Chelsea M. Cameron

Readable but semi-ridiculous. Lots of telling, less showing. Dude-pro was too perfectly understanding and the chick-pro was abusive. If the roles had been reversed, dude would have been put in jail for all the physical violence. Understandably, the chick had lots of issues, but still, NOT OKAY. The verbal abuse was pretty bad too.

The writing itself was uneven but not offensively bad, though there were some rookie mistakes (to instead of too, frex). The sex scenes were SO BORING, which was show more especially disappointing considering that they don't even start until 75% through.

I need to stop reading self-pubbed New Adult, but [b:Easy|13548456|Easy|Tammara Webber|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1342983117s/13548456.jpg|19113823] makes me keep trying. Thank baby jesus for Amazon loans. show less

When LGBTQ Reads posted the "cover reveal" for Marriage of Unconvenience, I knew I would have to at least try the sample: I love romance novels with fake-dating/marriage of convenience plots, and this one has that plus the main characters are both women.

This is definitely that plot. The convenience part is because best friends Lo and Cara live in Boston and could really use some income of any kind - and, actually, Lo has an entire trust waiting to disperse once she marries. It's just that show more the women are only 24 and Lo has never really had any interest in marrying anyone yet and Cara is straight, so making use of the trust fund for the two of them wasn't something they thought about until suddenly it did. Since the two women are already basically family, and both of them need money, why not get a quickie marriage, become reasonably wealthy, and then annul the whole thing once their finances are straightened out? Yeah, about that annulment...

Chelsea Cameron takes the plot through all the typical things - mystery Feelings, hiding those feelings, lying to friends rather than admit the truth, accidental kissing, etc. It also really revels in the details of the wedding, originally planned as a get-in-get-out fast affair at the courthouse but then there's dresses and music and a reception. It felt a little like Cameron was using the book mostly as a way to comment on her favorite wedding-themed tv shows, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't care at all about those things and I didn't have the same kind of investment. Other readers, like my mom, probably will enjoy those parts more.

The narrative is very heavily flavored by both Lo and Cara being 24, fairly recently out of college (actually, Cara is still a student in between degrees), and part of the digital, social media world. I don't think the word "millennial" is ever used to describe them, but at least one joke was made about avocado (I think it was a sly joke, anyway) and the narration is peppered with topics common to "millennial" thinkpieces. After all, Lo is the "I" in this narrative and these are things she worries about. She also curses plenty and isn't always charitable in the way she thinks of others.

I mostly enjoyed the book. I like the plot, of course, and didn't mind all the wedding stuff. The two main characters are nice and lovely people, though not particularly memorable. Cara, of course, turns out to not be completely straight, and her arc is a nice way of exploring it - but I almost would have preferred the story to be from her point of view to do more with it. Lo is a great narrator, especially since it's her money and she's the one who gets the plot going, but it's Cara who really pulls the strings and makes their marriage "real". (I suppose keeping the narrative with Lo does help with the surprise and emotional impact, but it's always a toss-up which half has the better storyline in these plots.)

If there's anything that I really didn't like about Marriage of Unconvenience, it's Cameron's writing style. It's a little bit clunky and wordy and I wasn't always sure if she could hear the character voices in her head or not. She uses a lot of "that" clauses, not really a bad thing, but it started to be noticeable fairly early on and made me want to blue pen some of the phrases for more elegant, less repetitive sentence construction. Because it did get repetitive, and it caused some of the descriptive details to feel tacked on instead of genuinely adding to the setting or characterization. Even then, this is hardly the worst I've read recently, and the bones of the storytelling are sound.

I have regretted some Amazon Digital Services self-published books that I tried out based on reviews recently. The plots and characters and basic things were so awful that I couldn't even look past the bad writing styles. But while this one has some faults, none of them were so bad I wanted my money back, and in fact I ended up mostly enjoying the reading experience. Readers who really like wedding reality shows will probably enjoy this one a lot more than I did. show less

REVIEW:
The story:
This book basically continues on from where My Favourite Mistake finished (however these can be read as stand alone novels). Jos, Renee's little sister, has been struggling to deal with a traumatic event that occurred last year. She started to drink and party too hard, and as a result her sister Renee forces her to transfer college and live under her watchful eye. And by watchful Renee means, Not-Even-Allowed-To-Pee-Without-My-Permission.

