2.75 ⭐️

I don’t know why it took me forever to get through this book! I had such high hopes but it just felt flat to me.

The beginning went really slow and the characters dynamics weren’t giving me the thrill I usually find in the contemporary romance novels I read. Once I hit the 70% mark the story picked up the pace but that kind of defeats the purpose of pleasure reading if you have to wait that long for the story to peak your interest. I have enjoyed Elena Armas’s books in the past- sadly this wasn’t one of them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC in return for my honest review.

The beginning of this book was really difficult to get through unfortunately, but things started getting better about 25-30% into the book. Josie is very quirky, and it was definitely a “it’s not you, it’s me” situation that made me disconnect from the book initially around. I ended up taking a month long break.

I’m glad that I stuck with it and read the entire book though, Even though the reason they started fake dating was extreme and they were essentially strangers, Matthew was very sweet and seemingly perfect (impossibly so at times) for Josie, and I enjoyed seeing them fall for each other.

Books by Elena Armas are always enjoyable. The tale of Josie and Matthew was amazing. Josie is under pressure from her little community and others to proceed with a successful engagement because she has called off four previous engagements. Though they quickly realize they are both interested in more than just a fictitious engagement, Matthew is at the right place at the right time. Josie's dad's publicist Bobbi and a colorful cast of supporting people make for a humorous ensemble. There is increasing strain as the wedding day draws near. Josie's happily ever after is a wonderful way for Armas to wrap up the tale.

I love a fake dating trope and a fake engagement even more! This book is a perfect combination of small town shenanigans, he falls first energy, a meddling grandpa, and the sibling’s best friend trope. I literally cried at the HEA of this couple and feel strongly that it lives up to the Elena Armas hype!

If you’re looking for a funny and light-hearted romcom, you’ll have to check this out in July 30th!

Summary: Josie recently connected with her biological father and he happens to be a pretty big deal. When the public finds out about Josie’s existence, they’re quick to point out all her failed engagements. So, she fakes another engagement to her sister’s best friend to try and do some damage control.

Thoughts: Man, this one was just not for me. I think I had a hard time with it because it felt like the MMC spent the first 7 chapters just so confused. I think this would have benefitted from a dual POV because I had a hard time understanding what his deal was.

Once he ends his deer in the headlights moment, he all of a sudden turns into a possessive growler and it felt like such an aggressive lane change.

All of the other characters in the book barely communicate with each other. It’s like they’re all dancing around one another and it felt so awkward.

The FMC was really cute and the story really had such great potential but I just couldn’t connect with anything here. Except the farm animals, they were adorable and easy to connect with of course.

Another solid read from Elena! It took me a minute to like Josie but damn did I love Matthew from the start. A very, very fun read!

The Fiancé Dilemma was such a fun, beautifully written book full of love, compassion, and piping hot tea. I had such a great time with it!

Josie and Matthew were SO cute together! At first I thought the pacing of their relationship was a bit weird, but as the book progressed it got better and better. They are so compatible, caring, supportive, and absolutely gone for each other. I seriously couldn’t get enough of them! And Matthew might be my new favorite Elena Armas book boyfriend. The WORDS THAT COME OUT OF THAT MAN’S MOUTH 🥵 I adore him.

I also loved seeing more of Adalyn and Cameron, especially their respective friendships with Josie and Matthew. The two sisters obviously care about each other so much, and seeing their relationship blossoming made me so happy.

The only thing I wish had been included was some on-page time with Matthew’s family. I want to know more about them so badly!

Elena Armas never misses, and this was no exception. 4.5 stars.

I will post my review on Instagram no more than 14 days before publication, and on Amazon on publication day.

Thank you to Atria Books for the ARC of this much-anticipated book that lives in the universe of The Long Game.
As someone who loved The Spanish Love Deception and the subsequent The American Roommate Experiment, I was so excited to learn that The Long Game (which I had just finished) was going to have a complement too, especially because of the way it ended (as soon as Matthew asks Adalyn if Lazy Elk is available, I knew it was coming).
Overall, I enjoyed The Fiancé Dilemma, but the beginning felt so preposterous and unnecessary that it took me a bit to get into it. With that being said, I really liked Josie and Matthew, even though I did think he was too good to be true at times. I wish that we had more Cam and Adalyn in this book, but I understand that would have taken away from our protagonist and her love interest. I enjoyed the book, but honestly, I wanted to love it more than I did.

Elena Armas does it again!

