I have been meaning to pick up a Melanie Harlow book for a long time now, she's been coming up on my radar quite a bit, but I believe I started with the wrong one.

To be fair and transparent, I think she is a good writer. It flows well, there's no repetition, her dialogues are good and even though she put way too much dirty talk in this book for a couple that had ZERO chemistry, I appreciate the effort.

The cover is nice, the narration on audible was also great, loved the female narrator. The guy was meh.

I am having a hard time figuring out if this whole fake-dating trope is just not for me, or if people just don't know how to do it right.

This girl wanted to go to a wedding, she didn't want to sit at the single's table so she hired a male companion online. Because that is what any other woman would do, god forbid women are seen or written as anything more than a man holder. God forbid we get a female character that doesn't act like her only value in existence is to look pretty and have someone love her.

But I know, I know. It's a fake-dating book, that is not really a fair comment to make, so let me give you a couple of fair comments.

In the hopes to make our FMC the quirkiest, silliest, innocent flower in this Disney garden, she is seen AND DESCRIBED as almost child-like by the male main character, while he thinks about how much he wants to **** her in her jammies.

Mels, the word almost doesn't do much in this scenario, sorry to burst your bubble.

Don't. Just don't.

Listen, I love my fair share of taboo romances and HUGE age gaps romances but I don't need to be inside this guy's head while he is clearly attracted to her because she looks and acts like a child.

This might be an extremely personal choice but I am sick and tired of female main characters having to be infantilized so they can be seen as cute. Give her a colorful wardrobe, a love for dinosaurs, a river rock collection, give her a personality next time, maybe that's what they're missing. I don't know, just a WILD GUESS here.

Anyways, guy meets girl, they agree to make this a one night stand, but he is terrified of commitment so when he hears her use the word DATE once in a sentence he runs away scared. He doesn't date. He also has the emotional maturity of a lizard.

Our FMC, a 29 year old middle school art teacher, also sits down at a table with her parents and lies to them that he is a football player that went to a fancy college. When in reality he went to prison... Real popular school, look it up.

I don't care that he went to prison, I care that I am reading a book about a 29 year old lying her ass off over something absurdly shallow like she's the main character in parent trap.

She is selfish, bland, unconvincing as a human being and he is there to mention his dick is twitching in his pants every time he looks at her, and there you go. There's your fake dating book.

Grown-ups acting like they're 12.

I guess it's me. I just can't do the extra quirky, extra cutesy, extra silly, extra pedophily book. I have never read a fake dating book I enjoyed.

Honorable mention to:

"condoms are just an emotional barricade"

not unless Gonorrhea is an emotion Mels.

If you're a teen reading this book, please know that is not how life works.

what is it with authors trying to romanticize the need for condomless sex, it just feels better, it's not that deep.

We also have a very cute scene near the end where they're laying in bed hashing out their feelings, and she is going over the dad who abused him, the mom who abandoned him and he is still trying to stop his dick from twitching.

Some people say it never stopped. It's still twitching in his pants.

Maybe he should look into it, go to a doctor. I don't know.

Anyways

I might pick up another one of her books to see if I have better luck.

If You Were Mine - Likewise Book Reviews

4 Reviews