Love Scam is about a carefree bachelor named Rake who wakes up in Venice with no identification, no money, and no idea how he got there. In Venice he meets Claire, along with his maybe daughter Lillith.

I really did not like this book. The writing is pretty good, and I love the setting. Venice is a beautiful city and I was transported back there through MaryJanice’s writing.

The characters did not jive with me at all. Rake is an overgrown man-child and I did not care at all what happened to him. Additionally, the storytelling was S L O W. I reached the halfway point and wondered if I had really learned anything that moved the plot or supposed romance forward.

I am willing to give the author another shot because maybe this just isn’t the book for me, but this was not a book I would recommend reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for a copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest review.