» QUICK OVERVIEW «
Stars: ★★★☆☆
Plot: ★★☆☆☆
Readability: ★★★★☆
Characters: ★★★☆☆
Writing: ★★★☆☆
Recommend: ✗

» PLOT «
Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating leads her to a lie where she panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor. With both benefitting from fake dating, both agree to keep up the charade. But as they spend more time together, Olive can't help but see a different side to Adam.

This book was presented to me as an enemies-to-lovers, and let me make that clear: it isn't one. So the following rant is kinda not deserved, but I already typed it out:

Ok so, I absolutely despise it when the enemies-to-lovers trope has a surprise "I secretly loved her from the beginning" part. I feel like it cheapens the enemies portion of the book. I don't mind if it originally started as enemies, and then one of them becomes enamored. But if there was never a mutual enemies portion, it isn't really enemies-to-lovers. It's a lot like the "it was all a dream" thing. It makes it all matter less. But of course, this wasn't even a true enemies to lovers, since they are not enemies, so if you read this, you just wasted your time reading about me (and my preferences) and not about the book.

There was one main thing that made me not rate this 4 or 5 stars. Apparently this was originally a Reylo fanfic, and I'm not sure it if that is true, but it does feel like a fanfic. There were so many poorly executed forced proximity scenes that resemble fanfic. My qualms with this book is not the fact that it was originally a fanfic (especially since if you don't know that it is fanfic, it changes nothing), it's that the plot is not well done and an overused one at that. The scenes just felt unrealistic and awkward.

Not only that, but the fake dating only came into play because Olive wanted to make it apparent that she wasn't interested in a guy her friend was interested in. Are they not adults? Can they not talk about it? This wasn't that big of a problem, I just wanted to mention it.

I'm gonna mention it, but not really go into it, but wtf was that part about him being able to fit her entire breast into his mouth?

» READABILITY «
Despite the poor plot, I did read this book very fast. There are some books that are just easy to speed read, and this was it.

» CHARACTERS «
The main character, Olive, is fine. Adam is fine. But Anh... why was she the one

instigating the scenes

with Olive and Adam? Considering that some couples have certain boundaries and the fact that this was a professor-"student" relationship, PDA really was forced, unnecessary, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

» WRITING «
The writing is fine, it's mainly the plot.

Also, this book was only told in one perspective. :( It's completely a me-thing, but I prefer it when romance books have multiple viewpoints.

» OVERALL «
While I did rush through this and enjoyed it, I feel like it is way too overhyped (on TikTok) for what it is).