Starting off with the good: The characters were nicely written. I like that both MCs had friends, families, hobbies, fears and goals. They were realistic and likeable. I especially appreciated Bethany’s confidence and Jacob’s sweetness. I also appreciate all the representation (the MCs and SCs all have different body types, ethnicities and sexualities. Nice!). 
 

Bethany and Jacob’s relationship was really fun and sweet! They fit together really well, I enjoyed their banter, I liked that they showed genuine interest in each other’s hobbies, and I really appreciated their conversations about boundaries. 

  

Now for the bad…. The pacing was off. The book starts with Jacob breaking up with his girlfriend, then getting a new one (Saylor, aka Bethany’s friend). Then Saylor suggests that Jacob and Bethany should go to homecoming together as friends, since Saylor had already agreed to go with someone else before she started dating Jacob. Then then break up. Then Jacob and Bethany agree to still be each other’s homecoming dates. And ONLY THEN do they decide to fake date. 

It takes over 80 pages for them to even get to this point. And they only actually begin fake dating at around 40%..... Idk why we wasted so much time with other stuff at the start. I understand that it’s there to establish Jacob’s motives, but let’s be for real for a second: both of their motives were flimsy and unserious, at best. We seriously didn’t need to waste almost half of the book on that. 

And here’s the worst part: when they started fake dating, they already liked each other!!!😐😐😐 Both of them already wanted to kiss each other BEFORE they even started their scheme!!!!!!!!!! And keep in mind that at that point they’d had a total of like 4 conversations; they were friendly acquaintances at best. Like, at that point…….. just date for real???? I genuinely couldn’t believe that we wasted the first 40% of the book on unnecessary stuff, and then turns out the last 60% was just gonna be me waiting for those 2 to admit their feelings (and not actually *develop* feelings, since apparently they were already into each other…… 🙄). 

 
The rest of the book was kinda cute, I guess. I liked seeing their friendship grow, but I would’ve rather seen their *romantic* feelings also grow. Instead, they both had a crush on each other after talking only a couple of times, so the whole fake dating thing felt completely unnecessary to this story. The fun thing about the trope is seeing characters fall in love *for real* after pretending they’re in love for so long, but these 2 already liked each other, so, literally – what was the point??? 
 

I just kept thinking “Why am I even here? You already like each other. Literally just date. I don’t need to be here.”. 🙄 This made it hard for me to care about their romance. I was very neutral the whole time. When they broke up and got back together in the end I literally didn’t care. It was very anticlimactic. Perhaps I would’ve cared if I’d seen their romance flourish, but alas. 

 
 Anyways. The book isn’t bad; it’s actually kinda sweet! But it simply felt like a waste of time. 🫤