The Trope

The two constants in Maggie’s life have always been books and her anxiety. A close third is that she’s been in love with her best friend’s older brother her whole life, not that she’s ever told him. She prefers to keep her thoughts of love and desire in the stories she writes, and that works out well for her… until her readers find her first novel unbelievable and her characters devoid of any real chemistry.

So, what’s a writer with only fictional experience supposed to do? Fake it, of course. Dean is willing to fake a relationship to help her writing. Secretly, Maggie is hoping their time together will make him fall head over heels for her, but something is missing—the spark, the chemistry, the heat—and now she’s struggling to reconcile her longtime fantasy with reality.

Then there’s quiet, grumpy Mac. The more time Maggie spends with Dean, the more Mac appears in her life and her thoughts. She’s read this book before, she knows how it’s supposed to end, but all her carefully laid plans are unraveling. Her lifetime of romance novels never prepared her for this. Could it be that she doesn’t understand love at all? Rated '4/5 - Explicit open door' for steam/spice/heat level.