Sweet Matthew! My heart! This is actually my first book from this author and it will not be my last! Thank you so much for the free book!

Elena Armas has been one of my favorite authors since her indie era, and she has just gotten better and better. Her newest novel, The Fiance Dilemma, has to be one of her best yet. It has all our favorite things about her: a small town with fake dating and some fantastic banter. I finished this in one sitting, and I adored the storyline; it got annoying at parts, but that is just my love for this author. No matter what, I will read her.

Tropes:
-Small Town
-Opposites Attract
-Fake Dating

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Fiancé Dilemma by Elena Armas. Thank you @netgalley for the ARC!

What a cute cute story! Set in a small town, with fake romance, slow burn, and him falling first, I was instantly sold.

I absolutely loved Matthew and Josie, their chemistry and spice was impeccable! This is my first Armas book, and I definitely will be going back and reading more!

🏷️
#netgalley

This book was disappointing.
I missed having Matthews's perspective; I think including it would have added clarity to the story and a sweet side that the book needed. You are left wondering why he is going a lot with this scheme and not understanding his feelings for Josie.
I wanted to love this book, and after the first in the series, I was looking forward to it, but I was greatly disappointed after reading it.
I've enjoyed Elena's previous books, and I hope this is just an outlier. But if she doesn't bring back her old way of writing, I might stop reading her books.

I'm not even sure how to start this review book I just didn't overall enjoy this book. There were some fun scenes, but as a whole I found myself uninterest and not looking forward to reading this. Regardless, I did finish this, so you will be hearing my thoughts :)

To start, the concept of this book just didn't make sense to me. I didn't understand why Josie was going through this whole fake engagement for her father, a man she barely knew and who had done nothing to try to make a relationship with her. He quite frankly referred to her as a "misstep" in his life, so why is she going through this for him???? I genuinely couldn't understand and therefore felt that this whole engagement was unnecessary.
Secondly, I felt that Josie and Matthew's relationship was so rushed and quite literally came out of nowhere. Like Matthew had literally never met Josie in person before he agreed to do this fake engagement with her. They had never physically interacted and suddenly they were having these moments of chemistry and calling each other pet names? We definitely skipped some steps here and unfortunately; I felt a lack of interest for the book because of it.
Lastly, I just didn't feel any connections to any of the characters. I did read the first book (the long game), so I was already introduced to these characters, but unfortunately, I think the combination of the odd plot and rushed relationship just left a disconnect. (That being said, Grandpa Moe was my favorite part of the book).

I really did try to like this, but it just wasn't for me.

This was the second book in The Long Game series. This one follows Josie and Matthew. After a strange series of events, Josie and Matthew end up fake engaged. Throughout the story you see them learn to get to know one another, while obviously falling in love. This was a single POV, which sometimes I really love, but in this instance, I wish I got both POVs.

I also feel like this book did a lot of telling, but not showing. Josie spent the whole book telling us that Matthew was really funny, goofy, and silly, but I honestly didn't see any of that until maybe the last 15-20% of the story? He was pretty serious throughout most of this. It was a cute story that I had fun with while I was reading it.

This was absolutely amazing. I loved being back in Green Oak with Josie, Adalyn, Cameron, Maria and so many other characters. I loved the writing, falling in love with the characters the minute I started reading. Elena's books get better and better as she keeps writing. I loved Josie and Matthew's relationship, the way they supported and truly loved each other. Adalyn and Josie's bond was beautiful and so strong throughout the whole book. This was fabulous.

I wanted to love this so so badly and while it had bright moments, on the whole it missed the mark for me. I normally love a fake engagement trope but this one was just too over the top and unbelievable for me to jump on board. If you are fully willing to suspend disbelief I think you could really enjoy this story. I have loved other book by Armas in the past and will still pick up her next one!

I have found my book boyfriend and his name is Matthew Flangan. I’m obsessed with him. Don’t read this book. I want to keep him to myself.

EDIT: My fellow club members have informed me my perfect 4 sentence review is not in fact sufficient, so if you must read this book, here’s what to know. This is the stand-alone follow-up to The Long Game, set in the small town of Green Oak in the NC mountains. FMC Josie has a heart of gold and a mouth that moves faster than her sense. When she becomes news as the secret daughter of a Miami billionaire, her past history of a Runaway Bride (yes, the Julia Roberts kind) makes her a PR liability to said father billionaire. When said issue with her mouth creates an imaginary fiance, she grabs a loose acquaintance and her new sister’s bff, Matthew into her web of deceit. What follows is a good old fashioned fake fiance tale set amongst the most charming of small town vibes. And with a MMC that I have declared as a perfect specimen of the “respectfully obsessed” archetype.

Josie is the queen of broken engagements with four under her belt. To make matters worse, she finds out her long lost father is being featured in a magazine article for his retirement, causing the daughter he kept secret to enter the spotlight, sordid dating history and all. To circumvent the PR nightmare, she pretends the next man she runs into is her fiance. Matthew, confused and down on his luck, plays along and before long they are planning their fake wedding.

The premise had me really intrigued, but unfortunately this story just didn’t reel me in the way I hoped. I was a bit confused at how easily Josie let her absentee dad and his PR team dictate her life out of the blue, and it felt like it was dragging at times. This story is definitely a very slow burn, and I wished it was a bit faster paced. There were some cute scenes that I really enjoyed, but I don’t think this one will stick with me long term.

Thank you to Elena Armas, Atria Books, and NetGalley for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

Ok, so I really tried with this. I didn't realise that this was part of the long game series (which I didn't particularly enjoy either).

I just found this quite bland and boring, and think I just don't mesh well with this author's writing.

Have you ever read a book that you loved so much that when it came time to write the review, you weren’t sure what to say? This is one of those for me.

