I loved The Long Game. So much so that I have six copies of it, including one in German that I can’t even read. To say I’ve been excited for this book featuring characters I loved in that one is an understatement. Ultimately, it didn’t *quite* live up to my expectations, but it was still fun to go back to Green Oak.

One thing I did love without fault in this book was Matthew. That man is a tall drink of swoony water. He’s got a mouth on him, he’s got a sense of humor, and he has the strength to stand behind his convictions and behind the people he loves. He shows up. It would be impossible not to fall in love with him. He was without a doubt the best part of this book, and I wish we would have gotten his POV like we did Cameron’s in TLG.

Josie was complicated for me. So much of her personality that I loved in TLG felt like it was lost here. I had to keep reminding myself that so much of her world got a major upheaval with the Andrew reveal and she’d been thrust into a spotlight she never asked for here. I felt for her as her past was put under a microscope for the world to judge without really knowing her. I was happy when some of her personality made a comeback later in the book. Her life spiral made it kind of difficult to feel the relationship development between her and Matthew, but Matthew carried it with his steadfastness.

Even though I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to, I’ll still be adding a copy of this one to my personal collection when it releases. Elena Armas could release a dictionary and I’d want to read and buy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ok Elena, I SEE YOU!! 👏🏻

I think The Fiance Dilemma is my new favorite book by Elena Armas!!

I was SO excited for this one because Josie was one of my fave characters from The Long Game. I’m so glad she got her own time to shine because she is a QUEEN 👑

We hit the ground running with a fake engagement because Josie had been engaged 4 times prior and her reputation was being put on blast. Enter her father (who she only very recently met) wanting to fix it and we get the funniest, swooniest, angsty “engagement”!

Right off the bat I was hooked by Josie and Matthew. He has gotta be Elena’s best MMC!! The funny nicknames, his protectiveness over Josie, and his personality were just icing on the cake! He knows how to make a person feel loved and valued. Josie is a small town girl, who is a bit all over the place. The juxtaposition was amazing and their chemistry popped off the pages!! Watching them figure out their true feelings for each other was such a joy!!

This book made me laugh, swoon, get a little teary eyed, and everything between. You'll love this is you’re into engagements of convenience!!!

I think I would read Elena’s grocery list if I’m being honest. I just loved this book SO much!! It had her classic slow burn tension and such a wonderful ending that gave me a lot of closure!! Overall I 10000% recommend grabbing The Fiancé Dilemma on July 30th!! 🥰

Thank you so much to Elena and Atria Books for this ARC!! 🫶🏻

This was amazing, but I shouldn't been surprised because everything Elena Armas has written is divine. I will definitely read more that she writes!

This is the first book. I have read by this author and now I definitely need to go back and read her backlist because this book was just an absolute delight. It has so many of my favorite things to read about and even though it’s not necessarily the most perfect book to exist, I had such a great time and I know my best friend who loves this author is going to love this book as so many other individuals are going to as well upon release !

This book had me laughing out loud at some parts and it’s definitely a quick and easy rom com to read! When Matthew agrees to a fake engagement with Josie, she has no idea what a wild ride she is in for. Being thrown off and surprised by her dad and his assistant, they are constantly having their emotions tossed around, but Matthew remains a steady rock for Josie….and she isn’t quite sure how to process that at first. I love how quirky and awkward Josie is and you can’t help but laugh at some of the things she says.

I absolutely love Matthew! He is sweet and sexy, all wrapped into one beautiful package. The way he flat out flirts with Josie had me smiling and some of those steamy moments they shared were definitely the result of that angst and slow burn building between them while they initially tried to fight their chemistry.

It releases on July 30th and is definitely a perfect rom com for the summer!

Thank you to Netgalley, Atria Books, and Elena Armas for the chance to read an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A laugh out loud, feel good and heart melting love story I couldn't put down! I loved Josie and Matthew, all the crazy side characters that made this book so silly. I also loved how soft and loving the author made Matthew's character, he had so many "awe" moments in this book it made me smile. Definitely add to your TBR list

Reviewed for NetGalley:

This one started off strong for me: quirky grandma, young mayor/coffee shop owner protagonist with an fake fiance trope thrown in.

However, after a quarter of the way in, I just started losing interest.

