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A review by emeliestegbornblixt
Check Your Work by Skye Kilaen
4.0
Bisexual m/f romance is very much my thing at this point in my life and Kilaen keeps delivering thoughtful variations on that category. This one is fake dating with a bit of an age gap (younger man, older woman). If you've read previous installments in this series you're familiar with Oliver and his pining for Octavia. Before he became a math teacher he used to work as a barista at Knockdown and she was one of his regulars.
This story starts when Octavia volunteers at the school to fix their very shitty software. These two nerds start fake dating because of silly reasons. (Are there any other reasons for fake dating? No.) In this particular case the silly reasons include spite, which makes for a very dramatic and silly episode toward the end - which, to be clear, is a good thing. This is fake dating, things are supposed to be silly and dramatic. Along the way we get lots of mutual care and support, and lots of explaining away the other persons acts of affection as a part of the act. I love how they both have good support systems, are good at and passionate about their jobs and are adult enough to communicate like adults (by which I mean, they're emotionally mature, not that they swear a lot). They could in all honesty use some deeper flaws than being overly careful and apologizing for everything, if there's any real problem with this story it's that they're maybe too perfectly likeable. You know, apart from the pettiness, which isn't really presented as a flaw by the narrative, so it doesn't count.
Anyway, not my favorite by Kilaen, but it's comforting and entertaining.
eArc provided by the author
This story starts when Octavia volunteers at the school to fix their very shitty software. These two nerds start fake dating because of silly reasons. (Are there any other reasons for fake dating? No.) In this particular case the silly reasons include spite, which makes for a very dramatic and silly episode toward the end - which, to be clear, is a good thing. This is fake dating, things are supposed to be silly and dramatic. Along the way we get lots of mutual care and support, and lots of explaining away the other persons acts of affection as a part of the act. I love how they both have good support systems, are good at and passionate about their jobs and are adult enough to communicate like adults (by which I mean, they're emotionally mature, not that they swear a lot). They could in all honesty use some deeper flaws than being overly careful and apologizing for everything, if there's any real problem with this story it's that they're maybe too perfectly likeable. You know, apart from the pettiness, which isn't really presented as a flaw by the narrative, so it doesn't count.
Anyway, not my favorite by Kilaen, but it's comforting and entertaining.
eArc provided by the author