Y’all, I have so many quotes highlighted in this one. It’s borderline ridiculous.

I just love it so much.

At a glance:
- Engagement of convenience (fake engagement)
- Small town
- She’s been engaged four times before.

Some notes I made while reading this (but, again, I absolutely adored this one, so this is just a glimpse of what I loved about it):
- This is absolutely delectable/delicious
- I love a man in glasses
- 🥵🥵🥵
- Did I highlight nearly an entire scene featuring a phone conversation? Yes. Yes, I did. *stops to fan self*
- I love, love, love his patience with her
- And the way he categorizes her smiles
- And how they discuss fear
- And how they truly see each other
- Swoon

Select quotes (a sampling of favorites, if you will):
“Then I finally saw her. In the flesh. And as much as I tried not to build her up in my head, as much as I’d told myself not to be a fool, that there aren’t such things as soul mates, or fate, or love at first sight, there she was.”

“…Josie had always been Technicolor in my head.”

“‘That f***ing sound,’ he all but growled. ‘The things I’d do for it. The things I’m doing, Josie. The things I’ll do if you ask.’

“God, I was going to cherish this woman as long as she let me. As hard as I could.”

“‘I’m yours,’ I whispered. ‘I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.’”

“‘You once told me perfection is subjective. Remember?’…. ‘This moment, right here, right now, is perfect for me.’”

“The sight of him standing in the middle of my room, smiling, was like a punch to the heart. He looked so right. So very mine.”

Thank you, Atria Books, for the advance copy. All review opinions are my own.

I read “The Spanish Love Deception” by the same author and didn’t love it, but hoped that this book would be better. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case for me. I found the writing style goofy and immature. I thought the characters were annoying, the plot was so obvious that anyone could know what was going to happen, and it felt to me like the book kept going on and on and on. Definitely not for me.

I received an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria.

Another great book by Elena Armas! From the very first page I got attached to the main character! A fun possible romance with a bit of family drama. I laughed and felt so much!

Josie is Adalyn's (The Long Game) secret sister and when word gets out, the national news groups go berserk because their father, Andrew, is some billionaire hellbent on salvaging his reputation. And because their father is so famous, he employs people to take care of situations. Unfortunately for Josie, she has become such a situation.

Matthew is Adalyn's best friend who comes to visit her in Josie's small town of Green Oaks, NC where she is the mayor. Josie is quirky, generous with her time and spirit, and loves her small town. She also has a string of ex-fiances that weren't so right for her. As her father's PR strategist is trying to convince her to come clean and fix her relationship with her father, Josie sees Matthew and claims he is her fiance. He weirdly and readily agrees and thus begins their fake engagement.

Overall, I liked Josie and Matthew together but I wasn't a fan of how they came to be. It was a little too easily falling into place. I really did not like how much of a doormat Josie was to everyone that didn't care about her. Why try to salvage her father's reputation and their relationship? Why is his scandal hers?

I enjoyed the writing style and loved the characters from The Long Game popping in. The town's characters were entertaining as always. And I am sure Josie and Matthew will have a long life together.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this eARC. The Fiance Dilemma is out now.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I hate to say it, but this one was not for me. At first, I was so excited because I love the fake dating trope and the engagement situation felt like it could build up tension in a great way. However, my excitement deflated the longer I read through this book, even though I enjoyed Armas' humourous, witty writing.

The main issue with this romance is that it didn't feel earned. The MMC has (clearly) liked the FMC from the get-go. He was so into her, but we never figured out why that was. We don't watch him fall in love with her. As for the FMC, she falls pretty quickly and I never understood why, because Matthew sadly has no personality. He is just vague enough that he can fit into anyone's dream guy wall of trophies. And ultimately, I hated that. If you're doing slow burn, I want the angst! Instead, we got a phone sex scene 130 pages into this 340-page book. There was NOTHING keeping these two people apart, literally nothing.

I'm disappointed because this should've been right up my alley. I ended up reading most of the smut scenes in the subway and for what? I got nothing from this book.

The perfect fake dating story! A funny and sweet small town fake dating story. I loved how this worked into the previous story and continued in their universe. Cute, romantic, steamy and fun romance,

Oh how I adored this book, and Matthew was the PERFECT book boyfriend…. Errr fiance! Loved the chemistry, the friendship, and the whole fun fake fiancé story line! The story was really sweet, there were just a few plot holes and a lot of repetitive sentences that knocked the rating down a bit for me. But overall I’d highly recommend, and huge bonus points for no third act breakup!

Thank you NetGalley and Atria books for my ARC in exchange for my honest feedback!

4.5 stars

Matthew my dream man. Although too bad he’s blond…

I adored this book and I adored this couple. I was WAITING for Josie’s book as soon as we met her in The Long Game. I absolutely loved the fake fiance situation and I loved how absolutely down baaaaad Matthew was for Josie this entire book. Also bonus points for no third act break up!! 💃💃

I’m not usually a fan of pet names but baby blue was doing something to me in this book 😜

This book was a little bit long and could have been amazing with a little trimming so I did take a half star off. Still this book was very very good!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this earc in exchange for my honest review.

2.75⭐️. Was kinda disappointed with this read - it started out strong with a funny meet cute but it went down hill from there. There are some adorable, sweet funny scenes but nothing spectacular that made me want to root for the couple. Half the time I’m still wondering why the male lead lacks personality (he has plenty of good looks and seems to be someone whose love language is acts of service) but we really needed a dual POV because I don’t know why he even fell for her? Especially with how he got into this whole fake fiance fiasco. Our FMC, gosh, she needs to grow a spine? I can’t believe she is being stepped all over by 2 people who she doesn’t even have close relations with.

While I adored TSLD, this book was not it for me.