I really enjoyed reading this sequel to The Long Game. I was very excited to get Josie and Matthew’s book. 🥹 While it says it can be read as a standalone, I would still read The Long Game first because of a couple that’s constantly mentioned and in this book.

Overall, a very enjoyable read but one irk is that it was just too much of a slow burn and too much being left out. If it was this long, the author should have let us see certain events that occurred off page. There seemed to be a bit of rambling and not getting anywhere.

The last 20% of this book was absolutely enjoyable though. It’s the getting they that seemed too much.

Pedro Pigscal takes the MVP award though.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.75⭐️

This book is a spin-off of The Long Game which wasn’t immediately clear from the jacket copy. I didn’t read The Long Game beforehand, but wished I had as it may have fleshed out the characters more.

Overall, this book was cute with Runaway Bride vibes, but I felt this book would have massively benefited from being a dual POV. We get one chapter from Matthew’s perspective but otherwise the reader is stuck in Josie’s often chaotic brain and I found it difficult to get a read on Matthew until the end.

The fake engage plot felt thin, and the side characters weren’t fleshed out enough. There wasn’t a lot of conflict or tension, other than will she or won’t she walk down the aisle. I would have like to have seen more with Andrew, Adalyn, Grandpa Moe and Matthew’s family and Matthew’s job issues. Bobbi Shark was funny,

This would have been a 3⭐️ read for me but I enjoyed the latter third of the book more than the rest, so I nudged it up.

Thank you NetGalley, Elena Armas, and Atria for the ARC and the opportunity to read this story early and provide my honest review.

Five stars! We love and adore this book, Elena Armas just know how to write a man and a love story. Nothing is simple when it comes to love and personal relationships. Matt & Josie just make sense and they complimented each other, it just thank you for bringing these two lost souls together as one. WE NEEDED A GOOD MAN WHO FALLS FIRST!

Oh & the slowburn, yes yes please!

This book was a DNF for me at 8% . The summery sounded really great, however, I am having a hard time connecting to the characters and getting into the story.

Elena Armas does a fake dating rom com so well! This book is like a mix of Runaway Bride & The Proposal with all of the 90's/2000's rom com vibes. I loved Josie in The Long Game, so I was really excited to read her story. She is the quirky mayor of her small town and has just discovered that her father is a famous multimillionaire (also Adalyn's dad from The Long Game). Her "runaway bride" past becomes public gossip so her father's PR team comes to clean up both of their public images. Matthew is Adalyn's best friend coming to visit after losing his job, but he quickly becomes Josie's fake fiancé. Josie is a people-pleasing ray of sunshine and puts them in ridiculous situations that will have you laughing out loud. Their relationship was fun & flirty but Matthew also supported her & stood up for her in a very meaningful way. Matthew was the perfect book boyfriend and absolutely made this book worth reading.

These lines had me falling in love with him:

"It was his dream to get married in a place like that."
"His dream should have been getting married to you."

"We handle shit together. I don't care if you can do it on your own. You shouldn't have to."

"If I asked you to meet me somewhere at midnight and bring a big pack of matches with you, what would you do?"
Matthew's answer was quick and serious. "I'd say we better dress in black. Ash stains are a motherfucker to remove."

This book is for those who "believe in magic. Fate. Gut-feelings. Soul mates." Light-hearted. Funny. Slow burn. Love at first sight. Totally unrealistic but in a good way.

A big thanks to Atria Books & NetGalley for letting me read this one early.

Elena did it again! This was by far my favorite book by her, to me I really felt like I could relate to the main character! I will say there were times where I felt it got a little repedative, but over all a great read!

After seeing the small teasers of Matthew and Josie in The Long Game, I just knew I would enjoy their story. And I was not disappointed in the slightest. I always love a fake dating trope, and it was made a thousand times better by leveling up to the fake engagement. Their chemistry and banter were off the charts. And I couldn't help smiling at everything Josie said.

Where do I find myself a Matthew?? Every word that came out of his mouth was somewhere between sweet and hot, and each one made me swoon. I was convinced that Cameron would always be my favourite MMC written by Elena Armas, but Matthew pulled a Flynn Rider and smouldered his way into my heart.

Grandpa Moe was hilarious. His relationship with Josie was incredibly sweet and the way they looked out for each other just made my heart happy. Another side character I enjoyed was Bobbi. To be fair, if I knew her in real life she would probably drive me crazy, and as much as she was so focused on achieving her goal through whatever means necessary, she did seem to care about helping Josie in her own way.


Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF @ 6%

Probably my fault for not reading the premise of the book + Elena Armas just does not do it for me. But there are very few reasons in which i think miscommunication is done well, and this absolutely was not one of them. Also I feel like fake relationship is quite a fun and easy trope to straddle the line of believable and whimsical, yet the entire opening of this book was just a huge burning fire of cringe and second hand embarrassment. I don't understand the FMC at all, and what would make a person think that sticking their hand in a jar of strawberry jam can loosen a stuck ring????? no common sense here at all, not to mention absolutely disgusting...I suppress a shudder every time i think of that scene.

*fake dating / fake engagement
*he falls first
*slow burn
*Grandpa Moe
**no third act breakup

The story begins with Josie, (like her newly discovered half-sister in the previous book), put in a position to bend over backwards to try to please their utter POS father (which aggravated me immensely).

I wanted to like The Fiancé Dilemma; I really did, after enjoying the author’s The Spanish Love Deception but this was painful to read. I found the FMC to be extremely immature, the premise was flimsy and unbelievable. I struggled through this.

While other readers may love this, I was not the right reader for this.



Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the DRC

Cute!
There was kind of a lot going on, but it wasn't hard to follow. I liked this one so much more than the Long Game. For some reason, the Long Game was just so boring to me, but this book was entertaining!

