The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

Themes: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

The synopsis

Catalina Martín desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiralled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him.

She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. New York to Spain is no short flight and her raucous family won’t be easy to fool.

Enter Aaron Blackford—her tall, handsome, condescending colleague—who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating, blood-boiling, and insufferable man.

But Catalina is desperate, and as the wedding draws nearer, Aaron looks like her best option. And she begins to realize he might not be as terrible in the real world as he is at the office.

The review

Was it a good romance? Yes. Does it deserve all its hype? Not sure about that.

If you are a fan of the classic tropes of romance (the fake boyfriend, the one bed, etc.), go ahead, I think you will like this book!

The main issue I have with this book is that it has almost 500 pages but everything felt underdeveloped. The characters are one-dimensional, with one single trait of personality (the grumpy one, the sunshine… another classic trope). This is a slow pace slow burn romance, at least in the case of Lina, and the romance is happening in literally just three days at the end of the book! The writing felt a bit repetitive and I wonder why the author thought that the multiple uses of the word “baby” felt right whilst it was just cringy.

There were also things present in the book that I just did not understand. Why write a charity scene when neither the characters introduced during the scene nor the scene itself have an impact on the rest of the book and are not even mentioned anymore after it ended? Same for the date Lina wins with Aaron: it would have been logical to have the scene in the book but it just magically disappeared.

The last point that bothered me was the attempt at making a feminist argument. Do not get me wrong, I love having this kind of argument in books. But here it just was missed because it was superficial, like a lot of other elements.

In brief: Despite what you might think after reading this review, I did not hate this book. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed it and especially Lina’s interaction with her family and would have liked to see more of it. I also laughed several times at her internal thoughts and swearing in Spanish.

My rating: 3.5/5