If I Never Met You

Fake dating!? Yes please! A favorite trope to read, when done well, and Mhairi McFarlane did it REALLY well. She actually takes the time and effort to dissect the effects of doing something like this. It's got a psychological toll, it's straight-up lying to people who truly care about you (what is worse than faking it for your parents? Or his? And do you tell your best friends? The more people you tell, the more you risk it all coming out...). The main character's biracial heritage is also tactfully handled, as is the unbearable grief of a breakup you never saw coming—and the rage-inducing revelations of what truly caused it, and what a shit her partner had truly been to her.

I actually liked the love interest, Jamie, from the get go, and enough that despite his comparatively small presence on the page, I found myself siding with him in some of his and Laurie's miscommunication spats. He's got a reputation that he earned, and the more the line between fake and real blurs, the more those preconceived notions become a problem. It's masterfully handled, and I thought truly well done.

However, nearly everything to do with their place of work and the people therein is horrible. I don't mean poorly written or badly done, but just... fucking ridiculous. Sadly I have seen workplaces that behave with similar misogyny and machismo, so I know they actually DO happen, but good lord. The Michaels and Kerrys of this book are the absolute worst, and I surely cannot be the only person who hoped that perhaps Laurie or Jamie would at some point accidently hip-check one of them a little violently by a tall hi-rise window that happened to be poorly affixed to the building. Whoopsiedoodle.

Overall a delightful read, and also, I'm a little salty about the mention of Gregg's there in the middle, because I'm about as far as you can get from a Gregg's geographically speaking, and I have wanted a bacon cheese pasty since I read that line. Damn it all.