After moving in with her sister and show more her friends, Jos continues to feel lost alone in the world, believing she's not entitled to be happy. But after meeting Dusty Sharp, she doesn't feel so isolated. He doesn't let her tough angry attitude keep him away from her, and he works to break through her walls and discover the real Jos. Dusty understands exactly what she's going through - more so than either of them could ever imagine. And it's that connection plus their shared passion for music that draws them closer together

The characters:
Jos is going through a bit of an identity crisis. When she first started college 9 months ago, she was popular, wore the latest fashion and was dating the 'it' boy who has his sights set on the white house, but after the traumatic event, Jos started to question all the things she stood for. Now she has the opportunity to reinvent herself, she starts to discover what she really wants to do with her life. I loved watching her grow throughout the novel as she became more and more confident in who she wants to be.

Dusty came across as a typical college guy; confident, popular and of course not to bad on the eyes. He's majoring in music education and is a beat boxer, which leads to some fun jam sessions with all the cast of characters joining in. But as Jos gets to know Dusty better, we start to see a vulnerable side to him, and we learnt to a major event recently changed his attitude to life - he longer drinks or parties the way he used to. He'd much prefer to hang out with his friends, in particular Jos…oh and his little Kitten, Napoleon too.

I also loved Jos's new friend, Hannah. She has severe burn scaring down the side of her face and body, and it's clear that the stares and nasty whispers upset her. But despite this she has a beautiful and vibrant personality, and still has a very positive outlook on life. I am desperately hoping that the third book in this series follows her story...PLEASE CHELSEA!!!

It was also great to see all the cast from the first book back for this sequel. There are developments in all their lives, which made me so excited. I kind of want to move into that house with them all - I think it would awesome amounts of fun!

The romance:
I was so happy to see that the romance was slow building. After all that Jos has gone through, a new relationship happening that quickly wouldn't have been believable. Instead we get to see them start out as friends, and just get to know each other. It was clear that they both felt an attraction towards one another, but they are hesitant to act on it, unsure how the other feels. There is also a touch of forbidden love, since Dusty is Renee's friend and she doesn't want him messing around with her little sister.

The Writing:
Oh I love Chelsea's writing, which is a good thing since this is my 6th book by her! She has a very distinct writing style with sarcastic and sassy characters and dialogue that is particularly effective. With sharp and witty conversations, it can sometimes feel like verbal foreplay. She also uses lots of pop culture references, which reminded me a lot of Gilmore Girls (which is my favourite TV show EVER!!)

FINAL WORD:
This is one of my favourite books my Chelsea! My Sweetest Escape is a fun and flirty book with vibrant, loveable characters. If you love heroines with a bit a sass and a redeemed bad boy hero who loves to cuddle up with his cat, than this book is for you!

CONTENT:
Sexuality: medium-strong / sex scene
Violence: mild / minor punch up
Language: medium / frequent f words
Drugs & alcohol: medium / some underage drinking and references to past drug use show less

Okay, where to start? Let's start by saying that this book was fantastic. One minute I was grinning from ear to ear and the next I was laughing my head off. The characters in this book are not afraid to say what's on their minds, especially Hunter. He was a flirt, a little crude but not in a disgusting way. He is not afraid to ask for what he want's or take a dis or a punch from a girl. Of course, Taylor was nice enough and quick to oblige.

Taylor did not make it easy for Hunter's pursing of show more her. She was standing firm on her pact with herself to never get involved with a boy. Taylor was pretty angry and sometimes a bit hostile and doesn't give a crap what anyone thinks of her. He relationship or lack there of with Hunter, was at times pretty volatile, mostly on Taylor's side. I was happy to not have to hear a female protagonist deal with self-esteem issues this time around. Even though Taylor wasn't falling over herself from looking in the mirror she didn't put her looks down, just the baggage she carries around. Hunter has a hard edge to him, but underneath it all he was a sweetheart. Taylor and Hunter carries some heavy scars from their past that had a lot of influence on their prospects for relationships or at least healthy ones.

The premise of My Favorite Mistake has a lot in common with [b:Beautiful Disaster|11505797|Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1)|Jamie McGuire|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358259032s/11505797.jpg|16441531] but both stories have enough differences to stand on there own. There was even and addendum to the original bet later in the story. This book was a pretty hot read, the intense sexual tension between Taylor and Hunter was enough to drive me crazy. Taylor would have been too much to handle for most guys but Hunter was the perfect guy for her, he didn't have a problem letting her take out her frustrations on him. Love, love, love, grrrrreat book. show less