elizabethnicole 's review for:

Rules For Fake Girlfriends by Raegan Revord

2.0

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

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Avery decides to move to Brighton where her mother went to college in an effort to complete a scavenger hunt she'd left for her and shortly upon getting there she meets Charlie, a girl she decides to pretend to be a fake girlfriend for. 

This book really disappointed me. It started out very strong, I was intrigued by the scavenger hunt, Avery's relationship with both her father and her late mother and how the whole fake dating thing was going to go. The pacing just felt so off though. Things would be repeated like one chapter later, or things would be contradictory where like for example Avery said she texted her best friend to visit but then that was never addressed again. The next convo her friend asked about meeting for lunch. Also at one point Avery was worried about what Charlie would think about something she'd done but they'd already seen each other since that happened so it felt very delayed and confusing. 

I didn't let this part affect my review score because it could change in the published copy but I felt it was worth noting, there's some issues with pronoun usage that felt very clunky. Avery's roommate Maddi was misgendered multiple times when it was clear that they only used they/them pronouns. There were also several typos throughout the entire book. 

Another thing I did like was the effort to be inclusive. I liked that there was a trans character, a couple nonbinary characters, of course lesbian characters, a character with ehlers danlos syndrome. Seeing people deal with different things not often shown was appreciated. 

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the ARC to review.