Rating: 65% | D | ★★ Warnings: + Sexual content Synopsis (from Goodreads): A wedding. A trip to Spain. The most infuriating man. And three days of pretending. Or in other words, a plan that will never work. Catalina Martín, finally, not single. Her family is happy to announce that she will bring her American boyfriend to her sister’s wedding. Everyone is invited to come and witness the most magical event of the year. That would certainly be tomorrow’s headline in the local newspaper of the small Spanish town I came from. Or the epitaph on my tombstone, seeing the turn my life had taken in the span of a phone call. Four weeks wasn’t a lot of time to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic–from NYC and all the way to Spain–for a wedding. Let alone, someone eager to play along my charade. But that didn’t mean I was desperate enough to bring the 6’4 blue eyed pain in my ass standing before me. Aaron Blackford. The man whose main occupation was making my blood boil had just offered himself to be my date. Right after inserting his nose in my business, calling me delusional, and calling himself my best option. See? Outrageous. Aggravating. Blood boiling. And much to my total despair, also right. Which left me with a surly and extra large dilemma in my hands. Was it worth the suffering to bring my colleague and bane of my existence as my fake boyfriend to my sister’s wedding? Or was I better off coming clean and facing the consequences of my panic induced lie? Like my abuela would say, que dios nos pille confesados. Spoiler-Free Review I really, really wanted to like The Spanish Love Deception. I know I said that about For the Wolf as well, but my standards for The Spanish Love Deception were different. With For the Wolf, it was more a feeling of frustration regarding how poorly I felt the author executed the premise. With The Spanish Love Deception, it was a feeling of utter disappointment and confusion as to why there had been so much hype on social media about this book. If Emily Henry's Beach Read redeemed the contemporary romance genre for me, Elena Armas's The Spanish Love Deception booted me back to square negative ten, all hope lost. My main problem with this novel is that it reminds me too much of Sally Thorne's The Hating Game, which deprived me of all hope in the contemporary romance genre in the first place, two years ago. (I'm starting to think I might have to swear off all office rivalry romances.) I instantly clocked the similarities between the novels the first chapter of The Spanish Love Deception and it was downhill from there. That being said, if you liked The Hating Game, definitely try The Spanish Love Deception. Aside from the plot and the characters, the writing also didn't suit me. There was an overzealous amount of detail given to the main love interest's eyes—and to everyone's body parts in general. Not to mention the author's refusal to use contractions half of the time, which made for clunky, artificial dialogue. However, I did enjoy some parts of the plot. I found the protagonist to be a semi-well-rounded character by the end of the novel, and many of the struggles she dealt with were well-founded and believable. The ending was also clean and satisfying. Ultimately, this novel is perfect for readers looking for a fun (but not short—this novel clocks in at a whopping 487 pages) romance with a guaranteed happily ever after ending. (Click "Read More" for spoilers.) Plot (17/30)
Beginning (5/10), Middle (6/10), and End (6/10) The plot starts off slowly, with Lina and Aaron bickering for what seems like half the novel. What struck me most while reading is how off-kilter the plot is before the trip to Spain. The pre-Spain chapters seem like a series of loosely interconnected short stories rather than a cohesive contribution to the novel. The plot's weak-legged, struggling feeling doesn't vanish when Lina and Aaron finally arrive in Spain for the wedding, but it does improve, and the plot moves consistently during the second and third acts. A major factor in my dislike for this book is the nonsensical nature of Lina and Aaron's enemies-to-lovers arc. There's little reason why they should hate each other—and, in fact, as some people have pointed out online, Lina is almost solely responsible for their antagonism—and it's hard to connect to an enemies-to-lovers arc if there's no real obstacle keeping the characters apart. I found myself constantly groaning at Lina insisting ad nauseam that Aaron couldn't possibly like her, that she couldn't possibly like him. Characters (17/30) Development (10/15) and Allure (7/15) By chapter 2, the novelty of Aaron's silent yet intimidatingly hot personality had worn off. By chapter 3, I stopped paying attention to Lina whenever she waxed poetic about Aaron's eyes and then immediately launched into a tirade on how much she hated him. Development-wise, I felt that only Lina had adequate development over the course of the novel. First-person narration does unfortunately produce tunnel-vision character development for characters aside from the narrator, but even with that provision in mind, I felt Aaron's flatness of character keenly. I appreciated Lina coming into her own at the end of the novel and finally facing the demons that Daniel left her with, but I also found myself questioning exactly where else she had developed. In her one-sided hate relationship with Aaron? At work, where she'd always tried to stand up for herself anyway? Writing (11/20) Descriptions (8/10) and Flow (3/10) The descriptions were fine. A little over-the-top, as I mentioned above, but tolerable. As a guilty writer of purple prose myself, I'm not keen to call out other authors for it. The flow, on the other hand-- I'm writing this review just 15 hours after finishing the book, so I'm still oversensitive to Armas's writing. But the lack of contractions truly maddened me. I can understand writing out the contractions during non-dialogue moments. I can understand writing out the contractions for Lina, who isn't a native English speaker and who might tend to use more traditional grammatical structures. But writing out contractions during both scenarios and during dialogue is rage-inducing. The choice to avoid contractions half the time left the story's pace limping and the dialogue artificial. Closure/Set-Up (20/20) Logic (10/10) and Allure/Closure (10/10) Thankfully, no unclear or illogical endings to be found here. The Spanish Love Deception ends with a neat epilogue (probably one of my favorite literary inventions ever!), finally giving an exhausted Lina all the happiness she deserves.
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