TITLE: Faking Ms. Right
AUTHOR: Claire Kingsley
SERIES: Dirty Martini Running Club
SERIES ORDER: 1
PUBLISHED: 05/23/2019
AVAILABLE IN KU: Yes
GENRE: Romantic Comedy
RATING: 4/5
“I held her close, ignoring the line I was crossing. My dad was here now, so it stood to reason I could do this—hold her and stroke her arm with so much familiarity. But I wasn’t doing it for him, any more than I’d held her hand for show. This had nothing to do with our ruse, and I didn’t give a fuck. I wanted this. Needed it. Needed her.”
BLURB:
“When I kissed you last night, I wasn’t pretending.”
Everly Dalton is a walking, talking, martini-drinking dating disaster. Forget kissing frogs. She can’t even get past the first date. But at work, she’s a badass—the longest-running assistant billionaire Shepherd Calloway has ever had. Her coworkers wonder how she handles the big bad wolf—and never gets bit.
Shepherd Calloway isn’t interested in being anyone’s sugar daddy. Tired of women who only want him for his money, he swears off dating, determined to focus on running his empire. Until his gold-digging ex hits him where it hurts, putting him in a difficult position.
His solution—to have Everly pose as his live-in girlfriend—is obviously crazy. But the timing is uncanny. It just so happens Everly needs a favor from her boss—a big and awkward one—and this could ensure everyone gets what they want.
Besides, Everly can totally survive a few months of faux romance.
Except there’s a problem. Shepherd is supposed to be a single-minded, unemotional robot boss. Not an actual human with a heart and morning wood. Between the awkward bed-sharing and tingly fake dates, lines are blurring. And as Everly gets to know the real Shepherd, she discovers there’s more to the man behind the bank account.
And faking it gets all too real.
MY REVIEW:
Cute fun read; steamy with some kink thrown in.
Our hero, Shepherd Calloway, is in need of a fake girlfriend and hires his assistant to help with the ruse. After spending time together and getting to know one another outside of a business setting, they start to see each other in a new light, feelings are caught, and the relationship starts to feel more real than fake for both of them. Some unnecessary (I think) drama had to be thrown in to up the stakes and I ended up docking a star because of that.
Still, this was a cute story and Claire is one of my favorite romance authors. Looking forward to reading more about the Dirty Martini Running Club and from Claire in the future.