A review by multicoloredbookreviews
Faking It with #41 by Piper Rayne

3.0

Rating 3.5⭐

Bookbub has been very kind to me lately! I’ve come across so many titles by authors that are new to me that have been smashing successes. I couldn’t be happier. For the longest time, I kept deleting the emails without even opening them to see what free titles were available that day (in case you don’t know, Bookbub sends daily emails with book deals, from freebies to books that are on sale in the genres you’ve selected as being interested in). And now I’m low key kicking myself thinking of all the amazing books I may have missed out on.



Nothing to do about it now though, so let’s just move right on along to the review.

I really enjoyed Faking It with #41. Ford and Lena were both interesting, likable characters and their banter was *chef’s kiss*. Right from their very first scene together I knew they had great chemistry. The fake relationship trope is always a great set-up for some good sexual tension, and in this case it was made all the better by also throwing the enemies-to-lovers trope into the mix.



One of the aspects that stood out to me the most was how Anabelle, Ford’s baby, was actually a true part of the story. I really loved that a lot. I don’t often come across single-parent-to-a-baby books, but the few times I have, the babies have seldom been little else that props, hanging out in the background and only brought forth when the plot demanded it. That always felt disingenuous to me. Why write a single parent story, where the kids should be an integral, intrinsic part, only to completely forget about them for the majority of the novel? So, in that sense, this book absolutely rocked.



Another aspect that was tackled better than I often see it done was how it was hinted at that both of Ford’s friends/teammates had their own books without hitting the reader over the head with it, or making things confusing. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been happily reading along only to come to a screeching halt when some random character showed up spouting random things that were clearly a reference to something that had happened in some other book of which I was 100% ignorant.



I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, it’s awfully presumptuous of authors to believe readers have read all of their work and are familiar with the stories of all their characters. That’s a huge pet-peeve of mine. Especially when authors decide to bring together characters from completely different series. Either don’t do it or give sufficient context to know who these strangers are and how they fit into the current story. Kudos to Piper Rayne for insinuating enough about Aiden and Maxsim’s stories to spark my curiosity and make me want to read their books while keeping things clear by not diving into specific events that occurred in their own plots.



Back to the meat of the book, I thought the sort of gradual reveal of Lena’s backstory was done very well to justify her hang-ups and trust issues when it came to Ford. But I must say the execution of them getting over the last hurdle towards their happily ever after was messy. There was quite a bit of back and forth and the same conversation was had seemingly multiple times, which ended up being very confusing for me. I’d think they’d talked things through and were finally on the same page only to learn that wasn’t the case. That was the one thing that slightly put me off and why I docked half a star off of what would otherwise have been a 4 star rating.

In any case, this was still a super fun and entertaining book and for me, an introduction to what seems like an awesome series and two fantastic writers that make up a great writing duo, so I can confidently say I’ll be checking out more by Piper Rayne.