68. The Pretending Plot by Lauren Blakely

listened on Audible Escape
narrated by Joe Arden and Vanessa Edwin
Unabridged audio (4:33)
2020 Little Dog Press
202 pgs.
Adult romance
Finished 4/25/20
Goodreads rating:  3.91 - 422 ratings
My rating:  3

First line/s:  "The handcuffs snapped closed."

My comments:  I do enjoy these fake fiance/boyfriend/girlfriend/mail order bride tomes, no matter how bad they are, and most of them are pretty bad....  This was apparently one of Lauren Blakely's first, originally a novella, and she has recently rewritten and added to.  It's still pretty short.  I was put off by the female narrator.  I think perhaps she's American trying to speak with a British accent, but it just didn't work for me at all.  And there was was too much about her stupid chihuahua that she called The Artful Dodger. Glad it was a quick read because I don't think I would have finished it if it had been much longer than four hours.  Also hard to believe that a 28-year-old woman would be in the casting director position of authority as was Sutton.  Sutton and Reeve...a little pretentious much?

Goodreads synopsis:  A delicious and all new reimagining of Lauren Blakely's original fake fiancé romance!  All preorder proceeds go to Australian fire relief!
          I don't mean to just blurt it out. "Why, yes I'm engaged!"
          But once I say it to a potential client, there's only one logical thing to do -- cast the role of my fake fiancé.
          Easy enough. As a casting director, my job is to find the most talented players for every part, so I choose dreamy, edgy, sexy, sarcastic Reeve.And I sign him up for one week in the role of mine.
          It's not as if I'll fall for him in five nights even if we get a little cozy one night at theater. It's not as if I'll want more even after a scorching afternoon in the stacks of the New York Public Library.
        I can't let myself fall because on Friday at midnight the curtain drops on our fake romance . . .

The Pretending Plot is a reimagining of the 2013 story Pretending He's Mine (no longer available for sale). The Pretending Plot has been rewritten in first person and expanded from a novella to novel length!