Rent a Boyfriend

"A lot of fun to read,perfect beach read!"

"A cute college age fake dating/ real relationship romance. Highlighting the asian family culture."

"I learned this year that I really enjoy fake dating storylines, and Rent a Boyfriend did not disappoint! This was both a cute and stressful read. Chloe lives with really heavy expectations from her parents, and it was I felt bad for her. Overall, the story was fun, and I would check out another book by the author! <br/><br/>CW - misogyny, arranged marriage, fatphobia, homophobia, cancer"

"Made my heart skip a beat here and there. Defines the pressure of having Asian parents. Gave me a good laugh. "

"This was good. I always expected it to be because I'm a sucker for a pretty cover, but also fake dating fatigue has been setting in for me for a long time so I wasn't sure. But the concept of Rent a Boyfriend in this book differs from other fake dating books because it is both literally different from one I've read before, and also actually makes sense. I can wholeheartedly understand the logic behind Chloe/Jing-Jing's decision to rent a boyfriend with very little suspension of disbelief involved. The most unbelievable thing about this story is that she flew home for thanksgiving, christmas, chinese new year, and spring break. Lol I literally attend university while living in my parents' house so I actually don't have personal experience with deciding to visit home or whatever but also if I moved across the country I would not be traveling in the middle of a semester I would fail out of school. This story is told interestingly because as I've kind of mentioned it occurs mainly across holiday visits home and also text messages. And I found out today that those are great settings for a romance novel because wow I loved the tension of them falling for each other while performing an elaborate charade for the parents that could be suspected at any moment while there's an awkward customer employee dynamic going on while they're all like eating turkey or something. The text messages were also pretty believable and one specific line about a sheep caught me so off guard I laughed out loud. The parent-child dynamic was obviously a giant part of this story and it felt done really well because while I'm obviously more sympathetic to Chloe and her parents are basically unbearable, they're also pretty easy to empathize with too. <br/><br/>And while I'm white and have pretty chill parents (ok one truly chill parent, the other was raised in the type of immigrant household that was very achievement-focused too and halfheartedly enforces those standards on me) so I couldn't directly relate to a lot of the dynamics or traditions (lol i guess washing and reusing tubs/containers/bags/tins but I didn't realize that was weird), there is one thing I insanely relate to because Chloe you do the replaying all of your most shameful moments in your head too? Me too! I have the time when I was in the first grade or so and asked someone who would later become my friend if they would consider losing weight. (I know why I did this, my parents and aunt and uncle talked about losing weight often in those days before they basically gave up, and 6 year old me wasn't really intending to make fun or anything but still! omg. i have never brought this up to that friend because maybe they don't remember but it haunts me). The (multiple) times I have high-fived people when they were just raising their hand for an unrelated reason and also not even looking at me. The time I literally rode my bike into a creek while the older girl who thought she was so much older and cooler than us when she was literally only a year older looked on. I could out-cringe basically anyone and also all my most awful moments are categorized in my head and routinely replayed so I can hate myself and dude you too? I love that."

"DNF. I just couldn’t get into it"

"It didn’t let me read it "

"Cute story and interesting to learn about Chinese culture! (There is language and some crude references to anatomy.)"