I enjoyed this book a lot! I did feel like the main characters were a bit exhausting in their doubts about themselves and relationships

This was such a fast read! I found myself literally laughing out loud.

Beck and Hazel were SO cute. They were so smitten with each other and I found myself smiling every time Beck mentioned how much he adored Hazel.

Beck is the cutest cinnamon roll with no mean bone in his body. And Hazel literally deserves the world!

This book was so cute. First of all, I was so happy to get to revisit Mabel and Alfie, because they are just adorable. This book focused on Mabel’s best friend, Connie, and her neighbor, Beck. I could relate with Connie because I’m also not a size 0. It’s refreshing to read books about bigger women finding love and men that see more than just size. Beck is the type of guy we all wish we could have. He ends up telling a little fib at work, and before they know it, they’re in a fake marriage. It was good. I loved it.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the early copy. All of these opinions are my own.

This was a riot—equal parts hilarious, steamy, and unexpectedly sweet. The fake marriage setup is pure gold, with sharp banter, off-the-charts chemistry, and just the right amount of chaos. Stein nails that perfect mix of laugh-out-loud moments and gut-punch feelings, making you root for these two even as they fumble their way through the most ridiculous situation. If you love fake dating with extra spice and heart, this one’s a total win.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for the opportunity to provide my honest opinion.

I felt almost exactly about this book as I did When Grumpy Met Sunshine. It started off slow and the "quirkiness" of the hero and the cadence of the heroine's inner dialogue almost had me doubting that I could get through this book. However, when this story picked up, boy did it pick up!!

I absolutely fell in love with Hazel and Henry as people AND as a couple. Henry was quite inexperienced and awkward but he was never afraid of being exactly who he is despite years of people telling him that there was something wrong with him. Connie has spent years being treated poorly by men and doesn't trust "nice" men. After listening to her mother tell her exactly how to act and dress etc. for so long she doesn't even know who she really is. She even goes by the name Connie instead of her real name, Hazel. Henry and Hazel are neighbors and is very suspicious of his "nice guy" act despite her friend, Mabel, vouching for him repeatedly.

When Hazel stumbles across Henry's secret and learns, from him, the lie he's told his co-workers and why, she immediately feels drawn to Henry and decides to help him by playing his fake wife at a writing retreat they are both attending. She especially wants to stick it to his sports bro co-worker who is giving him a hard time. This quickly turns in to the two of them really getting to know each other and, OF COURSE, involves them sharing one double bed. Hazel quickly learns that there is more to Henry than that awkward, inexperienced guy and takes it upon herself to give him some experience. This is when the book really took a turn for me and I just couldn't put it down!!

I loved how Henry showed Hazel that it was okay for her to be herself without her even realizing it. I enjoyed seeing their chemistry come to life. Hazel was kind of forward with her dirty talk and advances but in the best of ways that really allowed Henry to open up. Overall, I just really enjoyed them together and now I'm kind of sad that their story is over.

*I received an ARC from NetGalley for voluntary review

Connie doesn't trust men-at all. That's why she wonders why her neighbor Beck is always cheery and giving her unsolicited baked goods that he's made for her. She waits for the other shoe to drop. After a comedy of errors, she ends up going to a writing retreat as Beck's fake wife. There she is forced to realize that maybe some things are true and real and good. Beck is a real "cinnamon roll"-a lovely, intelligent, nerdy man wrapped in a large package (no pun meant here!).
This story was a little more explicit than I like to read but overall a sweet story.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for my honest review.

Full disclosure I hated when grumpy meant sunshine but wanted to give this author another try so jumped into her latest with a fairly open mind. I mean, fake marriage/close proximity/one bed, what could go wrong. And when, in the beginning, Beck calls M&S marge and stencil 🤣? I was sold just for a minute.

The minute was swiftly over due to the choppy style of writing, characters that really didn't have any chemistry, not fully being clear on the FMCs name, and spicy scenes that felt more clinical and took up the entire last half of the book. No issues with spice here but there was no plot that went along with it.

I wanted to like this one, I did but ultimately don't think this author is for me.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for my review!

This book was so cute! And a lil spicy! I really enjoyed Beck’s character and that he was “innocent” but not not unbelievably so for a 37 year old man. Kinda need him bad 😭 but I also liked Hazel’s character arc too, it was very relatable and I feel for her. I enjoyed the relationship building in this book and I thought the premise was helpful in advancing the relationship as it developed rather than it just being a way to set up the beginning. Like, it felt purposeful.

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC! I really enjoyed this read!

