When you love your best friend, is a good idea to pretend to be dating your other best friend?

Synopsis

Lori has been in love with her best friend Aiden since college. Now Aiden (handsome, fair, All-American dream doctor) is getting married, and Lori desperately needs a date to the wedding.

So she asks the best man, Jace (tall, dark, and brooding), to pretend their platonic friendship is something more not to have to face the worst day of her life alone.

Fake dating one best friend to forget the other should be easy… Plot twist—it’s not. When Jace starts acting like the sweetest, most attentive boyfriend, Lori begins to wonder if she’s been seeing him wrong all this time?

They’ve been an inseparable trio since freshman year, but now everything is changing — and that’s not even bringing Jace’s feelings into the mix.

Basically? It’s complicated.

My review

Ever since Lori met Aiden in college, she has been in love with him. Together with Jace, they have been inseparable for years. But her feelings were never reciprocated. And seeing Aiden getting married to someone else, it’s Lori’s worst nightmare coming true.
So she asks Jace, her other best friend and Aiden’s best man, to be her date, to help her through the worst day of her life. And that also means to be pretend – dating before the actual marriage.
But the last thing Lori expected, was that Jace would turn out to be the best boyfriend in the world. Could it be that she never saw Jace for who he truly was and what he was truly feeling?
And then Lori learns about a pact the boys made in college, which makes things even more complicated…

Dear Camilla,

May I kindly ask you to stop writing such great, funny, hilarious stories? With each book you publish, I find myself giving up real life, and let myself submerge in the book. Sleep? Who needs it… Food? Who needs it… Everything else has to make room so that I can keep reading page after page. And that is not healthy! 😀

Is there something I didn’t like about this book? Perhaps one thing… it was over too quickly! 😀 I was completely enthralled by it, curious to see how it would all evolve, and when the once made pact was revealed, how it would affect all the characters.

I truly liked Lori from the start. Even if she is a doctor (so really really smart!), she doesn’t act like one. Meaning that she still is a ‘girl next door’, not splashing money around and is just like you and me.
And I also felt sorry for her, as she has loved Aiden for years. I can only try to understand how her heart broke and keeps on breaking seeing him with someone else, and on the verge of marrying someone else…

So while perhaps it wasn’t the best idea ever to pretend to be dating common best friend Jace, I could understand her reasoning. Yes, it all started by just a misunderstanding, but as she didn’t do anything to correct Aiden, I had a few laughs over the whole awkward situation.

Now, I have to say, while Lori is totally in love with Aiden, it isn’t that her friendship with Jace isn’t a that good one. And it was sweet to see those little revelations, where we see that in fact Jace is an amazing friend, there for Lori whenever she needs a shoulder to cry or. And all that while keeping his own feelings well hidden…

Seeing Lori and Jace paired up was so so so sweet, even if it was just pretend. And seeing the real feelings emerge or just grow was amazing! I could see how this couple would work for real, as they are exactly what they need or are longing for.

And even both their friendship with Aiden was a real genuine one. These three friends would walk through fire for each other, and you can clearly see how all the lies that Lori and Jace are telling Aiden is not an easy task for them. They know that once the truth comes out, it can end everything they have been building on for years.

It was absolutely funny to see how the pair are trying to keep up with the pretense, even finding allies that are having the best of times with teasing and adding a bit of fuel on the fire!
But we also see how Lori realizes that the woman she sees as her worst enemy perhaps isn’t truly the enemy, and she starts to see Aiden’s fiancée for who she truly is and that being a likeable and warm woman.

Obviously, being a Camilla Isley book, I had so much fun, laughter, smiles, swoons while reading. And even if there are a few misunderstandings, miscommunications between the characters, all of the friends truly care about each other, and don’t want to hurt in any kind of way.

I just *devoured* this book, I couldn’t get enough of it, wanted and needed more of it. Camilla managed to write a story about friendship that lasts a lifetime, an unreciprocated love, faking it until you make it, but most important, realizing that love was perhaps closer by than you thought but didn’t manage to see. And all this wrapped up in a wonderful book that for sure will put one big smile on your face!

This is an author that never disappoints, and makes me look eagerly forward to her next book! Because you can be sure of it that I will read that one too and will love that one too! 😀