The latest novel from Elena Armas, a contemporary romance filled with small town charm and a fake fiancé
Hello and happy Wednesday! Today we’re going to be talking about an ARC I got a while ago, “The Fiancé Dilemma.” This is from the author who wrote the book “The Spanish Love Deception”, which got very popular on social media and BookTok. “The Fiancé Dilemma” is the sequel to “The Long Game”, which you don’t necessarily need to read to follow what’s going on in the sequel. I know this because I didn’t read the first book; honestly I didn’t know that book existed until I got the ARC for “The Fiancé Dilemma” – whoops!
Let’s dive into the synopsis!
“The Fiancé Dilemma” follows our two main characters, Josie and Matthew, as they navigate through a typical “misunderstanding and now suddenly they’re engaged” situation type thing. Josie is from the small town of Green Oak, North Carolina, where she runs a coffee shop and is the town’s mayor-in-spirit. She’s simply living her life, doing her best to move on from her latest break-up from fiancé #4, when a flashy PR exec shows up on her doorstep to basically tell her she’s a shame to her rich and famous father down in Miami, Florida, and they need to figure out a plan to mitigate the disaster that is Josie. Enter Matthew – literally.
When the PR exec thinks Josie is engaged (again!), Josie goes along with it in a panic, and who better to be lucky #5 than Matthew Flanagan, Josie’s half-sister’s best friend! When news breaks to not only Josie’s father, but to the whole town, Josie and Matthew are forced to pretend they’re engaged – and madly in love. Will they be able to convince the town and Josie’s father? Or will these “fake” feelings for their “fake” fiancé’s end up being real?
My star rating: a disappointing 3 out of 5.
I really wanted to like this. I read “The Spanish Love Deception” a while ago and I don’t really remember it, but I gave it four stars so I guess there was something there, but this one didn’t hit the mark for me.
I said earlier that there isn’t a need to read “The Long Game” to understand what was going on in this book, but maybe I should have. Josie and Matthew were introduced in the first book as supporting characters, so they wouldn’t be brand new people for readers who have read the first book. But me? They were new characters. I have never met these people before, and I’m really hoping their intros in “The Long Game” were better than the beginning of this book.
The book starts so clunky and jarring; we meet Josie at her house where she has decided to stick her hand in a jam jar to try and get an engagement ring that got stuck on her finger. One of the four rings she has from her ex-fiancé’s. Yes, you read that right: she truly believed that a good way to get a stuck ring off her finger was to use jam. JAM. So here I am, meeting this woman for the first time, and she has jam hands. Like a child.
Plus, it’s not just on her hands, it’s all over the place. Like a murder scene. I was so confused; this is how you introduce your character? But I guess, since Josie was in the first book, she may have had a more “normal” introduction. Who knows? I don’t, and I’m not going to read “The Long Game” to check.
So Jam Hands answers the door looking like Jason Voorhees after he meets up with some summer camp counselors, and she meets with the PR strategist, Bobbi Shark. I wish I was kidding with that name, but that’s what it is. Bobbi “with an i” Shark. Already I can tell I will not like this person, and I was proven right.
Look, I understand that, as the reader, I have to suspend some reality and disbelief when it comes to the “fake dating” or “fake relationship” trope, but this one was such a stretch, even Gumby had to stop and be like, “Woah, okay, that’s enough now!” Bobbi with an i sees the stuck engagement ring on Josie’s finger, immediately assumes she’s engaged (AGAIN), and also immediately assumes her fiancé is the first man she makes eye contact with on the sidewalk. Seriously, what is this? Who assumes this? And with such conviction.
The biggest thing about Bobbi Shark is when she meets up with Josie the next morning, and the topic of Matthew, Josie’s shiny new fiancé, comes up. First, Bobbi calls him “Blondie,” which is, um, weird. But when Josie corrects her with his name, this is her response:
“I think I prefer Blondie… Don’t get your panties in a bunch, I have nothing against him. I just can’t take blonds seriously. I know I’m one before you point that out. But that’s different. I’m a woman, and I’m me. I take myself – and women – very seriously.”
What the actual? What is this?? This woman – a blonde woman – is literally using the “dumb blond” trope against Matthew, a man she doesn’t even know. She apparently is like that with all blond men, but it’s okay because she takes blonde women seriously?
Bobbi: *sees blond men and labels them as Unserious Dumb Blonds*
Bobbi: *holds hand up to the blond man butterfly*
Bobbi: “Is this feminism?”
Aaaaand now for the rest of the book I cannot take this woman seriously. And congrats! It’s not because of her hair color.
Josie is also a character that rubbed me the wrong way sometimes. She has to convince Matthew – pretty hard – to be her fake fiancé, and when she finally gets him to agree, she hits the gas on it so fast. She “hard launches” this man as her fiancé to the entire town in such a weird way: by jumping on him and clinging to his body like a koala to stop another woman from talking to him. Matthew’s confused, obviously, and Josie just says, “This is your hard launch. As my fiancé. Yay!” It was just a weird situation. There are a few other instances where I feel like Josie pushes Matthew past his comfort zone, which I’m not a fan of.
The redeeming factor of this book is Matthew. I enjoyed his character, and he didn’t feel like a caricature of himself, much like the others did. He was sweet and heartfelt, and my heart softened when he had his family’s ring and told the story behind it. He’s also a man who knows what he wants, and while the “insta love” was a bit much, he for sure wanted Josie. I do love a man who’s sure.
When it comes to the overall plot of the book, it also felt a bit sparse. On the cover of this book there are the two main characters looking all cute. Well, as cute as you can look without having any faces, but I digress. So there’s the two main characters, but in the background there are four men standing around. Four men that, I assume, are Josie’s ex-fiancés. This has led me to believe that the four ex’s are going to come back in some way, shape, or form.
What really happens is that only one of the four ex’s comes back, and he only comes back when he finds out Josie’s father is a billionaire and wants his money for his political campaign, where he’s running for Senate. So he’s basically a non-factor and only shows how freakin’ awkward and ridiculous this man is. Seriously, who shows up to their ex-fiancé’s engagement party to chat up her father who only just came back into her life? And only came back basically as a PR stunt? The “drama” of that situation felt very forced and basically a non-starter, because we never see or hear from that ex-fiancé ever again. And the other three are just name-dropped and nothing else.
Look, I’m not dumb. I see the similarities with this and the film Runaway Bride. Julia Roberts raised me – I can probably quote that whole film by heart as I type this now. So the whole “going back to revisit her past relationships and wonder what went wrong” is not a new concept. I’m not saying to do that, but I guess I would have liked to see more of the motivation for her to not only leave her fiancé’s, but get engaged to them in the first place.
I wanted to like this book, I really did. But it just didn’t hit quite right for me.
Have you read “The Fiancé Dilemma” yet? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, I always love hearing from you!
Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
“The Fiancé Dilemma” is out now!
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