Love At First Like- Hannah Orenstein

“But right now, I don’t need the love of my life–although I want that someday–I need a fake fiancé.”

hannah orenstein – love at first like

Publication Date: August 6, 2019
Publisher: Atria Books
Genre: Adult Contemporary Romance
Pages: 317
Dates Read: August 7-8, 2019
Format: Paperback

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My GoodReads Review

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

📖”Eliza Roth and her sister Sophie co-own a jewelry shop in Brooklyn. One night, after learning of an ex’s engagement, Eliza accidentally posts a photo of herself wearing a diamond ring on that finger to her Instagram account beloved by 100,000 followers. Sales skyrocket, press rolls in, and Eliza learns that her personal life is good for business. So she has a choice: continue the ruse or clear up the misunderstanding. With mounting financial pressure, Eliza sets off to find a fake fiancé.

Fellow entrepreneur Blake seems like the perfect match on paper. And in real life he shows promise, too. He would be perfect, if only Eliza didn’t feel also drawn to someone else. But Blake doesn’t know Eliza is “engaged”; Sophie asks Eliza for an impossible sum of money; and Eliza’s lies start to spiral out of control. She can either stay engaged online or fall in love in real life.”📖

⭐️⭐️⭐️
3 STARS

Love at First Like is the story of Eliza, a self-made entrepreneur and co-owner of a local jewelry store. Eliza accidentally posts a fake engagement picture to her Instagram account and in a spur-of-the-moment decision decides that to increase sales at her store, she will plan her own ‘fake’ wedding. Only Eliza doesn’t even have a boyfriend!

First I am going to be clear that the writing was great, and there was nothing wrong with the pacing either. This was an easy read, and a great summertime read.

I’m going to be totally honest, though. The plot and characters just weren’t my favorite. Not so bad that I couldn’t finish reading it, but bad enough to only give it an OK star rating.

The premise is pretty far-fetched, and implausible. As you read it only becomes more and more evident that Eliza is absolutely crazy. I mean, she accepts a free wedding ceremony for literally no reason at all! Like….what kind of grown-up actually acts so impulsively like this? 

Eliza makes so many bad decisions that you will be basically screaming at your book. Eliza made me pretty mad…some of these decisions make it really hard to like or root for our heroine.

The most unbelievable part of the whole thing is that everyone in her life doesn’t STOP HER! She is trying to rope this kind, handsome man into proposing to her when she doesn’t even really love him, her family/friends go dress shopping with her, and cake tasting, and all of these other normal bridal activities like it’s completely normal and okay for her to SCAM people!

[Overall]
If you like a light and fun summer read, this is definitely the book for you and I highly recommend as the writing was great. If you are more of a deep and emotional kind of reader though, i’m not sure you will like this plot that just gets sillier with each turn of the page. The author had a good idea, and good writing, but ultimately, I found this book underwhelming.

Plot: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing: 5/5
Content: Mild Language/Sexual Content. Very brief mention of religion.

**Special Thanks to Atria Books and the author for generously providing an early review copy in exchange for my honest review.**