My Big Fat Fake Marriage is a delightful, body-positive romcom that delivers plenty of heart, humor, and sizzling chemistry. The story follows Connie, an aspiring writer who’s wary of her neighbor Henry Beckett, a seemingly perfect “nice guy” with a quirky mustache and slightly disheveled hair.

The premise is simple yet fun—fake marriage, forced proximity, and plenty of tension. When Connie steps in to help, claiming to be Henry’s wife at an event where his bully is. What starts as a ruse quickly turns into something more as Henry shows Connie nothing but respect and care, making her feel seen and valued in ways she’s never experienced before.

Overall, this was a book filled with lovable characters, steamy moments, and a feel-good romance!

Charlotte Stein does it again!
My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein was such a fun and relatable five-star read!
This book was such a delight to read, featuring a well-rounded cast of characters who are impossible not to fall for.
The characters felt so real and I couldn't stop myself from loving them!
Connie and Beck had the absolute best banter. I was hanging onto their every word.
This warm, witty, laugh-out-loud rom-com was everything I was hoping for.
Overall: perfect chemistry, so smart, so humorous, so entertaining, so heartfelt!

Connie doesn’t trust nice guys. She doesn’t particularly like the bad guys, but at least she knows where she stands with them. They pretty much just want the one thing, so there is no confusion. And then there’s her neighbor, Henry Samuel Beckett (Beck), who is a very nice guy. He’s always making her cakes and is very thoughtful. But he’s married. Or so he said.

Connie is going to get the chance to get to know her neighbor better though. He’s a book editor and has helped plan a weeklong writer’s retreat. Connie has been working as a copywriter, but what she really wants is to write fiction, so she signed up for the writer’s retreat. She’s been looking forward to a week of relaxing and getting to know other writers.

When Connie talks to Beck about the retreat, she finds out that he’s far more awkward than she first realized, to the point that he made up a wife that he told his entire workplace about. And he’s going on the writer’s retreat with people who think he’s married, including a bestselling author who isn’t afraid to call Beck out on his awkwardness. Connie sees that and feels protective toward Beck. She feels so protective that she jumps into the conversation and announces that she is Beck’s wife.

Which is fine, until Connie realizes that now she’s going to have to pretend to be Beck’s wife through the writer’s retreat. And she’s finding that the more time she spends around Beck, the warmer her feelings grow towards him. So acting like his wife won’t be too difficult. But staying in the same room and respecting each other’s boundaries might be harder than they think.

My Big Fat Fake Marriage is a sweet rom com about a couple of people who don’t quite seem to fit into their worlds they live in. They have both been bullied and marginalized for being different, and it takes them some time to realize how perfect they are for each other, and I thought it was really sweet how they found respect and support in each other.

I listened to this book on audio, narrated by Imogen Wilde. I thought she did a really good job. The accent she used for Connie was lovely and brought her to life. The voice she used for Beck was a little awkward, which brought the character to life with perfection. I thought that listening to this book was a lot of fun, but there were several scenes that got extra-spicy, so listening at work may be a bad idea.

I wanted to love this book. I loved Charlotte Stein’s When Grumpy Met Sunshine, and I was excited for this fake marriage story. I thought the idea was a lot of fun. I just felt like the story veered off from the fake marriage idea to a very spicy story about the tension building between Connie and Beck. For me, that took over the plot, so I missed out on the comedy I was looking for with them acting like a couple in public. It’s not a bad book, but I think that the marketing for it was a little off from what the book became. It was still a lot of fun to listen to, and extra spicy, just not as entertaining as the book I was picturing in my mind.

Egalleys for My Big Fat Fake Marriage were provided by St. Martin’s Griffin, and an early copy of the audio were provided by Macmillan Audio, both through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Did Not Finish

I was really looking forward to reading this book after liking Stein's previous novel. However, I could not get past the first few chapters. The main character is neurotic, and the entire first two chapters are about her thinking her neighbor is suspect because he is "too nice." I decide to stop, knowing that I would be quickly annoyed by the protagonist.

Charlotte Stein has been writing for several years, starting in the erotic romance field and has recently turned her hand to contemporary romance. Her popular 2024 release When Grumpy Met Sunshine introduced readers to Mabel and Alfie, and Mabel’s best friend Connie is the star of this new release, My Big Fat Fake Marriage.

