This book was a little slow for me. I couldn’t fully get into it and had to take breaks and read other books in between. The chapters were too long and I felt like there was too much filler and it was repetitive at times.

I truly wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t for me…felt like the book could’ve been a little more concise.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC.

Happy one week to The Fiance Dilemma! This is the second book in The Long Game series, but personally, I thought it was much better than the first book. I think Josie & Matthew had really fantastic chemistry, and if you’re into he-falls-first romances, this is totally for you.

Josie, hot off a string of failed engagements, finds herself in a new predicament when her father’s retirement announcement puts her complicated love life in the spotlight. Luckily, Matthew, her half-sister’s best friend, ends up posing as her fiancé. Though it starts as a misunderstanding, as their charade continues, Josie begins to wonder if this fifth engagement might just be the one that sticks.

It was a fun little bonus that this is set in North Carolina, and even though I find the kinda-evil rich father trope to be a little tired, I ended up liking how this story wrapped up. I think even if you haven’t read the first book in this series, this works as a great standalone!

4.5/5 ⭐
2/5 🌶
ARC REVIEW!!! i'm in love with matthew 🤭 he really knew how to say all the right words and do all the right things. i seriously was smitten over him throughout the entire book! this was THE perfect feel-good book, and it will become my new comfort read. the character development for both matthew and josie was amazing and i'm so proud of both of them!!

the plot of this book was different than what i normally read. we have josie, who has been engaged 4 times and has never successfully made it down the aisle, and matthew, who gets stuck in a muddy situation and ends up on josie's doorstep being introduced as her fiancé. what could possibly go wrong?

read if you like:
✨engagement of convenience/fake dating
✨small town
✨he falls first
✨SLOW burn
✨sister's best friend
✨no third act breakup

thank you so much elena armas, atria books, and netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest review!

So I didn’t realize this was a sequel to THE LONG GAME (which has been on my TBR since last year) but I really enjoyed it! You don’t necessarily need to read that first but I would probably recommend it because I hate not getting all the references. I really enjoyed the characters and plot. The small town setting was perfection and I would 100% read more from this series.

Josie and Matthew were adorable together!
This was fun and goofy but also very sweet!

Also loved the cameos from Cameron and Adalyn!

Josie Moore has started down the aisle 4 times but made it a grand total of zero. When her stranger of a dad announces his retirement and Josie is thrust into the spotlight as his long-lost daughter, she quickly learns she is about to be a PR disaster. Enter Matthew, who finds himself without a job and suddenly wrapped up in Josie's life as her fake fiance after a hilarious misunderstanding. As they navigate a phony engagement, will they be able to hold back the real feelings they are starting to feel?

I really enjoyed this one! It was a pretty easy read and I thought Matthew and Josie had such great chemistry. Matthew treated Josie so well despite the less-than-ideal circumstances and Josie got herself into some pretty funny situations. This would be such a great beach read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC!

This is a light fake dating turned to real feelings love story and a continuation of the Long Game series. It was cute but I am not a fan of slow burn romances and this once was too slow for me. I found myself getting bored with the pacing.

Thank you Netgalley & Atria Books for the advanced reader copy.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc. i had previously read armas' work with the spanish love deception and the long game and thought it was good and could be better. the fiance dilemma did better! one of my critiques is the POV is just josie and she acts and reacts immaturely sometimes, we never get to see anyone else's perspective. maybe matthew would have reacted to things differently, worse or better.

Elena Armas did it AGAIN!!!
Thanks to Netgalley, Atria Books, Simon and Schuster and Elena Armas for providing me with this ARC!
I feel so privileged!

