If youâve been paying attention, you know that I donât really write a âreview,â but rather share a selection of short snippets to let the book showcase itself. I may or may not add a bit of commentary about why Iâve selected particular snippets.
This book is a reread because the 2nd book in the series is coming out on August 2, and I want the details for book 1 to be fresh in my mind.
In this book, hand to heart, I could open to a random page anywhere in the book, close my eyes, swipe a couple dozen times in either direction, plant my finger on the screen, reopen my eyes, and select a snippet including the words Iâd landed on, and you wouldnât be able to tell it wasnât one Iâd deliberately highlighted for the purpose of sharing with you. Thatâs how lovely and needed every word of this story is.
I did just that for one of these. Bet you canât guess which of these snippets was randomly selected rather than carefully curated:
James Royce-Royce sucked in an audible breath. And, suddenly, everyone was studiously looking in different directions. âSorry,â I muttered. âI⌠Sorry. Iâm a bit upset right now, and I use being a prick as a defence mechanism.â
The conversation hadnât so much died on us as been taken out back and shot in the head. And I knew I should be playing paramedic but I couldnât quite bring myself to or work out how. Instead, I crunched on some of the baked salisfy and parmesan that had just arrived (which was delicious in spite of the fact I had no idea what salisfy was, and didnât want to give Oliver the satisfaction of asking him) and wondered what it would be like being here with somebody I could actually stand.
âYou know youâre wearing pyjamas wrong, right?â
He didnât look up. âOh?â
âYeah, youâre supposed to just wear the bottoms, and have them hanging low on your hips, displaying your perfectly chiselled V-cut.âÂ
âMaybe next time.âÂ
I thought about this for a moment. âAre you saying you have a perfectly chiselled V-cut?âÂ
âIâm not sure thatâs any of your business.âÂ
âWhat if someone asks? I should know for verisimilitude.âÂ
The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. âYou can say Iâm a gentleman and we havenât got that far.â
âYouââI gave a thwarted sighââare a terrible fake boyfriend.â
âIâm building fake anticipation.â
âYouâd better be fake worth it.â
âI am.â
âDo you ever half-arse anything?âÂ
He thought about it. âI gave up about two-thirds of the way through Wolf Hall.âÂ
âWhy?âÂ
âI donât know, really. Itâs quite long and involved, and I think I got distracted. Isnât that precisely what half-arsing entails?âÂ
Out of nowhere, I was laughing. âI canât believe Iâm pretending to date someone who just used the phrase âprecisely what half-arsing entails.ââÂ
âWould you believe me if I said I did it deliberately for your amusement?â
Blurb
Luc OâDonnell is tangentiallyâand reluctantlyâfamous. His rock star parents split when he was young, and the father heâs never met spent the next twenty years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dadâs making a comeback, Lucâs back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything.
To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice, normal relationshipâŚand Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. Heâs a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and heâs never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. In other words: perfect boyfriend material. Unfortunately, apart from being gay, single, and really, really in need of a date for a big event, Luc and Oliver have nothing in common. So they strike a deal to be publicity-friendly (fake) boyfriends until the dust has settled. Then they can go their separate ways and pretend it never happened.
But the thing about fake-dating is that it can feel a lot like real-dating. And thatâs when you get used to someone. Start falling for them. Donât ever want to let them go.