Connie is a marketing copy editor and an aspiring writer. She lives down the hall from Henry Samuel Beckett, or Beck as he’s usually known, Mabel’s book editor. In fact, it was Mabel that found the apartment for Beck to live in. Beck is a large man, friendly, cheerful, polite and a bit shy. A gentle giant, if you will. He likes to bake and he leaves her goodies outside of her door. He seems a bit too good to be true to Connie who has a very cynical view of men, having been disappointed by them many times in her life. Connie inadvertently discovers that in defending himself from a bullying colleague, Beck has invented for himself a fake wife. He spends a lot of his time coming up with details about her that he can bring up in case someone asks about her but lying also makes him feel stressed out and sick. While Connie has trouble sticking up for herself, she has no problem when it comes to defending others and she’s outraged on his behalf.

Beck has organized a writing retreat that Connie has been planning to attend anyway, encouraged by Mabel. Attending a book launch party for Mabel before the retreat though, Connie encounters the bully (Doug) from Beck’s office who is harassing Beck about speaking to a woman (her) and without thinking about it, Connie blurts out “Of course he’s talking to me. I’m his wife.”

So Beck’s fake imaginary wife has now become his fake real person wife. Which would be fine and easy to cope with if she weren’t going to be seeing Doug again, except that he’s also going to the writing retreat and he’s sharing a 2 bedroom cabin with Beck. So now, instead of going as herself, she’s going to have to go as Beck’s fake wife. They say that opposites attract and Connie and Beck appear to be opposites – but are they really? And what if it turns out that they’re each other’s perfect partner?

Ms. Stein has a writing style that some people really like, and others don’t. It’s very introspective. There is a lot of internal woolgathering and thinking and daydreaming and lusting and not everyone is comfortable getting so deep into someone else’s head. I happen to like her style but I know it’s not for everyone. This book is written all from Connie’s point of view but you don’t feel like you’re missing Beck’s POV because of the detail that comes from Connie.

Because of Connie’s upbringing with critical parents, and her general life experiences, she’s often hidden parts of herself- including the fact that her real name is actually Hazel and she’d chosen Connie because it sounded like a cooler name. When Beck finds that out, he insists on calling her Hazel and that he likes the name Hazel a lot and so Connie becomes Hazel in the story from that point on. This is a slow burn romance with the first 60% of the book being a lot of lusting on Hazel’s side, to the last 40% of the book where she discovers that the lust is mutual and Beck and Hazel engage in some intimate relations of the distinctly horny kind. The author doesn’t mince words, and there are pages of pages of sexual longing and then sexual experience which is what bumps this up from a ‘warm’ rating to a ‘hot’ rating for me.

Sex aside though, Hazel discovering that Beck is as good a man as he appears to be is very sweet and satisfying. They have a lot of things in common, nerdy things like 80’s TV shows and science fiction books and writing silly texts to each other and Beck’s idea of a perfect weekend morning with a partner, drinking coffee in bed and splitting sections of the newspaper to read side-by-side sounds pretty ideal to Hazel too. It just comes down to getting Hazel to believe that she can be that partner for Beck.

If you’re in the mood for a slow burn, steamy, forced proximity (there’s only one bed!), funny, and charming (if a little long-winded sometimes) book, this is one for you.

This review will be posted at All About Romance and feedback updated with the link.

Thank you to St Martin's Press for the earc, all opinions are my own.

I had a really hard time with this one right out of the gate. The main character is very unlikeable, the different names doesn't make much sense at all, and the man is just boring. I can't get past about 20% unfortunately. Thank you for the opportunity to try the book out.

Thank you to the publisher for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I didn't love this book. I had a hard time getting invested in the characters. I was able to continue reading it, but it felt like the lead up to their story took too long. I was interested enough to see how the story ended and I still rooted for Hazel and Beck to work through their individuals struggles to be honest with themselves and each other.

My Big Fat Fake Marriage is a charming romcom that took me a little while to warm up to, but by the end, I was completely hooked. The quirky, imperfect characters are a refreshing change from the usual romance tropes, and I appreciated the personal growth they each experience throughout the story. It's a heartwarming read for anyone who loves seeing characters evolve and find love along the way.

This story seems like a collection of conversations. There is very little exposition to what is going on around them, unless it furthers the conversations.

It’s a little hard to love a book where the characters spend the entire time explaining how “wrong” they are for each other and why they “can’t be together” when it’s a crock of shit. The greatest strength in this book is the intimate scenes, though.

An amazing spicy, cute romance that was so good I couldn't put this one down.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloom Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

The premise of this book sounded good. And while I didn’t love this book, I was able to finish it. I liked the fact Connie was into Beck and it was something new for her. Their interactions were amusing. Neither one of them expected the other.

I enjoyed reading My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein. You will fall in love with all the characters. I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely. Happy Reading!