I am a huge fan of Elena Armas and obviously I really liked this book! Three months after reading I still remember every detail and I remember those days spent reading it as carefree and very funny days as well as the book that made me kick my feet and giggle a lot. (nostalgia is hitting so let’s move on)…
•
The Fiancé Dilemma is a sequel to The Long Game (which can also be read as a stand-alone) that features Josie, Adalyn’s sister, and Matthew or Adalyn’s best friend. In the book you can find a small town fake engagement romance , a second (or better fifth) chance to love, a super hot blonde MMC with glasses (yes, the glasses did the job and made me obsess with Matt), a lot of spicy scenes (open door) and so many fun and crazy moments that made me scream so much!!
•
I loved going back to the world of The Long Game and I love Elena Armas’ writing style, it was a very fast reading that I would have liked to last forever!! The characters were all great and Josie and Matthew’s chemistry hits the roof, putting each chapter into flames, everything was so intense and extremely hot
And Grandpa Mo/Maurice was one of the greatest supporting characters i ever read!
•
Thanks to netgalley, atriabooks and the author for providing me with this e-ARC on my birthday... it was one of the most beautiful gifts ever!
The Fiancé Dilemma comes out everywhere on July 30th! Listen to me, you can’t miss it, run to pre-order it!!!

Btw I need a Matthew in my life… please!

This one hurts. I love Elena, but this was not it. The plot was terrible. She doesn’t even really know the dad and know she’s supposed to care about his reputation so much that she’s getting fake engaged?? What?? Matthew just pops up out of nowhere and we love him? And he agrees to the fake relationship because….. There was zero foundation for that love interest. And last but not least, Josie was ridiculous. Immature and annoying. I had to DNF. I simply couldn’t continue.

Thank you Net Galley & Atria Books for this ARC!

Josie is a small-town coffee shop owner & mayor that has had her fair share of failed engagements. Unfortunately that isn’t a good look for her very wealthy and influential father… that she has never met. When put on the spot by her father’s PR agent, she is forced to introduce Matthew as her current fiancé. Matthew hesitantly agrees to put on the show with her until her image is fixed.

I was not a fan of the writing style at first, but set it aside for a week and came back to it with a fresh perspective. Once I was able to listen to the audiobook along with the ARC, I was FLYING through it. Matthew is such a sweet MMC and knows exactly how to approach Josie and all her fears. I always love a good fake engagement, but the added long term pining on one of the main characters part just made it so much better!

2.5 stars. I have put off writing this review because I do not want to review an Eleana Armas book so low. It pains me to do so. The Spanish Love Deception and The Long Game were both 5 star reads for me. I don't know what happened with this one, but this was not Armas best work. The Fiancé Dilemma was such a slow burn, and it did not hold my attention very well. I didn't care for the characters or the storyline. I did like getting to check back in on Adalyn and Cameran from the first book. I love the cover! This one definitely fell short, but I loved her previous books and I'm not giving up on her.

Thank you, NetGalley, and Atria for a copy in return for my honest review.

If you like fake dating/engagements, small town romance, and books where he falls first then this book is definitely for you! The quirky towns people reminded me a lot of Gilmore Girls which I personally love. Josie and Matthew had such great chemistry but also a solid friendship underneath the romance. I loved how Matthew was FULLY in Josie’s corner no matter what got thrown their way. Matthew saw right through Josie and did not let her push him away. I loved every minuet of this book highly recommend.

Thank you Atria Books for my gifted copies. All opinions are my own.


This is the sequel to The Long Game which I absolutely adored. Josie was such a memorable and funny character and I was so excited for her story. Josie’s world implodes because of her father and the world finds out she’s been engaged several times but never made it to the altar. As a result, she and Matthew enter a fake engagement. ⁣
⁣
The chemistry between Matthew and Josie was perfect. They know each other through Josie’s sister/Matthew’s best friend Adalyn. Matthew was absolute boyfriend goals. He wanted to be there to support and care for Josie no matter what. I loved seeing their relationship develop. ⁣
⁣
I loved seeing Adalyn and Cameron and how their relationship has progressed. It made me want to reread the Long Game.

Pick this up if you love:
- fake dating/engagement
- sister's best friend
- he falls first (and hard)
- spice

I absolutely loved the main characters in this book. So cute! Unfortunately, the premise for why they had to be fake engaged made no sense to me, so that kind of put a damper on the whole book for me. But I know a lot of people loved it!

