Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

by Jennifer Millikin – I’m forever grateful that @jenmillwrites commented on one of my Instagram posts about her book. Authors, please always do this! I’ve found some of my favorite stories in precisely this way!

Paisley Royce is hosting her sister’s bachelorette party and should be looking forward to the destination wedding on her all-time favorite North Carolina island, where she will be the maid of honor. The only problem? Her sister is marrying Paisley’s college ex-boyfriend, and everyone keeps reminding Paisley that she’s single. Burnt out on bachelorette shenanigans, Paisley finds herself at the restaurant bar, where she comes face-to-face with her college creative writing class rival, Klein. He’s as handsome as ever and working as a bartender while he tries to get his first book published, but publishers want an author with a social media presence, and he has none. Through a quirky series of misadventures, they sign a napkin contract – Klein will be her fake boyfriend for the wedding so that people will stop looking at her like she’s pathetic. She’ll put the weight of her digital marketing agency into gaining a social media following for him. But as they prepare for the wedding and help each other through a series of challenges, they see softer sides of each other emerge, and the line between fake and real gets very blurry.

My favorite version of the enemies/rivals trope is when she thinks it is enemies-to-lovers, and he sees it as his second chance romance. That’s what we have in this pitch-perfect beach read. It is sweet, steamy, deeply romantic, and laugh-out-loud funny. Throughout the book, you become invested in Paisley and Klein and their complex and incredibly different families. Millikin breathed incredible life into all the characters without the book feeling too long and created excellent third-act drama that left me rooting for all the right people. I loved it.

The audiobook is duet narration, and you know I absolutely love that format. It was perfect for this book, and I may have neglected several weekend responsibilities to finish it!