Despite the fact that I recently read two others (great!) books centred around a marriage of convenience, this engagement of convenience still felt fresh and exciting! The story was original, completely swoon-worthy and thoroughly entertaining. And thanks to my love of The Long Game, the tidbits involving Adalyn and Cameron made me so happy!

Can’t wait for Elena’s next one!

A sincere thank you to the publisher for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley! (My first ARC!!) All opinions are honest and my own.

I love this author and find all of her books to be an easy read. I liked the characters in this one but didn’t love the circumstances.

The Fiance Dilemma by Elena Armas
Josie, Ada's sister from The Long Game, is the center of this novel. Josie lies and says Matthew (Ada's best friend) is her fiance to save face in front of her father. He goes along, will love blossom or will Matthew be Josie's fifth failed engagement? This is a stand alone novel but was nice to see characters from The Long Game show up again.

Pros:
I liked Josie. I understood her. I pulled for her. I wanted her to stop people pleasing and ask for what she wanted.

Love Matthew. So supportive and hot.

Small town charm. Grandpa Moe! Goat yoga is back. Introducing Pedro Pigscale a teacup pig, c'mon!

Modern twist on Greek chorus using podcast hosts.

The right amount of spice.

Cons:
The premise is dumb. Why would it save face to be engaged for a fifth time? Made no sense. But if you can take that imaginative leap the book is very cute.

I wish Ada acted more like herself from the first book. She seemed too timid in this one.

Character of the shark. Meh. Not scary. Could be more dimensional and less one note.

All in all this was a cute, quick read, perfect for the beach. 4 stars. Thanks to Atria Publishing and Net Galley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️.5/5
Spice: 🌶️🌶️

I wanted to love this book, but unfortunately, the motivation behind why the story existed was hard to root for. Why was Josie getting dragged into her (newly) found father's PR nightmare, that didn't make sense to me. All of the sudden, Matthew appeared and they entered into a fake fiance-ship because of her previous hangups with four previous potential marriages. He showed up out of nowhere, and agreed to it, without having any real reasoning behind why he agreed to it. It still never fully was realized throughout the novel. Towards the end, I expected to have some resolutions of the PR drama with Josie's father, but it just didn't have a strong ending.

Unfortunately, Matthew was never fully realized, and I never understood his motivations. However, how he treated Josie through her issues was top tier, and supported her without chastising her. This made me enjoy how he was written. I just wished I was rooting him more!

Overall, there were moments that I enjoyed, but as a full story, I struggled to find the connections.

Thank Atria for a gifted ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love a fake dating trope so much, and was excited to dive into this story. Unfortunately, I really just struggled to connect with the characters, or to find the plotline believable. The pace of the story also felt quite slow. Thank you for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

“The Fiance Dilemma” ⭐️⭐️⭐️
🌶️ // 💖 - fake engagement, he falls first, slow burn, small town romance, sister’s best friend
Book release date - 7/30/2024

I REALLY wanted to love this book as I have loved every other book by Elana Armas. I’ve given all of her past books 4 or 5 stars. But this one, thissss one… it just didn’t hit the mark for me. Our FMC Josie was a boss business owner, quirky, loyal, and self-aware. So when she starts becoming this small shell of a human who lets people take advantage of her, it just didn’t match up with the personality that Elena had painted. As for the MMC, Matthew seemed a little one dimensional. The story of him falling in love with her throughout the book wasn’t really sold to me because we never heard his point of view (until the last chapter). Want to talk about slow burn? Well this one was slowwwwww burrrrrrrn - their first intimate scene was at the 80% mark (I’m not counting the phone call). The last 15% of the book was the best part as we finally started to understand what was in it for Matthew, it just took way too long to get there. I still don’t fully understand what was happening in that last chapter. The side character of Bobbi Shark, now she was a firecracker! The character you loved to hate, but were secretly rooting for. I hope she’s the FMC in Elena’s next book, maybe with Maria’s dad Robbie. Bobbi & Robbie may be the perfect book couple! Giving it three stars because while I didn’t love this story overall it was very sweet and I love the easy way in which Elena writes.

