Sam and Kaila have been best friends their whole lives. Thirteen years ago, they made a pact never to date to protect their friendship. But when their well-meaning mothers keep setting them up on terrible blind dates, they decide to fake date through the holidays. With a set of rules in place, they won’t break the pact, right?
Sam
What the hell was I thinking? Fake dating? Fake dating the girl I’ve been madly in love with for most of my life? I’m an idiot. Of course, as always, I said yes to her. Like always, I’d do anything to make her happy. And, okay, maybe I thought If we pretended to be together, she’d realize how amazing we could be and forget about the pact. Instead, I’m more in love with her than ever and have no idea if she’ll ever allow herself to see me as more than her best friend.
Kaila
This is fine. It’s all fine. We’re just fake dating. We have our rules. We have the pact. We’re best friends: always and only best friends. But the longer we fake date, the harder it’s becoming to ignore the spark I feel between us. It’s always been there, but I’ve always ignored it. I’ve focused on our friendship because I can’t risk what Sam and I have. But his touch makes my heart race and his arms feel safer than ever before. It’s okay. I can handle this. Stick to the rules. Abide by the pact. This will all be fine, right? Fine, fine, fine.
My Review
This book starts in the past. Sam is comforting his teenage best friend Kai after a breakup and remembering about other amazing friendships. They have a fantastic friendship, but one of them secretly hopes for more. However, they make a pact to always and only ever be friends.
Jump forward in time to Kai’s point of view. Kai, who is almost thirty now, has a successful business but not successful love life. She has an interesting relationship with her best friend, Sam, living with him now but acknowledges he is hot.
Sam is a sweetheart but obviously not oblivious to his best friend’s needs. This book does jump to his point of view. He seems to have an issue with blind dates, too, and relationship issues as well.
They decide to fake being in a relationship. It is for their mothers to get them to stop setting them up. This should be interesting. Somehow the faking actually unlocks the reality. Then this book gets steamy as they explore their fantasies with each other.
The family in this story is overbearing, obnoxious, meddling, and oh so wonderful. This book truly has the holiday spirit in it in all the moments with family and friends. Omg, this book wrecked me. I guess I was so overly involved with the ups and downs of the characters that I couldn’t help the ugly emotional crying. This story is a whirlwind from one major milestone to the next in a short time period. Still, the characters do live happily for now. I love the playlist at the end of the book.
I would definitely call this story an intriguing holiday romance.
I really loved how the author included the dates at the top of the chapters. It really helped with the swift timeline of this book. The story is super sweet by I loved that both characters had their faults and loved each other despite them. The blending of all their families makes this story a bit rowdy, but it is so amazing. I absolutely love that they were so close with their entire family and, of course, all the people on the plantation they grew up with. I really liked how this story started out and the meddling that started the whole fake relationship. It was fun to read and definitely added charm to the story. One event to the next, talk about instant love but not really as their characters were friends before lovers and always fell back on their understanding of each other in difficult times. This was overall a fantastic read and really got across all the family and holiday feels.
If you would like to read Faking It for the Holidays by Bethany Monaco Smith you can find it on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn on qualifying purchases.
If you like this book you may also enjoy books with these tags and categories Holiday Romance, friends to lovers, and New Adult Fiction.
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