As an audiobook narrator, Clementine Cox has no trouble mastering the voices of space aliens, elven warriors, or even demon-possessed cats. But the moment she tries her hand at an erotic romance, she’s stumped. With her deadline looming, she books a week at a secluded cabin to restore her inner muse, telling her loving-but-overbearing family it’s a romantic getaway with her not-so-existent new boyfriend to keep them from worrying. She never expects them to invite themselves along to meet the new guy. Now, she has less than twenty-four hours to find a pretend boyfriend in order to save her job and, potentially, her sanity.
Workaholic Jake Donovan isn’t interested in a real relationship. After a broken engagement, all he wants to do is focus on keeping his brewpub, the Holy Grale, afloat. But when he finds out his favorite customer is in need of a fake boyfriend, and his business partners insist he take a much overdue vacation, he has no choice but to help Clem out. All he has to do is enjoy the sunshine, play nice with her family, and keep his hands to himself for the week.
But Jake’s not prepared to like waking up next to Clem every morning as much as he does. Or to feel so welcome by her quirky family. And as the line between real and fake starts to blur, he realizes one week
might never be enough.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39509019-real-kind-of-love
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Kind-Love-Books-Brews-ebook/dp/B07BPFM113/
I can't explain how adorable this book was. It was everything I could ever ask for a weekend read: cute, lighthearted but it was also a book that didn't shy away from putting the characters through complications, especially relating to family dynamics and expectations. I adored the fact that the heroine, Clem, was an audiobook narrator, in particular she was reading a romance book with rough sex and the hero is "helping her" with her involvement with the book. It was all kind of cliche but in an amazing way, don't get me wrong. It had a humour that made me really happy and had me laughing out loud. At the same time, I was rooting for their relationship even though it was obvious that both of them had a lot of things that they had to get through.
The family aspects were really relatable and I had so many reason to like the main characters and feel for them in relation to the situation that they were in. I thought this story would be very straightforward but it actually surprised me a lot of times. And of course, I adored the fake relationship, which is one of my favourite tropes ever and the one that made me want to read this book in the first place. It was written beautifully and made me want to keep reading. I connected with Clem's struggles especially and with her character and personality. And even though I know her family was too much, I adored reading about them. They gave me a lot of funny moments.
As you can tell, I really enjoyed this book. I have a few complaints though. First, I would have liked more diversity because it felt super white and straight at some points. Also, I really disliked the fact that we were constantly being told that Clem wasn't that pretty, that she was "pleasantly average" but she was a skinny, white girl with very stereotypically pretty features and everyone thought she was pretty. Apart from that, there's a passage where the guy said that "if he ever got a taste of her, there'd be no way he'd stop until he'd stripped down all her defenses". I know it's probably not intended as a literal thing, he was thinking that he was bad and he always hurt people and there was never a moment where he made unwanted advances but I just don't like that it said that there'd be no way he'd stop, it's part of the language that we have to change.
This book was gorgeous, though. If you're looking for something cute and fun, this is the one for you!
