A review by idgetfay
Act Like It by Lucy Parker

4.0

Lucy Parker writes the sweetest romances. By reading the blurb you would think this would be tropey, cookie cutter, and vapid. It pleasantly surprised me! I’m not super interested in celebrities as protagonists because, well, I have no desire to be a celebrity so that does very little for me. However, I felt like Parker did a great job elevating the book beyond its tropes. It’s not really enemies to lovers, although there’s a fair amount of banter. And while on the surface it is for sure a fake dating book, the main characters never fall into the trap of just utterly failing to communicate that their feelings are real. They are almost always on the same page. Some things are handled much more logically in this book than they usually are in romances. For instance, when the heroine gets really sick, her mom comes to help out. Imagine that! A mom showing up instead of the hero showing his soft side by overstaying his welcome at a deliriously ill woman’s apartment. And when the couple inevitably have their falling out, the hero and heroine talk to one another and work out what caused the issue, they didn’t just mope and brood until an epiphany prompted a grand gesture. There was a sexual assault scene that almost dropped this book an entire star, since I didn’t feel it was necessary to the plot at all and was just thrown in there as an opportunity for the love interest to act possessive and heroic. At no point did anyone call the police, which I was desperately hoping for. So, I mean, nobody’s perfect. But I like Parker’s writing and her approach to tropes… she doesn’t shy away from them, but tries to elevate them with realistic characters and execution.