I really enjoyed this romcom! It reminded me of Dating Dr. Dil in the best way! It’s a fake dating romance between two Chinese Canadians (yay Canada!) trying to get their meddling families off their backs about getting married that turns into a real connection. Don’t you just hate it when your family is right and they actually did know what was best for you?? Anyways, I loved it.

a charming, lighthearted rom-com that brings the best of opposites-attract and fake-dating tropes to life with a fresh, humorous spin. Emily Hung, a writer and barista, is tired of hearing about Mark Chan, the golden child of her parents' social circle. According to her mom, Mark is a near-perfect human being who has single-handedly solved all of the world’s problems. But Emily isn’t impressed. She thinks he's just another boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer who doesn't understand her world.

When they’re thrown together at Emily’s sister's wedding, sparks fly—not the romantic kind, but more of the "I-can’t-stand-you" kind. The idea of being constantly compared to Mark is driving Emily up the wall, and with her mom breathing down her neck about marriage, Emily comes up with a plan: convince Mark to pretend to be her boyfriend to put an end to her mother’s relentless matchmaking attempts. Mark, initially reluctant, agrees, and thus begins their hilarious and awkward journey of fake dating.

The initial chemistry between Emily and Mark is fantastic—there’s sharp, witty banter, and Emily’s frustration with the situation is relatable. What makes this story really work, though, is the slow unraveling of their fake relationship into something real. As Emily spends more time with Mark, she begins to realize that he's far more complex than she assumed, and maybe—just maybe—that argyle sweater is actually kind of charming.

The pacing is excellent, with a series of fun and increasingly ridiculous "fake dates" that bring the characters closer together. These moments are where the book really shines, balancing humor with more meaningful moments of character growth. Emily, with her dry wit and vulnerability, is easy to root for, and Mark’s earnestness makes him more than just a “boring engineer”—he’s thoughtful, kind, and, in the end, more in touch with his feelings than Emily ever gave him credit for.

Full disclosure, I read reviews of this book before I started reading it and got a little dissuaded to read it. This is one instance where I'm glad I didn't listen to some of the reviews. I had a blast reading it and immediately started one of the author's other books after finishing this one.
I enjoyed how quickly the pace of the book was, so it kept it fresh and I was interested in what was happening. I enjoyed seeing the relationship develop between the two main characters.

This was average at best. I was very put off by the female main character in the beginning. She just kept jumping to conclusions about things and I wanted her to slow her brain train down a bit.

This was so fun. Family pressure results in fake dating, a typical trope but this was so well done. The journey to the HEA was fun.

Jackie Lau's Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie is an absolute delight! This charming and heartwarming romance had me hooked from the very first page. It's the perfect blend of sweet and spicy, with characters you can't help but root for and a storyline that's both funny and touching.

This book was so stinking cute! A super cute and fast-paced rom-com with a fake-dating scheme to put a meddling mother’s matchmaking to a stop that shows you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover (and maybe… mother knows best?)

Emily Hung is an author writing her next novel and working as a barista to help pay the bills. In a family full of sisters who are all now married, her mother is set on getting her married next and has picked Mark Chan as her perfect match. But when they meet at her sister’s wedding and Emily is NOT impressed, she writes it off as a no-go. But her mother won’t give up that easy and sets them up again, leading Emily to come up with a plan to fake date Mark so her mother will leave her alone. And she truly means fake the dates and say they were out when really, she is sitting on her couch watching TV to ‘research’ for her novel. But with her mother’s friends always seeming to be where her and Mark are supposed to be, they find they have to actually start going on these fake dates to make it believable. As their dates go on, Emily starts to realize that Mark isn’t what she initially thought and that maybe her mom wasn’t so wrong after all.

I just loved the set up of this book so much with the truly fake dating scheme that turns into a relationship. Emily had so many presumptions about Mark based off what her mom told her and she jumped to a lot of conclusions when they first met. I loved seeing them get to know each other more and her slow realization that she was quick to judge him. I also LOVE that we got his POV in part two! Seeing the first half of the relationship solely through her eyes and then seeing what he had been thinking all along was literal perfection. I LOVE Mark so much. The man has a cat named Ms. Muffins, I mean, what’s not to love about him? They ended up being such a great pair and complemented each other in so many ways. I loved the emotional growth that we had and the payoff we got when they finally gave in to their feelings! Their chemistry and banter were top tier.

