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The Catch
Amy Lea
416 pages | Published by Berkley
Publication Date: February 13, 2024
The Set Up: Melanie is a city girl and lifestyle influencer concerned with her waning following. She accepts a brand deal to stay at a luxurious Canadian spa, but a travel mix-up leaves her with nowhere else to go but a B&B in a rural fishing town. She arrives to find the B&B is more construction site than hotel and the owner, Adam, doesn’t want her there at all. But a boating accident leaves Adam unconscious in the hospital, with only Melanie by his side. When his family arrives, they mistake Melanie for his fiancé and the thought of a wedding has them putting aside a decade long family feud. Melanie and Adam agree to play fake fiances for a week to help mend his family drama and create some amazing social media content for her.
Amy Lea is so obviously a contemporary romance fan - her writing is fresh, her characters are relatable, and the spice is 👍🏻👍🏻
I saw this book comped as The Proposal meets While You Were Sleeping, which really fit. The whole book felt like a walk through a quiet coastal town.
I liked Melanie and I thought most of us can probably relate to her struggles with social media and image. She an Evan had a great opposites attract dynamic. Their friendship and banter kept me hooked (sorry, it was right there).
Fake dating always requires a bit of suspended belief in my opinion, but I love it regardless and I thought the motives here were pretty well intentioned and believable.
This ended up being a 4-star read for me, and now that Amy has finished her Influencer series I’m excited to see what stories she writes next!
Thanks to Berkley for the advanced e-book!
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