Melissa's Reviews > Fake Crown

I have to admit that I really HATED this book at first. Posey is incredibly open about everything. EVERYTHING. She has made the questionable decision to join up as a plus one for a wedding with a guy she doesn't know at all. I wouldn't recommend this for the average college woman, but Posey is Posey, so it is all going to work out. Posey has a gift for immediately becoming bff with everyone she meets, a useful quality to have when you are plopped into a social situation with a bunch of strangers for a weekend in Bermuda. Yeah. Bermuda. That's the sort of world we are entering here ... one where college students can jump on a plane at the last minute for a trip to Bermuda without a problem. My issue with Posey is that she jumps right to a level ten of sexual innuendo with this guy that she has just met. Sure, it's superstar college swimmer, Brent, who everyone knows, but still ... I wasn't a fan of this banter. Who talks this way in real life? Maybe after you are well acquainted with someone, but after ten minutes? I don't think so. It was super off-putting for me. I didn't really like her or this weird feeling relationship at all. When you start your convos so explicitly from the get-go, there's not a lot of room for this relationship to grow, so we head right into level ten physical intimacy almost from the start. Boring. But it's all okay, because neither of these two do relationships. Well, Brent does, but he is all about superficial basically physical relationships. It's all he can do with his Olympic training. Posey had a bad experience that has apparently scarred her for life for some weird reason, but she's also determined to live in the fake island nation of Bellerive that she loves so much, and they don't let lots of non-citizens stay there, so she can't get serious during college. yada yada yada One thing leads to another. They decide to do a "fake" relationship for a couple of weeks to throw off Brent's psycho ex-girlfriend. And before you know it they are in love. End of story. Mostly.

But here's the thing ... although I didn't really like this story at first, by the end of the book it had grown on me a bit. You have two people who were committed to not being committed, but they found themselves in a relationship that worked. I did enjoy seeing them behave more like normal couples you might actually see in a real life situation. W. Million could have made a nice enough little YA novel if the book had focused more on the development of the non-physical connection between Brent and Posey, but as often happens in these stories, the focus fell on the physical connection, and, like I said, this is soooooo boring in a story. And lazy in the writing. But if you are a reader who is all into a book of physical chemistry found on every five pages, this might be the book for you.

I am sure I grabbed this story because I thought it was a royal romance book, and I can be a sucker for the story of love between royalty and commoners, but there's no royalty in this book. Posey is royal adjacent, connected to the royal family in Bellerive, but not a royal herself. That made this book just another college NA romance book, and as far as that goes, this was pretty weak. I finished it, so there's that, but I don't recommend it. Two stars. It was okay.