A love story for sarcastic cynics. So obviously I loved it.
Plot: Sophie was on the cusp of being promoted. Then she got engaged to the son of one of her coworkers, whose dad was also her father’s long-time employer. And then he cheated. So on the one hand, if she backs out of the wedding and humiliating the son, her dad’s is on the line. On the other hand, fuck that guy. Enter Max, who helps people who feel forced into a wedding they don’t want. Plus, as it turns out, he’s fun as hell to hang out with, and that their emerging friendship can pay all sorts of dividends. Shenanigans ensue.
The tropes here are a little different than you’re used to, in part because the people involved are contemporary people fully aware of the downfalls of most of these tropes. They’re not acting like they invented the idea of friends with benefits, or fake relationships, instead engaging with them as well known forms of self sabotage. But also, as smart people often do, they feel like they’ve found tricksy loopholes other people hadn’t figured out. Spoiler alert – they did not.
The problem is this – Sophie and Max are intensely compatible right away. They’re funny and fun and hot together. But they’re also both super smart and have reasoned quite sensibly that most relationships are awful and therefore not worth the risk to their independence. So they become fast friends instead, but the chemistry keeps getting in the way. Even still, this is a love story about two sensible people who know that chemistry alone does not a good relationship make, and they have to really work on themselves to be ready to take the risk together.
That should actually warn off a lot of people for whom this book won’t work, but based on the very polarized Goodreads reviews, not enough people intuited that the book won’t be for them, so let’s get into it.
Sophie’s a bitch. She’s kind, and hilarious, and smart, but she’s a takes-no-bullshit, aggressive, assertive, imperfect woman who makes mistakes and then apologizes and tries to do better. If you like your heroines soft and sweet and faultless, you will hate her. Max is a bit more of your standard guy, except that he’s actually into assertive, take-no-bullshit women (I can confirm from personal experience that this is very, very rare). Readers who don’t care for Sophie seem to hate Max on principle. Your feelings on Sophie will make or break your enjoyment of this book.
As for me, I have a bunch of Painter books to get through now.