Gracie Reid's to dos: Find a new job after her gross boss fired her. Get Mom into a better nursing home. Decide if she wants to be famous Chinese actress Wei Fangli's stand-in for the next few months. Don't fall in love with Fangli's best friend Sam Yao if she says yes. Take multivitamin. Laundry.

Previously an Audible Original, this really delightful celebrity romance is making its physical debut this spring. It was such a fun and touching read - Gracie is struggling to take care of her mother with Alzheimer's, as well as dealing with the fallout of sexual harassments at work and trying to launch her fledgling planner business. Her relationships with Fangli and Sam are both tender and warm, and it's wonderful to watch Gracie settle into the long-term friendships she's been craving.

Gracie has depression and anxiety, and it's revealed that Fangli likely does as well. In a way that's probably familiar to people with either/both of those diagnoses, she feels really stuck at points and is also unable to really verbalize how terrible her boss's behavior was until she has a lot of distance (much like Tiffy and her past relationship in THE FLATSHARE). I think the book has been dinged unfairly for that.

Why I'm not giving it a full five stars is because I am perhaps too much of a moral relativist for this to totally work for me - Gracie has a real existential crisis over when it's "okay" to pretend to be Fangli and when it's not. I don't really see the ethical dilemma there: the important parties have consented to the sham. I found this a little tedious.

This was a really fun read, and I'm hoping that Fangli gets her own story! She sure deserves it.

Thank you Sourcebooks and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

workplace sexual harassment, parent died of cancer (remembered, off-page), parent with Alzheimer's (on-page), depression and anxiety, non-narrative characters with controlling parents