Review: Fake Dating Her Best Friend's Brother by Tia Souders

Book Blurb:

Falling for her best friend’s older brother wasn’t in the Fake Dating playbook.

Callie’s about to lose her job. Either she cleans up her debt, or her career at GG Financial is over. Despite the protests of her best friend’s brother, Dean, she does the only thing she can think of; she finds employment with a date-for-hire company.

NBA point guard Dean Kimball should be having the time of his life. But even his flourishing basketball career with Pittsburgh’s brand new team can’t help him forget about his feelings for his little sister’s best friend. Apparently, distance really does make the heart grow fonder. Now, she’s dating men for money, and he can’t help but worry about what will happen if the date turns into something more.

In an attempt to save his heart, Dean proposes a plan: he’ll pay Callie to be his girlfriend. Knowing she won’t agree, he convinces her it’s because he wants to win his ex-girlfriend back. Everything goes as planned, until feelings start to deepen. Now they both must decide if they can be truthful enough to allow themselves to fall in love.

Find out more about the book on Goodreads

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My Review:

5 Out Of 5 Hearts

Genre: Heart, Romance--

This is my second book by Tia and from an entirely different genre, and I can now strongly say that she can write anything. I thought her YA mystery The Truth About Us was great, but Fake Dating My Best Friend's Brother was fantastic. It was everything I was looking for in a book without me even knowing I needed it. This was swoony and sweet and cute with a dash of humor thrown in and the best of characters, which were really the stars of the book.

The story was dual narrated by the two love interests, Dean and Callie. Dean has always been madly in love with the unsuspecting Callie but assumed he never had a chance with her since she saw him as a brother. But now that he has an opportunity to be her knight in shinning armor, he is leaping at the chance- and concocted a ridiculous backstory to make her agree. Dean was basically perfect- flaws and all, really. He was down to earth, loving, loyal, sweet, considerate...attractive, successful... yeah, the whole package, and he was basically oblivious to his appeal (which made him even better!) When Dean turned his charm on Callie, she had no idea what hit her and I loved the encounters. His very public displays of affections made me equally swoon and giggle.

I enjoyed how Callie struggles with her feelings for Dean- her memories of him at age six running around in super hero undies and wiping boogers on her to this incredibly attractive, successful man who fills her with unwanted desire. Sometimes she did the most outrageous of things that made me just want to shake her or throw an intervention, but by the end of the book she really confronted her problems and made changes with herself and life that made me cheer her on. Also her relationship with Jinny was such a strong support for Callie and made for such a great dynamic in the book- and I love Jinny with her strong opinions and bad men choices.

I was 100% emotionally invested in this story and these people. I was happy when they were, I was teary when everything fell apart; what they felt was what I felt and that is all due to Tia and her writing. I am now officially a Tia fangirl and will try to patiently wait for her next book. I highly recommend this cute, clean HEA contemporary romance to anyone who wants to swoon with me. (and hint hint, I would love to see another book about Jinny finding love...)

I voluntarily reviewed a complementary copy.