Thank you to NetGalley, Elena Armas, and Atria Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book just wasn’t for me. I didn’t love The Long Game, but I still liked it. Some of my favorite parts involved Josie, so I couldn’t wait for her book. However, as a main character she just fell extremely flat for me. She had very little development, the focus on her supposed daddy issues was blinding and underwhelming, the plotline involving her failed engagements honestly was never fleshed out and there we still have little details on all of the previous engagements, and she became over the top in a strange way in this book that I just couldn’t connect to at all. Also, Josie kept insisting that she wasn’t naive and then continued to make idiotic and naive decisions. It just didn’t feel like the same Josie to me and I had such a hard time reading about her. Matthew was just there. We knew virtually nothing about him, besides that he was fired and he was Adalyn’s best friend. We literally didn’t find out anything about him, his family, or his motivations pretty much until the last like 15% of the book. Also, this book only had one Matthew POV chapter (the final chapter) and I really think that did a disservice to the storytelling.

Andrew is a terrible father and having an entire second book dedicated to him being a terrible father was just not fun to read about. Josie pretty much let herself be bulldozed by everyone constantly, would randomly get a backbone for .25 second and stand up for herself, only to immediately go back to letting everyone walk all over her the next page. It was so frustrating.

Grandpa Moe was my favorite part of this book. He is a treasure and must be protected at all costs.

3.5 ⭐️

The Fiancé Dilemma is a fake engagement, friends to lovers story that follows Josie and Matthew as they navigate this intricate scheme they had developed. When Josie’s estranged millionaire father decides to come into her life, he sends his PR associate to help shine a positive light on the situation. In the process, there is a mix up that leaves everyone believing Josie is engaged. She grabs the first man she sees off the street, who happens to be her half sisters best friend, to play the role of fiancé.

I want to preface this review by saying that The Spanish Love Deception is one of my favorite books of all time. Elena Armas became an instant buy author for me because of that book and this was one of my most anticipated reads this year. This book fell a little flat for me. I felt like I was pushing myself through the first 70% of the book. It seemed like there was very little chemistry between Josie and Matthew and their scheme didn’t feel well put together. It seemed like it happened almost instantly and the details were never fully developed. It also felt like chapters just halted suddenly without wrapping up the scene. There were multiple occasions where I thought the scene was going to carry over into the next chapter but instead it switched to something new, leaving me confused. Around the 70% mark, the story did finally take a shift for me and I finished the remaining 30% in one sitting. I just hate that it took me that long to fall in love with these characters. I definitely would recommend this book, but probably not above any of Elena’s other books.

Literally obsessed. Every one of Elena’s books is better than the last! Honestly my only request is to write faster so we can have more of her books in the world!

No notes. No comments on the characters. This is a Non-review review because you just have to read this story.

Read this book!

This is my first book by Elena and it won’t be my last because I really enjoyed it! I do feel like the fake engagement was unwarranted for the situation, but that didn’t make the book any less fun for me. This was spicy spicy spicy! I do wish I had read the previous book before reading this for more context. I will go back and read that now. Overall, a fun reading experience with loveable characters.

✨Book Review✨

The Fiancé Dilemma
By Elena Armas

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ve never been more excited than when I saw this hit my NetGalley shelf! I’ve been looking forward to the release of this book and it didn’t disappoint.
The Fiancé Dilemma can be read as a standalone but you meet Josie and Matthew in Elena’s previous book, The Long Game. Josie finds herself in the middle of a media storm due to the discovery of who her prominent father is. She’s had 4 broken engagements and is need of a fake fiancé to help her image. Enter Matthew. Matthew is jobless, homeless, and has just moved to town to be by his best friend. This book gives Runaway Bride meets 27 Dresses vibes.
Josie is hilarious and awkward and Matthew is supportive and charming. I was giggling throughout and the ending had me tearing up! The Fiancé Dilemma is out July 30th!
Tropes:
💜Fake engagement
💜Sister’s best friend
💜Small town

Thank you @netgalley and @atriabooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I want to say thank you Netgalley and Atria books for providing me with the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely devoured The Long Game and I was so excited to dive into the sequel featuring the two supporting characters that intrigued me the most: Josie, Adalyn's recently discovered half-sister, and Matthew, Adalyn's funny and supportive best friend. Unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me.

What I love most about a fake dating trope is that as the two characters spend time together, we understand their backstories and what motivates them. They also share moments where they become closer to the point that fake dating becomes real. I didn't get any of that until the last third of the book. The two characters are thrown together with little to no explanation and the majority of their interactions felt forced. I didn't really understand any of their motivations outside of a weird PR crisis that didn't make much sense to me.

I really wanted to know Matthew more. He's super supportive and also a bit of an alpha behind closed doors which is so intriguing. Matthew clearly has feelings for Josie but for the majority of the book we have no idea why or when they came on. I think maybe because the entirety of the book (with the exception of the last chapter) is from Josie's POV, that we, as the audience, miss a lot of what drives Matthew and who he is outside of what Josie experiences.

