*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.

Elena Armas has done it again! This has to be my favorite of hers so far. I absolutely loved this story, the plot, the characters and everything about it. We meet Josie who’s had a troublesome relationship with her very well known father, when she’s faced with a complicated situation she decides to lie and say that she’s getting married to Matthew (her sisters best friend) this unfolds “the fiancé dilemma” where they have to lie to everyone about their relationship. When I tell you this man had me screaming, giggling and kicking my feet im not even kidding, I love how protective he was of her and how he knew when she was feeling anxious of overthinking anything, I devoured this book in a couple of hours and I loved every minute of it, if you like the fake dating trope you are going to LOVE this!! Biggest thanks to netgalley and to the publisher for sending this my way!

instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7aMG04g0QT/

Thank you to Elena Armas, Atria Books, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

After reading The Long Game, I wanted more from the small town of Green Oak. The newest novel from Elena Armas takes readers back to North Carolina and focuses on Josie Moore, Adalyn’s sister. Josie is the mayor of Green Oak, she runs a coffee shop, and has been engaged four times. She has never made it down the aisle though.

Her wealthy, well-connected father, Andrew Underwood, makes a comment about Josie in a Time magazine article that opens up questions about his daughter. The media digs into Josie’s past and puts attention on everything she's done. When Adalyn’s best friend Matthew Flannagan arrives in town at the same time as the PR strategist, Josie tells the PR lady that she and Matthew are engaged!

The story is another slooooow burn romance, and it’s something that Armas is good at writing. I love the banter between Josie and Matthew. He keeps trying to find the right pet name for her, and when he succeeds, it opens Josie up and we see a little more vulnerability in her character. I wanted to see Josie finally make it down the aisle to Matthew, but the ending makes sense. It’s an appropriate happy ending.

I have a mixed feelings about this book. I normally love anything Elena Armas writes, but something felt off in this one for me. But!!! I loved getting to go back to the world of Green Oak and see all of the characters that make that such a cozy town. And who could forget all the farm animals??

I will start off with what I loved, which was the characters. I already loved Josie from The Long Game, so I was really excited to have her own story here!! And Matthew became a favorite as well, I may like him more than Cameron?? But anyways, I felt as if they were developed well as characters, and I just wanted to see them thrive!!

As for the plot, there were moments that felt a bit rushed to me. Certain scenes felt as if they ended before they were ready to be done. One plot point in particular that I thought could be explored more is the relationship between Josie and her dad. That was a major part of this novel, but we only get one real conversation between them, and Andrew does most of the talking. I wanted to see that played out more.


Also, I found the circumstances for the fake fiance trope a bit too unbelievable, but that may have been because it came so early on in the book, and it was instantly when Josie and Matthew met in person for the first time.

But just to reiterate how much I loved Matthew as a character, like he had the best lines, was so protective of Josie, he baked her a pie??? I mean how can it get better than that? He was just so thoughtful and complemented Josie well, so I think Elena Armas did a great job with that!!

Overall, I did enjoy this book and I will always buy Elena Armas’ work without hesitation!

Thanks to Atria Books and Netgalley for this ARC!

When The Long Game was released, I snapped it up immediately, only to be disappointed by Adalyn & Cam, their "romance," and just a really boring book. Adalyn was especially irritating as she was insufferable. Her sister, Josie, is a little better, but only a little. Like her sister, she's self-involved but not quite as clueless. Her story, fortunately, is more interesting though the story is fully developed. This book is a decent read, but you won't find the magic of Armas' earlier books.

3 stars with 3/5 spicy level

Tropes:
Fake dating
Found family (?)
Small town
Slowburn
Sister's best friend

It is no surprise that Elena Armas is the QUEEN of the fake dating tropes, as she did in Spanish Love Deception, but I fear that I have not felt in love with another of her books like I did then. This book follows Josie, the FMC and the long lost sister of Adalyn (btw I did not read the Long Game and I might've liked this more if I did) who comes from a family of fancy rich people, and due to her failed engagements, she is (strongly) encouraged to repair her image. In comes Matthew, Adalyn's bestie, who poses as her fake fiance to save face.

Matthew Flanagan truly stole this show. He was certifiably a good-hearted man with a secret spicy side and he ensured that Josie was able to fulfill her familial duties with her family. Josie, on the otherhand, was a bit difficult to get behind. It was hard to connect with her because while Matthew was kind enough to help her, she seemed to demand it. She seemed entitled, which is such a shame because Matthew was such a great book bf. In addition, when I said slowburn in the tropes, I really do mean SLOW. I don't think I liked the pacing too much and the plot seemed to be in disarray at times.

All in all, I do love Elena Armas but while I continue to try attempting her books because I will die for Spanish Love Deception, this might be the last for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria books for allowing me to review this book early in exchange for an honest review!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for the eARC.
I was so excited to get this ARC and it did NOT disappoint!
I loved this! Matthew > Cameron. I absolutely adored Matthew. This book was so funny, so flirty, so cute. I really like the fake dating trope, because even if it’s a slow burn, you still get the effect of the characters together, without them actually being together and I love it. The spicy scenes in this one were amazing. I liked this one better than I liked the Long Game. Josie and Matthew had intense chemistry, and I absolutely adored them together. I also loved seeing Andrew kind of step it up and be a dad and make an effort to have a relationship with Josie.

A great summer rom-com! I love the fake dating trope, and this seems to be Armas’ bread and butter. The story was definitely a slow burn but so worth it. Thanks to NetGalley for this advanced copy!

Unfortunately, I could not find the strength to finish this book. Despite loving previous books by this author, I could not connect with these characters. I read about 25% of the book and I could not be excited to finish it. Josie was a likeable character but the fact that she felt the need to go through a "fake engagement and wedding" to appease a father figure that is described as selfish and uncaring for her seemed out of character from what the author was describing Josie to be. Matthew did not call my attention as a hero,, his character seemed underdeveloped and a bit unremarkable. The other thing that I could not get behind was some of the phrases used in the book, such as things you would hear on tik tok or read on twitter that are used by a younger audience, I am afraid that when authors used that time of language, it can make the book less relatable or appealing in the future because of it.