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onefineelephant's review
lighthearted
fast-paced
3.0
6/10. The premise, while ridiculous, was very intriguing. An arranged/forced marriage by a white family in the 21st family just realistically doesn't make sense. And that leads me to a major miss for me: while most fiction books require readers to suspend their disbelief for a book, contemporary romance books like this one should not have absolutely insane, balls to the wall, incredibly out of the ordinary events, actions, and dialogue. Grant is not a realistic man in the slightest. He is clearly a 'man written by a woman' but taken to the utmost extreme. Every single one of his actions and pieces of dialogue is so incredibly far from what a real man would do or say that I frequently laughed at the absurdity. Also, the whole book spans like less than a week (not including the epilogue). They "fall in love" in less than 24 hours which is just so disgusting and unrealistic to me. You can have a deep connection and be infatuated with someone in that time but actually falling in love with someone takes much longer than that because you actually have to know the person. The inevitable "fight" at the end where they "address" the bet and their feelings were so incredibly lackluster and was not actual communication at all. I can't stand when books rely on lack of communication or miscommunication and that is the entirety of this book. I am giving it a 6/10 though because I liked parts of the book such as the setting, when Grant is taking care of Nell, and the cutesy scenes before he finds out about the bet. Also, I want to read the second book because I like friends-to-lovers and fake dating much better than whatever this was.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Gaslighting
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