-engagement of convenience
-PR drama
-mutual pining and forced proximity
-small town charm
-sister's best friend
-slow burn, but when the steam hits it's *chef's kiss*

Matthew Flanagan and his dirty bossy mouth! This one is a bit of a slower burn, but overall I enjoyed the blossoming romance between Matthew and Josie. Josie, our fmc, has been engaged 4 times and married 0 - which creates a messy PR issue when her famous dad announces his retirement (reasons unknown??) The perfectly timed, Matthew Flanagan, our mmc who is BLONDE (I swear I would never love a blonde man, but the blondies keep coming in so hot), just so happens to stumble into Josie's life right when she needs a PR stunt to cover for her messy history with being engaged. Naturally, she fakes being engaged with Matthew so the press will not dig any deeper into her past.
It's messy, it's fun, and when the slow burn speeds up it's quite steamy.

Fun read!!! Totally recommend.

For the Fiance Dilemma I land between 3.75-4 stars. I truly love the stories, and characters that Elena has brought in her previous books but this was hard for me to get into. I really struggled the first half of the book with just understanding what was going on, the relationships between the characters, and then what was taking place for them to fall in love. The second half was much more enjoyable to me and felt like I had a better grasp of what was going on in the story and that there was more depth in it. Overall I would definitely recommend this read to others because I did love Josie and Matthew so much but just wanted a little more. I hope to see them in future stories that Armas writes.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

𝗟𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵: 448 Pages
𝘈𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘑𝘶𝘭𝘺 30𝘵𝘩

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲:
💜 Engagement of Convenience
💜 Smalltown
💜 Her Sister's Best Friend
💜 Slow Burn
💜 No Third Act Break-Up
💜 Protective MMC

𝗠𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
I struggled with the first 20%. How the engagement started was a little over the top for me. However, once you get past the over the top antics, and the layers are peeled back, I fell in love with Josie and Matthew. Matthew Flanagan is the star of this one. His protective, alpha, dirty mouth made the book. I really like how this wrapped up, and I will still recommend it.

“𝘚𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦? 𝘐’𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳.”

I think that while the premise of this book hooked me, I couldn’t get myself to care about the characters. Matthew fell flat for me and Josie was kind of annoying… that being said, elena armas does have a strong writing style that I connect with and I’ll definitely continue to give her future books a try!

fake dating yes please!! I absolutely adored this book adding it my list of Elana Armas books I adore. I highly recommend this book to romance readers!

The more I read by Elena Armas, the more obsessed I become. I am not even sure how to put into words how much I loved this book. Like, laughed out loud, giddy squeals, all of it. If you loved The Runaway Bride, then this book is for you! But then imagine a MMC who makes Richard Greer look pathetic in comparison, and falls for the MFC from the start. I love me some “he falls first and hard” men. Throw in some fake dating that is only barely pretend? Oh, and Baby Blue?! *PERFECTION*
The character growth in this story is my favorite of any Armas book so far, as well. Josie is so strong, yet so hard on herself, while still managing to be a peppy, all around nice human being. I love that she embraces her past in the way she does, even if she also puts herself down for it. Following her journey with Matthew to stop internalizing what everyone else thinks was really refreshing.
Now, I am REALLY hoping we get another book after this with Bobbi Shark. I think she could be a really fun character to explore.

💐BEAUTY AND DEFIANCE💐

🌸Those are the best things to fall in love with. The ones we find accidentally🌸

🌼Beautiful things shouldn’t be boxed. It eventually dims their light🌼

🌷Perfection is subjective🌷

💐Awe, you named a drink after me. I’d be moved if this was some Hallmark movie💐

🌸And you’re cranky. You’re a crankembouche🌸

🌼Wrong. I’m perfect for you🌼

🌷The truth is scary sometimes. But it doesn’t make it any less real🌷

💐Perhaps to love was to leave a mark. And perhaps I no longer wanted to run from that💐

Absolutely amazing! I couldn’t put this down, and I immediately had to go buy more Elena Armas books! I love fake dating tropes and this one did my heart good!

I really wanted to love this book. I loved The Long Game and I loved Josie’s character. But in her own book? It felt like she just wasn’t fleshed out very well. I like fake dating but this felt so forced and weird and didn’t make sense.

I'm a fan of Elena Armas, the Spanish Love Deception, The American Roommate Experiment loved those. The Fiance Dilemma took two tries to get into the story because Josie felt a bit childish to me. The bubbly personality was too much at times. So I put it down. Then came the second pick up and it started to feel like an Elena Armas book, Josie's quirkiness grew on me and honestly Matthew saved this story for me.

I did enjoy the moments when Josie and Matthew were themselves with each other and it showed why their characters were they way the were when around others. This is a slow burn, just like Elena's other books and when it hits it hits.

This one turned out to be okay for me and in the end a 3.5/5 rating.

This is my first book written by Elena Armas and I absolutely love it! I am now an avid fan of her writing and will be reading everything else written by her! This story grabs you from the beginning on the front porch with Matthew and Josie. Josie is the mayor of Green Oak, coffee shop owner, and she is a happy girl even though she's been engaged four times. In a moment of panic, Josie announces she is engaged and convinces her sister's best friend, Matthew, to be her fiance. And so starts their make believe engagement.. but Matthew is amazing and falls into the part very quickly. I love Matthew from the very beginning as he teases and flirts with Josie til the very end. Will they really make it down the aisle? That is for you to read and find out! Perfect beach read!

Matthew wins the swoony award for this book! I think he held this one together for me. Josie wasn't as fun and feisty as I remember her being in the previous book, and I had a hard time agreeing with her decisions and how she reacted to things. But Matthew made me still love this one (and Pedro Pigscal). Matthew's the right combination of smitten, protective, and flirty.