This book brought me back to Green Oak where I fell in love with Josie and Matthew. They are obviously soulmates and I loved seeing them go from fake dating or in this case a fake engagement, to a real relationship. They are made for each other and are soulmates. Matthew saw Josie for who she was, flaws and all, and wanted her for her and to choose herself and what she wanted. They had great chemistry and good banter. We also can’t forget the steaminess between these two. I also loved the snippets of Adalyn and Cameron in this book.

Overall, I loved this romcom and recommend it!

Title: The Fiance Dilemma
Author: Elena Armas
Genre: Romance
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Josie Moore has given the opposite sex—and love—plenty of chances. Four exactly, if you count all her failed engagements, and five if you include the absentee father who kept her existence a secret until very recently. So when her father decides to announce his retirement with a splashy magazine piece about the family, Josie realizes her romantic history is a complicated PR issue.

Matthew Flanagan is in the mud, literally. Not only has he been fired from his job, but also the tires of his car are stuck in the muck after taking a wrong turn as he enters Green Oak, North Carolina. So, he grabs a duffel with his essentials and goes in search of a place to crash until he gets his life back on track. But instead, he finds his best friend’s sister, Josie, greeting him as her fiancé.

What starts as a big messy misunderstanding quickly turns into an arrangement with Matthew playing a new role as doting fiancé. A fifth engagement—and a stunt, at that—makes Josie’s stomach turn, but every dilemma requires a choice between equally undesirable alternatives, and Matthew doesn’t seem to mind becoming one more number in a colorful list of grooms-that-never-were. Despite the ring on her finger, Josie knows this is only temporary, even if the rest of the small town believes that the fifth time’s the charm.

This book was so much fun! Josie’s voice was so funny to me, and the situations she landed herself in had me laughing out loud. I loved the chemistry between her and Matthew and enjoyed watching it grow. I thought her fear of marriage was a little…random and pointless, but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this book.

Elena Armas is a bestselling author. The Fiance Dilemma is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Atria Books in exchange for an honest review.)

Small town, Slow burn, He Falls First, and Fake dating ... say lessssss. Our MCs Matthew and Josie were so sweet, I loved them! Well done on another stunning release Elena.

I loved this companion to The Long Game! Elena Armas does it again! I loved jumping right back into the town. I connected with both our MC right away and they truly felt so real to me. Josie was a true ray of sunshine and Matthew was just a cutie little golden retriever! This one had all my fave tropes- Small town, Slow burn, He Falls First, and Fake dating so of course I loved it! The humor in this was also top-tier. I had to reality-check myself because I was literally laughing out loud at times and it was literally words on my screen. I am laughing at WORDS. And girl... the SPICE WAS SPICING!!!!! Best of all, there was NO third-act breakup! Also, this is of course almost unrelated but the cover on this one was nearly PERFECT!

This wasn't my first or last book by Armas and I love her writing! Thank you to the publisher, Elena Armas, and Netglley for this ARC!

The Fiancé Dilemma is the second novel in the Long Game series, although it can be read as a standalone. It follows Josie Moore, who is the sister of the main character from the first novel. They are the daughters of Andrew Underwood, who owns the Miami Heat soccer team. Due to a misunderstanding with Andrew’s PR strategist, Matthew Flannagan ends up posing as a fake fiancé to Josie. Their banter was hilarious.

It was a fun Runaway Bride retelling. Just like the movie, Josie believes she is in love until she walks down the aisle and makes a huge spectacle.

I am not a huge fan of “ toxic parents” in books cuz I read for escapism, but there was still missing details. I didn’t understand why she wanted to cooperate with him.
I also felt Matthew and Josie had good chemistry but it was still missing something. It would have been nice to have more of Matthew’s perspective and more details about Josie’s engagements.

Overall, it was fine. Like her past novels, it was heartwarming, humor, and a touch of spice. I liked reading more about the charming town and side characters.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for my honest review.