I've been a fan of Elena Armas since her first book and was excited to return to the book universe she set up in The Long Game. As a native North Carolinian, I love that this series is set in Green Oak, a fictional, Stars Hollow-esque small town full of quirky and charming characters. Our main characters here are closely connected to Adalyn from The Long Game - Josie, her half-sister (as discovered in the first book) who is also the mayor of Green Oak and proprietress of a very popular coffee shop in town, and Matthew, her best friend who just lost his job in Chicago. The story opens with Josie, who has been claimed by her very famous father (who wasn't part of her life at all until he sent his other daughter, Adalyn, to Green Oak) and is now being exposed to a ton of unexpected media attention. She has a bit of a colorful romantic history in that she has been engaged four times but never married. Josie's dad is coming to town to get some good press and a PR specialist is assigned to clean up Josie's image for the media. Panicking, Josie decides to pretend that she's engaged again, for the fifth time, to the guy who is literally just walking by her house after having gotten his car stuck in the mud. That guy, Matthew, decides to play along even though he and Josie have never met in person before, and soon they're the Green Oak it couple. I really liked Josie and Matthew as individual characters, I loved revisiting the quirky denizens of Green Oak, and I liked the fake dating/best friend's sibling tropes, but for some reason I felt like the chemistry between the two of them was lacking. It felt like they were fake engaged friends and then like, very suddenly, they were more. Still, I had a good time reading this even if the main couple wasn't as compelling for me as Armas's past books. This may just be me, and it certainly doesn't put me off this author!

First off I need myself a Matthew Flanagan <3
His nickname for Josie was one of my favorite parts of this book 1000%
I was surprised how their "fake engagement" ending up being this HUGE thing but honestly I enjoyed the shenanigans that came w it. Get ready for a meddling grandpa, a crazy PR exec, goat yoga, "my fiancé", and Matthew's glasses. This book touched on important deep rooted struggles while remaining lighthearted. I was rooting for Josie as an individual and for her relationship with Matthew!
P.S I loved getting to see more of Adalyn and Cam!
Thank you Atria Books and Netgalley for this ARC!

I adored The Long Game, and when I saw Elena Armas was coming out with a second in the series I was incredibly excited to get this ARC! Unfortunately, this book was a very big miss for me.

The Good: The spice was spicin! The cover is gorgeous. And I love the Cam and Adalyn cameos.

The Bad: What happens when we take every millennial female stereotype and roll it into one character? Josie, that's who. As a proud elder millennial I love the nods and throwbacks to our generation but this was.. a caricature of a person. It was impossible to like her or believe in her story because she felt like a meme. Because of this I absolutely did not believe this relationship. It didn't make sense. It just.. happened. I could not find the section where they actually connected on a deeper level. Usually I am a 'don't tell me, show me' type of reader but in this case please also tell me because I don't understand.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have to be honest, I loved the Spanish love deception. I have not read another book by Elena until this one. But this did not do it for me. The main character was way too much for me, I couldn’t connect with her at all. In fact, she annoyed me and I didn’t understand why Matthew would even like her.

The way their relationship started didn’t even make sense, and I love fake dating and fake engagement. But this felt SO far fetched and why would he go along with it? I couldn’t jump on board with it.
Unfortunately this was a miss for me.

Fake engagement, seasoned runaway bride, found family. Josie has always been a people pleaser so when her absent father’s publicist shows up on her doorstep to try and control the chaos that ensued when her father announced a “secret child” in a news peice following his retirement announcement and muddy Matthew literally shows up in her driveway, she announces he’s her fiancé and he goes along with it! What starts as a misunderstanding, turns into the best thing that’s happened for Josie in a while! Matthew was also in the dumps, jobless and unsure of where life is going to take him until Josie comes along. Is the fifth engagement, finally the one?!?

I really enjoyed the chemistry that the two MC had! Matthew and Josie are a great match together. Matthew knows how to anchor Josie when she’s stressed, anxious or overwhelmed. He’s the ultimate lover and protector. Truly the constant she didn’t know she needed in her life. I liked seeing Josie find her voice and herself throughout the book. She did less of what others wanted and more of what she wanted/needed. Josie and Matthew had such good chemistry and tension! Truly a phenomenal book couple!

The book was a little predictable, and I do wish we dove a little more into Matthew’s family and Andrew’s relationship with his found family.

I’ve read every book by Elena and she’s an outstanding author. The Spanish love deception is just top tier for me and it’ll always rank high for me. Elena is one of my auto read authors!

Special thanks to NetGalley, Atria Publishing and Elena Armas for providing me this advanced copy in exchange for my honest and fair opinion. I would highly recommend this book if you enjoy cute rom-coms.

just finished the ARC and omg. My impression of Matthew in The Long Game was kind of lackluster, but my opinion has done a full 180 now. 💛 He was soooo sweet and Josie was so relatable (I cried at least 3 times ahaha). I read this in basically one sitting, it was that good! The deli scene 👀 The fitting room scene 😩 thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for approving me for this!! I will be purchasing on release day 😌