A charming and clever rom-com about a young woman’s desperate attempts to fend off her meddling mother…only to find that maybe mother does know best.
Mark Chan this. Mark Chan that.
Writer and barista Emily Hung is tired of hearing about the great Mark Chan, the son of her parents’ friends. You’d think he single-handedly stopped climate change and ended child poverty from the way her mother raves about him. But in reality, he’s just a boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer, and when they’re forced together at Emily’s sister’s wedding, it’s obvious he thinks he’s too good for her.
But now that Emily is her family’s last single daughter, her mother is fixated on getting her married and she has her sights on Mark. There’s only one solution, clearly: convince Mark to be in a fake relationship with her long enough to put an end to her mom’s meddling. He reluctantly agrees.
Unfortunately, lying isn’t enough. Family friends keep popping up at their supposed dates—including a bubble tea shop and cake-decorating class—so they’ll have to spend more time together to make their relationship look real. With each fake date, though, Emily realizes that Mark’s not quite what she assumed and maybe that argyle sweater isn’t so ugly after all… all…
Review:
An absolute delight!
Jackie Lau’s latest is a fake relationship–but wait, we need to make our fake relationship look a little more real, so we’ll go on some real fake dates…hang on, this isn’t feeling fake anymore, maybe it’s real?–story.
Emily Hung’s complicated relationship with her mother pretty much guarantees that she’s going to feel a certain way about Mark Chan–the mother that she feels doesn’t respect her chosen profession (novelist) and is constantly comparing her unfavorably to her sisters wants her to date this amazingly perfect guy? Yeah, thanks but no thanks–so their first meeting is an absolute disaster. But then they’re manipulated into a date (Mrs. Hung can apparently be quite intimidating 😉 ) and Emily comes up with the fake dating scheme. It’s pretty out there, but Mark (eventually) agrees to go along with it, and…we all know what’s going to happen, right?
EXCEPT…Ms Lau gives us some twisty turns along the way, and I think I was as surprised as Emily to find out what was really going on in her mother’s head the whole time. (Plus, I may never recover from Ms Margaret Muffins. She absolutely steals every scene she’s in being her own very aloof self and I was here for it) I also may have dreams about that cherry pie milkshake. And I’m not even that big a fan of cherry pie…
Be prepared for some ssslllllooooooow burn here–but yikes, that first kiss is everything (until Emily has a freakout) and once they get going they make up for lost time and then some. Emily’s nieces were an absolute delight, and the “quotes” at the beginning of Emily’s chapters were so much fun. The first half of the book is single POV–Emily’s–which I enjoyed, but by the time I got to the second half I was absolutely dying to hear Mark’s (because I was SURE her post-kiss freakout wasn’t justified) and I really appreciated the switch to dual. I was pretty sure Emily’s impressions of him hadn’t been terribly accurate, so I appreciated that he finally got the chance to speak for himself. I mean, the guy consults with his cat for relationship advice, so clearly he’s legit romance hero material. Who knows, he may even have me rethinking my stance on guys wearing sweater vests…
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.