3 STARS Read for the Pick Me A Winner April Challenge (1/2) - thanks Elizabeth!Someone was asking me for a recommendation for a good New Adult book recently and I was pretty stumped for a while because the few books in this genre that did tickle my fancy came with a "but". This didn't come with a "but".It just tickled the wrong fancy out of me.So this is the one where the hot, football player pays the hot waitress 3000 dollars to pretend as his girlfriend for a week when he goes back home for Thanksgiving. Why does he need a pretend girlfriend? So I can read this book and like it for the wrong reasons.The plot is pretty predictable and Drew's secret was pretty evident early on. Which makes the effort to make it mysterious, annoying and has Fable coming off as an idiot when it's so obvious. The secret in itself is pretty secret-worthy though the horror and squick that I should've felt over it was watered down by the cartoonish depiction of Adele and Drew's illogical coping mechanisms. NITPICK ALERT! he's disgusted with himself for banging the hot stepmom when he was younger, so when he has sex with Fable, he prefers it lights off? Shouldn't it be easier NOT to imagine Adele when he can see who he's doing the nasty with? Since this was pretty much Drew's story, Fable didn't come across as strong as I think the author wants her to be. She was likable enough, I guess, to stick around and root for.“I hope these are the right size for you. They look a little small.”Catty bitch.Fable offers her a fleeting smile. “Oh, the size is perfect. I just have humongous tits so it always looks like I need to go up a size but I make it work. Drew likes it when they hang out and he can see them. Easier access and all that. Right honey?”This was told in alternating POVs which is always tricky because more often than not, the MCs gradually start to sound like one person. This book cleverly avoided that by peppering Drew's POV with A LOT of cussing, outside of which he sounded just like the heroine. In between the fucks and shits, it was pretty much your run-of-the-mill does he/she love me or is it because of the 1-week deal hemming and hawing.The writing was pretty generic and migraine-free. Relatively. Adele wasn't the only cartoon character here, there's the token girls flirting with the hero doing a lot of eyelash fluttering and hair tosses. Editing could've gone more seamlessly:“He looks amazing in a black hooded sweatshirt and khaki cargo shorts.... I’d bet a million dollars he has a polo shirt on underneath. Typical golf wear, though he should be wearing pastel plaid shorts and not cargoes. Not that I know anything about golf.”Someone just wanted the hero to wear that damn ensemble a little bit too much and got lazy explaining. I think this happened twice and shouldn't bother anyone else but me.Of course this is a series and I'm probably going to pick up the next one just to know how this drama with Adele can get worse. It's soapy, sick and nasty.
