Fake It Till You Bake It
Rating: 3 Stars
Jada Townsend-Matthews is the most reviled woman in America after turning down a proposal on a reality dating show. When she comes home to lick her wounds, Jada finds herself working at San Diego's newest cupcake bakery, Sugar Blitz, alongside the uptight owner and professional football player Donovan Dell. When a reporter mistakenly believes Jada and Donovan are an item, they realize they can use the misunderstanding to their advantage to help the struggling bakery and rehabilitate Jada's image. Faking a relationship should be simple, but sometimes love is the most unexpected ingredient.
This book was really fun, cute, sweet and minimally spicy. I loved that Donovan was a football player who ran a bakery with two other teammates! It was just such an unexpected plot. Donovan is very type A plans out and researches everything type of person. And Jada is the exact opposite. The two have a funny first meeting that sets the tone for their relationship for most of the book. I will be the first to admit that elements of the book are typical/predictable romantic comedy type things. Yet, they are done in a way that is often super cute or super funny. It was a nice change for me to see a book where the guy was all put together and the girl was a hot mess. And Jada starts out a hot mess!
The cupcake shop is struggling some and the added interest from Jada's time on the reality show causes a bit of an influx of customers, which only grows as the two fake their relationship. Naturally they start to develop feelings, but spend most of the time denying this is the case. The number of coincidences in this book is about the typical cheesy romantic comedy level, but I honestly wasn't even mad about it. What did make me mad was the epilogue, I loved this book up until that moment, and would have given it 4 stars just for being cute and a fun quick read. But, I absolutely hate when the ending feels like a rushed marriage to wrap everything up. And in this case I hated it even more because Jada barely had time to find and discover herself. But honestly, that's my only complaint with this one!