There was also a lovely storyline between Emily and her mother that made my heart so happy. Their heart to heart in the later half of the book was so beautiful and really added so much to Emily’s character story arc as well!

If you’re looking for a contemporary romance that will make you laugh and squeal, I highly suggest Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie. It was sweet with a dash of spice, filled with witty banter, fantastic tension, and all the feels!

Thank you Atria for the copy of this book!

Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie is a sweet romance of a fake relationship that leads to something more filled with lots of desserts.

This is my first time reading Jackie Lau's work so I didn't quite know what to expect. What I got was a very sweet, sometimes too much, romance that was set up by the mother of the female protagonist. I found Emily Hung a hard character to like at times. She was so unsure of herself that I just wanted to shake some confidence into her. Mark is very malleable to the wants of people in his life and that at times also got to be too much. I wanted a little bit more conflict that we got especially since the conflict was more with Emily's confidence than anything else. Overall it was still a very quick and enjoyable romance. I would definitely pick up more from Jackie Lau in the future.

I really enjoyed Donut Fall in Love, so I was delighted to have the chance to read Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie. Jackie Lau brought her signature wit and charm and the HEA. I will recommend this book to my friends.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

The book started off slowly. Emily felt kind of whiny with her book writing and publishing information. While I'm sure it's totally accurate, it felt like it took up large chunks of the story. I appreciated her familial relationships, especially with her mother, and loved seeing how at the end, her mom opening up and showing Emily that she really cared and was proud of her. Mark felt kind of blah as a leading man. It was a good, but not great story for me.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book.

Unfortunately, I decided that this wasn’t the book for me and have decided to not finish reading.

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to read this one and look forward to future books.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau!

This was a cute read. I enjoyed the fake dating and who doesn't love an argyle sweater. It was a sweet read.

Synopsis:

Writer and barista Emily Hung is tired of hearing about here mom rave about the great Mark Chan. In reality, he’s just a boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer. But now that Emily is her family’s last single daughter, her mother is fixated on getting her married and she has her sights on Mark. There’s only one solution, clearly : convince Mark to be in a fake relationship with her long enough to put an end to her mom’s meddling. Unfortunately, lying isn’t enough. Family friends keep popping up at their supposed dates—including a bubble tea shop and cake-decorating class—so they’ll have to spend more time together to make their relationship look real. With each fake date, though, Emily realizes that Mark’s not quite what she assumed and maybe that argyle sweater isn’t so ugly after all…

Review:

This was a cute and uplifting read. Emily was a sweet and quirky FMC in an atypical career for an Asian family. I love these kinds of characters because that (South) Asian for me upbringing is super influential so its nice to see people breaking out of the mold. Mark sounds swoonworthy with his sweater vests and all - he's caring, respectful and romantic. I enjoyed all of the family characters in this book as well, it really was a cast of characters. It was a bit silly so it makes for a good chuckle.

3.5 stars rounded up 4.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for my digital copy!

Won’t lie, the title had me.

But this book? So cute 🥰

Fake dating. A questionable night. Meddling mothers. I am here for it all.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read and review.

Lau’s latest romance is based loosely on Bridget Jone’s Diary (which is based loosely on Pride and Prejudice). Meddling parents want to see their daughter Emily, a writer/tutor/barista, happily settled down like her sisters, and try to not-so-subtley fix her up with the lawyer son of a family friend into into her orbit at her sister’s wedding. Emily sees Mark Chan as a boring dweeb who won’t put down his phone. Things come to a head when her mother sets them up on a brunch date.

To placate their marriage-minded mothers, Emily and Mark make a pact to fake-date to keep their parents off their backs. Since their well-meaning family and friends keep popping up to monitor the progress of the relationship, they have to actually go out a few times, instead of just making up outings. Eventually, Mark starts looking pretty good, and afte they get together for real, the narrative shifts to a dual point of view, as if once Emily lets him in, we get to see him in a different way, too. Mark’s voice and internal monologue is distinct and a great opportunity to show how aligned they are in a number of ways, most especially on men pitching ideas to Emily, suggesting she write it and then share the royalties with them for germinating the concept. I’d have liked to see the dual narration from the beginning, but that’s just my preference, and I understand why the author made that choice.

