A review by yazaleea
The Romantic by Riley Hart

2.0

2.75 stars, this started off well and then it pissed me off.

The drunk Vegas wedding is always a set up I find funny, until I remember how much I hate fake dating. Fake marriage is a little bit better, but still, eh.

Parker is the Romantic of his group of friends, looking for his Prince Charming and his Happy Ever After. He has terrible luck with men, though and is losing hope. Elliott has been flirting with Parker for a year, but his fun, casual and frequent sexual encounters are a turn off for Parker. When they both meet in Vegas and get drunk, they never expected to wake up married. For the sake of keeping up appearances, they decide to stay together for 6 months before parting ways. But as they spend more time together and acknowledge their mutual attraction, they decide to start dating.

The whole plot felt so contrived and the conflicts were so dumb, but that’s mostly because it is a very regular fake dating with the usual fake dating tropes. Parker being insecure and refusing to see that Elliott obviously has feelings for him. Elliott is just so caring and spoils him rotten because he likes to do it and knows Parker loves it. Elliott is actually a pretty good communicator, and I really liked that about him. And then, Parker makes a whole drama out of nothing and that was so annoying. The whole ending with the « reveal » of their lie was rushed, happened and was resolved in like 20 pages. Huh. I don’t know, the reasons that pushed them to stay married felt so insignificant.

They were actually adorable together, despite the whole Parker’s inability to communicate or plot blindness to Elliott’s obvious feelings. The praise kink between them was hot as fuck and they were so whipped it was so sweet. Same as in Book 1, I feel like the trope was forced and came at the detriment of a cute couple. I’d probably have enjoyed this wayy more if we had just seen them give dating a chance without the entire wedding sham I think.

On to the next book, I like Marcus but I hate age gaps so we will see how it goes i guess. But this series is far from my fave Riley Hart series so far