Are love and marriage just a transaction gone well?

Synopsis

Is marriage about love or marketing?

Kat is 34, single and running out of time – she wants to get married before she turns 35, but her fiancé just ditched her for a 21-year-old life coach.

Freddy is a ruthless marketing guru who thinks love is just transactional. He’ll use his marketing genius to make Kat the most sought-after woman in London, if she lets him rebrand her struggling company.

With her 35th birthday looming and her love life a disaster, Kat agrees to become Project Marriage.

Can a rebrand king sell happily ever after? Or is love something even the best marketer can’t package and promote?

A smart, funny romantic comedy for fans of Emile Henry (Funny Story), Lucy Score and Ali Hazelwood. 

My review

Kat is on a mission which she thought she would achieve. But her fiancé boke up with her for someone else. So her goal of getting married before 35 is further away than ever, as she is already 34. The last thing Kat needs now, is a cocky marketing guru, ready to take over her business she has been building with pride and joy, even if it is struggling. However, whatever Freddy wants, Freddy gets. And when he hears about Kat’s dream, he wants to make a deal out of it. As a believer that even love is transactional, he is ready to help Kat with her mission, if she lets him buy her out. While things don’t truly start off well between Kat and Freddy, with a common goal, they start to spend more time together, which makes them understand each other better than imagined. But when they will have both achieved their goals, they will part their ways, won’t they?

Being at the age of almost 39 myself, I can understand that biological clock ticking. And I can understand how it feels that there is a deadline to make, even when it comes to matter of the heart.

And reading that Kat’s own situation is even more complex, made me sympathize with her even more. Life and love aren’t easy in ‘normal’ circumstances, but learning about Kat’s struggles, it was easy to understand her level of urgency.

Although I need to say, that while I understood Kat, I also felt that Kat was settling too much, too easily? Not only there are so many signs that her ex is just a douchebag, but the fact that Kat still finds it hard to let him go, to block him and just remove him from her life completely, angered me a little bit. While there are so many moments where we can see that Kat is in fact a power woman, why can’t she let go of the parasite that her ex is?

But of course, as a reader, as an outsider it is always easy to say what someone else should do. Yet we all know that the heart doesn’t always do the most sensible thing and has a will of its own…

Kat is the kind of person that in a way we all are, or all attempt of being. She has dreams, just like all of us, but I admired her of what she has already achieved at her age. Not anyone can say they have their own business, can’t they?

The fact that perhaps she is too soft on the people that work for her, only shows that she is also a caring person. Yes, she could be stricter and show her ‘power’, but Kat is the kind of person that cares about everyone. She values everyone for their own skills, and looks after them.

She looks after her people, that when Freddy enters the scene, and wants to change just everything, she won’t just let him.

And I have to say, I agreed with Kat’s initial dislike of Freddy. It is one thing to be confident, self – assured. But first – impression – Freddy was too cocky for my liking. And it saddened me to read how he truly believes that everything is like a transaction for him. Everything, even love…

It felt also like he is tricking Kat, by promising her what she wants the most, getting what he wants the most when he succeeds…

However, the more I got to know Freddy, the more I saw a gentler side of him. When he learns about Kat’s condition, he doesn’t treat her with pity, but he wants to understand it and her. When she is in need, he gives her the space she needs, but also can be strict when Kat won’t accept any help but in fact needs it.

When Kat accepts Freddy’s challenge, I was eager to read what Freddy would do and who Kat would meet. I was a bit afraid that Freddy would give Kat a complete make – over, letting her change her persona too. So I was happy to read how Freddy does give her a make – over, but just in order to give her a severe boost of self-confidence.

And Freddy, by helping Kat, slowly start to understand that a lot of things are transactional, but matters of the heart are not. While he helps Kat, Kat in a way helps Freddy, by seeing things not that black or white anymore. He starts to see that even if love is a scary thing,  you cannot stop from feelings growing.

So while this is a romance, with lots of comedy bits in it too, it is in fact a deep journey that both Freddy and Kat are having. A journey where they will make mistakes, but where they will mainly learn more about themselves, about their self – worth, about their heart and about each other…