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A review by bookish_kristina
My Fake Christmas Fiancé by Julie Kriss
2.0
I had trouble getting past the stupid premise of this book. There is no such thing as a legally binding contract that can force two people into an engagement. This would essentially be a contract forcing two people to agree to sign another contract - that being a marriage - it’s stupid. I could have gotten behind this book if it was a promise made on a death bed or an image issue that needed to resolve by a marriage, but the second the author starts spouting questionable legalities that are easily disputed with the smallest amount of intelligence, they’ve lost me.
Secondly, to further insult my intelligence, they are agreeing to get married to push forward the merger of two family businesses. Family owned…. Accountable to only the owners, which would be them. No shareholders. This isn’t a company on the NYSE. So maybe their fathers who were CEOs of each company might be able to hold them accountable….except, both fathers leave the company and the engaged couple then become CEOs. At this point we are to believe that they still cannot dissolve the ‘contract’ requiring them to get married.
Ok so maybe they can’t, let pretend that for a moment. So if they don’t go through with the marriage and the merger falls through - not likely but let’s pretend - would they, as joint CEOs, not then be able to renegotiate a new merger as soon as the next day? Since they both run AND own these companies?
You see we never see any overseers to this merger, we never see any momentum towards this merger, we barely know what the heck these companies even do.
It’s an author’s job to create a scenario with enough information and realism to build trust with the reader. At which point they can then give scenarios that require the reader to suspend their disbelief. But when the author has done fuck all to build that trust and then throws garbage at the reader, the reader cannot be expected to eat said garbage. I’m sorry, this was stupid. No effort was made into making it not stupid.
Beyond that the rest of the plot pretty much went back and forth in the MCs minds without them ever having a conversation with each other. But I guess they were in love at the end? I’m not really sure when or where that happened.
Overall this was a bad attempt at a Christmas book, a bad attempt at a story, and frankly just bad.
Secondly, to further insult my intelligence, they are agreeing to get married to push forward the merger of two family businesses. Family owned…. Accountable to only the owners, which would be them. No shareholders. This isn’t a company on the NYSE. So maybe their fathers who were CEOs of each company might be able to hold them accountable….except, both fathers leave the company and the engaged couple then become CEOs. At this point we are to believe that they still cannot dissolve the ‘contract’ requiring them to get married.
Ok so maybe they can’t, let pretend that for a moment. So if they don’t go through with the marriage and the merger falls through - not likely but let’s pretend - would they, as joint CEOs, not then be able to renegotiate a new merger as soon as the next day? Since they both run AND own these companies?
You see we never see any overseers to this merger, we never see any momentum towards this merger, we barely know what the heck these companies even do.
It’s an author’s job to create a scenario with enough information and realism to build trust with the reader. At which point they can then give scenarios that require the reader to suspend their disbelief. But when the author has done fuck all to build that trust and then throws garbage at the reader, the reader cannot be expected to eat said garbage. I’m sorry, this was stupid. No effort was made into making it not stupid.
Beyond that the rest of the plot pretty much went back and forth in the MCs minds without them ever having a conversation with each other. But I guess they were in love at the end? I’m not really sure when or where that happened.
Overall this was a bad attempt at a Christmas book, a bad attempt at a story, and frankly just bad.