Each chapter is prefaced with a funny quote, maligned from Shakespeare or the fake authors Wmily admires and follows on social media. The voice is great—breezy, matter-of-fact and sometimes naive, self-critical and tongue in cheek self-referential. Emily is a writer bemoaning having to market her work with a post about $15 cherry pie milkshakes when the novel is generational trauma… and it’s witty and funny. The feeling of getting “old” at 33, enjoying a quiet bar and getting home to bed before midnight is so relatable. She remarks on other best-selling authors with wonderful, subtle snark: one man brags about writing every day even as his mother is dying (he didn’t change his routine during his wife’s labor birthing his children, either) while another cranks out a new novel every other month because she likes to feel productive.

This has potential to be a culinary novel because food and wine is mentioned so many times: baked goods, gelato, a ten-course Chinese wedding feast—-it feels like a missed opportunity to not have included more sensory details. I don’t mind doing the work of looking up the Cantonese dim sum dishes, but a little more context and description—not a translation—would be welcome. Lau writes knowledgeably about the warmth and frustration of family, particularly sibling and mother-daughter relationships. It’s hilarious that as soon as Emily capitulates and starts dating Mark, the “just go out with him” pressure turns into “marry him” pressure. Emily’s voice provides a funny, real, (and sometimes cynical) view of the publishing industry from the lens of a writer struggling to make a living.

I think Jackie Lau is an author that grows on you. I thought Donut Fall In Love was a bit constructed and that only the food descriptions stood out… but have to say re-reading Love Lies and Cherry Pies four months after my intial read made me appreciate her skill a lot more. She gets better with every book.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #LoveLiesAndCherryPie via #NetGalley.

Thank you to Atria books for sending me this advanced copy of Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie by Jackie Lau.

I loved where this story ended, but the beginning was a bit slow. I love the fake dating trope, it is probably one of my favorites, but it just didn’t hit quite right. The FMC, Emily, is not super likable and the MMC, Mark is very lovable, but a little bland. There were some funny bits, especially with Mark’s cat! And I loved Emily’s family! It also opened my eyes to how difficult being a writer can be! Overall, 3 stars.

I wanted to like this book so bad but it was a little too YA for me and I didn’t end up finishing it

Vivian and Mark are such an odd couple, I'm not going to lie. On paper, it makes no sense (or on Kindle screen or through headphones, however you roll) that these two are together by the end of the book - but it also some WORKS? They couldn't be more different in a lot of ways, but some shared hobbies and interests and pure sexual attraction can make up for a lot apparently. These two ended up being the queens of compromise (and if you read it you will understand why queen is a perfectly solid moniker for Mark). The comedy aspect of the book was incredibly relatable and I loved that Mark worked through his anxiety and life struggles on stage and through his routines. Vivian is seen as cold and distant, but is really just riddled with anxiety (also relatable). Even with the comedy angle, there were several emotional conversations around culture and family that were crucial for these two.

I enjoyed Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie well enough but wished for more depth. The premise hooked me: Emily’s fake dating scheme with the oh-so-perfect Mark Chan to get her meddling mom off her back had all the ingredients for a fun, opposites-attract romance. Emily’s sarcastic resistance to her mom’s relentless matchmaking, like the time she pretended to be in a relationship with her best friend just to avoid another blind date, felt relatable, and her dry wit brought some good laughs.

But, honestly, I struggled with Emily’s mother’s overbearing interference—it bordered on exhaustion. Despite Emily’s apparent discomfort, her constant raving about Mark felt a bit too much, and I just wanted Emily to stand up to her rather than go along with the elaborate ruse.

Emily and Mark’s 'dates' were filled with enjoyable, tender moments, but their chemistry, for me, felt a bit tepid. Even as they began to dismantle each other’s preconceived notions, I found their connection lacking. Mark’s gradual revelation of his hidden depth and warmth was indeed charming, but it didn’t quite solidify their bond by the end.

Unfortunately, the resolution left me unsatisfied. After all the build-up, I hoped for a more substantial payoff—something with more punch or a greater sense of change for Emily and her family, like her mom finally accepting that Emily can make her own romantic decisions. Instead, it wrapped up quickly without much depth, which felt anticlimactic.