Three months after his boyfriend broke up with him, Kian finds himself drawn back into Hudson River’s orbit.  Hudson just so happened to forget to tell his family that he and Kian were no longer dating, and now he needs Kian to be his fake boyfriend again, just for a weekend.  In return, he’ll connect Kian with a high school classmate of his, the CEO of an investigative journalism team he’s interested in working for.  Surely Kian can make it through the weekend unscathed, and the two of them won’t fall back in love.  But if they do – can they make it work this time?

I really wanted to love this – I’m a big fan of second chance and fake dating.  But this really, really fell flat for me.  Some of it could be “it’s me, not you”: I found Kian’s constant pop culture references super grating, and the writing style overall felt very juvenile.  Hudson’s family is crazy wealthy, and I find myself disliking that more and more these days, and there’s just a lot of talk about money here – what he spent at the tailor, the cost of flights, the cost of jewelry – for Kian being pretty anti-rich folks.  His family also just, like, totally sucks.  They’re all awful.  Also, if the Spotlight journalism team that Kian wants to work for is the Globe’s team, they don’t have a CEO?

But my biggest issue is that the linchpin to the second-chance romance is that the people involved understand why they broke up the first time and how to work through it this time.  We do not know why Hudson broke up with Kian, so we cannot be sure that they will be able to weather whatever it was the second time around, and for that reason, this book does not have an HEA to me.  You’re welcome to disagree!  I am totally unconvinced.

Anyways, I think I probably would have liked this more if I were ten years younger.  Alas, I am not, and thus the book was just not my thing.

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

racism, homophobia, unwanted sexual advances, future boss wants sex for a job