Josie was so great in The Long Game but here I felt she was so different. In The Long Game she was fun and outgoing but that seemed to disappear. She eventually opens up but it isn't until the last third of the book so it's confusing to understand her reasons for her past and current behavior. I also wish there were more details about all her past ex's, not just two of them. It seemed like such a big plot point that was glossed over.

This is also a very slow burn - so many almost kisses that it was a little much. I love a slow burn if there is tension but something was just missing here. I will say that once that last third of the book kicked in where there was some drama, more dialogue about each other's past and they finally leaned on each other (emotionally and physically), it was everything I wanted and expected from Elena Armas.


Tropes & Elements:
➶ Fake Engagement
❤️ He Falls First
🏡 Found Family
🔥 Slow Burn

My rating: 2.75 out of 5 ⭐️

Josie and Matthew are soulmates. Plain and simple. Josie definitely has issues stemming from never knowing her father. Her father, Andrew Underwood, is just awful, but we already knew that thanks to Adalyn. There's plenty of comic relief and sweet moments. Hello, wise words from 11 year olds. I wouldn't have minded if this was dual POV(i don't count that last chapter) like The Long Game. I enjoyed this story and it was nice to have Adalyn and Cameron be a part of it.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for my ARC 💕

To be clear, I haven’t read the previous book in this loosely interconnected series. But I spent a lot of this book feeling confused and like I had missed something. I’m still not sure what portion of that was having not read prior book(s), or if the writing was just unclear. But I really think you should read The Long Game first.

My biggest issue was a lack of motivation (on both sides, frankly) for the fake engagement premise. Especially for the MMC, I had no clue why he was in town let alone agreed to this sham. Again, I just felt like we were missing some intel. Was I supposed to know something about him from the prior book that would help explain his willingness to pretend to be engaged to someone he had never met IRL?? And the FMC’s motivations felt flimsy too — I just wasn’t buying into the daddy issues and why she would care enough to pretend to be engaged.

This one is spicy 🌶️ and I loved the small town, but the lack of motivation for the characters and general confusion I felt throughout couldn’t make up for it.

Oh boy where do I begin? I don't think this worked for me. I haven't had luck with Armas novels since Spanish Love, which was 5/5 for me. I just felt so disconnected to the main character and plot. It was a fast read and I did like the overall premise as a novel but I just dont think it worked for me.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for a honest review.

Thank you netgalley for the chance to read this! I would give this a solid 2.5/5 stars, rounded up to 3.
As a side note that didn't contribute to my rating: this was incredibly steamy. Way above the steam level I'm typically comfortable with, but I knew that going in from Armas, so it's not part of my stars rating. If you like steam: you'll love this. If you don't...maybe skip.
I struggled alot with this for three reasons:
1) I don't fully understand Josie's character development. She is a serial engagement breaker but we really don't fully understand why. We don't empathize or really get glimmers into what happened, just a sort of tangential connection to daddy issues. But that's not enough to really make you feel for her, OR make her feel like she's grown in any way by the end of the story.
2) Josie and Matthew's fake-engagement to real-love arc is a bit baffling. The pacing just felt really REALLY off. Don't get me wrong: their chemistry sizzled. But I really needed to feel a connection that drove them so strongly down a path for love and for me it just felt kinda all over the place, even with the 'twist' on Matthew's feelings at the end
3) Most importantly: there is a part at the beginning that says this is stand alone, even though it lives within the realm of Armas' previous book. I find this completely untrue. I think you NEED Adalyn's story to make a lot of Josie's make sense. I didn't read the first so I felt like I was missing key interiority nuggets that would have made alot of this feel more real.

This book!!!! Made me laugh, made me cry, I just loved Matthew and Josie so much. The characters were so likable and I loved the small town/found family feel.

Elena Armas is my own personal fairy god mother, weaving these precious tales for me to devour. I LOVED this one

4.5 ⭐️!!!!!
Everyone who knows me knows that I LOVEEEEE Elena Armas. She is one of my auto buy authors and I am constantly recommending her books to the romance book community. Elena has an amazing way of bringing her characters to life and she has outdone herself with this book. Josie and Matthew have one of my favorite love stories ever. Josie's small town personality was so adorable and I feel like I barely read about FMCs that are from small towns!!!! Her feelings are so relatable and, because of that, it was so easy to connect to her on an emotional level. I was rooting for her the entire book. Matthew was the perfect balance of goofy, charming, and protective. I am telling you, if you love a protective man, you're going to love him!!!! Going into this book, I hadn't read the synopsis because I would even read Elena's grocery list. I am so glad that I didn't because everything came as a total surprise!!!!! The only thing that I wish I would have gotten more of is Matthew's family. I would've loved to see Josie meet Matthew's sisters!!!!!!
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the honor of reading this ARC! I LOVED IT.