Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book. Below is my honest review!

*takes a deep breath*

Okay. Let's start off with the fact that I loved, absolutely LOVED, Elena Armas's other books.

But this book. This was not it for me. And I'm so sad that I did not love this one as much as I did with her previous books. I had high expectations, and sadly, they were not met.

The general plot of this book is Josie Moore, our heroine, is in the middle of a PR problem. Her father, who she only recently discovered is her father only a year ago and is a very rich and powerful man, believes that Josie's previous four failed engagements reflects badly on him. So he hires Bobbi Shark, a PR specialist, to make her look good. As Josie is being interrogated by Bobbi, Matthew, our hero, shows up at her house, so Josie pretends that Matthew is her fiance so that Bobbi has a better story to tell about her. Matthew at first isn't on board, but for whatever reason, he decides he's going to help a girl (Josie) out and pretend to be engaged to her despite never meeting her in real life (they know each other through texts). As this is a romance book, we know what happens at the end.

*takes another deep breath*

Let's start with the good stuff. The sexual romance between Josie and Matthew is quite spicy. (Spicy is always a plus in my eyes). Matthew is also just a sweetheart too. What a kind young man. I also liked the small town setting that we got in Elena Armas's previous book. Grandpa was also a very interesting and funny character. I can almost picture how he looks in my mind.

And now my main issue... I felt like Matthew was kind of boring. Josie too, to a certain extent, but definitely not as much as Matthew. I KNOW. I'M SORRY. I WISH I DIDN'T FEEL THAT WAY. As the hero of this book, I felt like there was so much of him to explore, and yet we don't get his background, his story, what makes him him, etc. He didn't really do anything except be the romantic partner for Josie. Which I guess is fine because this is a romance book. But I wanted him to have depth to his personality, and it only felt like we got a surface level version of him. We hardly hear about his family until the very end (and we never get to meet them), which is weird considering he has a close relationship with them. We know he's into sports, but there's only one scene where he talks about sports. I wanted to know why he chose his career path, the little interactions with his sisters and parents, etc. I wanted to know if this man has any flaws or baggage (which I don't think he has). I needed more of him than simply a romantic partner.

Also, the whole daddy issue could have been flushed out more. I wanted to know more about how Josie felt about suddenly having a father figure in her life. It didn't seem like she was angry or upset or happy or whatever. Yeah, Josie freaked out when her father did something questionable, but I feel like Josie didn't process her feelings about it. I didn't expect Josie to straight up say that she has daddy issues, but the tension between Josie and her father could have been developed more. I wanted to know more about how this was affecting her, having him there and "present" in her life, whether it was good or bad.

Related to that, the build up that Josie feels about having four failed engagements felt very off to me. The break down that she had seemed very sudden and surprising to me because it was kind of connected to the baggage that she has regarding her father (which, to my previous point, was not flushed out enough IMO). My impression of Josie was that the failed engagements didn't really bother her that much because she's accepted that they failed for a reason.

Also, small thing but, considering that Matthew is Josie's sister's best friend, are we really to believe that the sister would simply accept that they are engaged with no questions? No "haha, you guys are playing a joke on me, right?" No "what the hell, you both are engaged and I didn't even know you were in a relationship?" And the sister/best friend was hardly involved in the story, which is weird especially since it seemed like Josie wanted to build a relationship with her. I understand that the sister/best friend had a book of her own (aka the previous book that Elena Armas wrote), but for her to just not be involved in any significant way is weird to me.

There were so many other (smaller) things that I didn't like. Overall, I just wished I liked this book more. I may have more thoughts as I continue to process. That being said, I don't think you should NOT pick up this book. I could 100% be the outlier. I don't hate this book by any means, but given that I had such high expectations for this book, I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't like it.