Who: Former high school classmates Posy Edwins and Lucas O’Rourke.
What: A crackling romance.
When: Modern day.
Where: UK, specifically England
How: Posy, newly cut off by her wealthy father, needs to book a flight to Hawaii for a photography convention to get her career off the ground. Posy enlists Lucas’s help to defraud their alma mater, a private school, by taking advantage of long-forgotten clause in its charter: if the Head Boy and Head Girl of a graduating class ever marry, the school is liable to pay for the wedding. Lucas agrees to pretend to marry her to get cash from the school, which Posy will use for her plane ticket, and Posy promises to help connect Lucas with her family’s rich associates to boost his client base for his wealth management company.
What I Thought:
I’m only recently on the romantic comedy book train, and I really wanted to enjoy Elizabeth Drummond’s debut. There are a lot of familiar tropes in romantic novels, including enemies-to-lovers and fake dating, and many of them are at play in this particular book.
A significant portion of the plot revolves around economic shaming: both of Lucas’s parents worked at the elite private school where Posy and Lucas first met, and his nickname was “Helpboy.” Talk about revolting. Posy’s family has a toxic habit of referring to her by the nickname “Hurricane,” referring to the fact that her life is generally a mess and that she leaves messes and chaos in her wake. I almost didn’t make it through the first few chapters, to be honest – the “we only tease you because we love you!” attitude that Posy’s family hides behind hit a little too close to home for me.
The characters did their best to rescue this book: Lucas was really well-developed, as was his family, but Posy was sort of flat and hard to relate to, as she only really treated a few people kindly (including her bestie, Tara, who STOLE THE SHOW. Can we please have a book about Tara?)
There were a few points in the book where I felt kind of emotionally invested; sadly, it just wasn’t the book for me overall.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book!