If I Never Met You...or Pretended to Date You

Hi Friends!

I am back with yet another romance review. This book was the buddy read for the Romance-A-Thon that took place from June 22-28, and I just finished it today (it took me almost six days to read.. way too long) because this book was very meh for me (which I will explain further on). 

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane follows Laurie, who just went through a break-up with her boyfriend of 18 years (yes, you read that correctly) who works at the same law firm as her. To make matters worse, she finds out that he was having an affair and got this woman pregnant and is starting a family with them when he was so against it with her. In comes Jamie, another lawyer at the firm, who has a playboy status. The two get stuck in an elevator, leaving the office conveniently, and decide to come up with this deal to fake date, which will allow Laurie to get over the gossip and pain of her ex, and Jamie to prove to their bosses that he has what it takes to become partner and that his playboy days are behind him. I mean, who doesn't love a good "fake dating" trope?

And so the story begins.. 

This story was way longer than it needed to be. I understand that it's important to understand the background of our characters, especially Laurie and Dan, but a lot of it was a lot of detailed events that really could have been condensed. I mean this book is over 400 pages, which is not common with adult romances as they usually push 300-375, if that. 

Also, this was a predictable story, which isn't the issue that I have. The issue that I have is that this book was unnecessarily long and took 40 CHAPTERS for Laurie and Jamie to FINALLY kiss (mind you, there are only 46 chapters in the book). I mean, why did it take that long? It was a lot of build-up, which usually I don't mind, but this one was way too much of a build-up. 

I put this book down SO many times because it was too slow and really lost my interest. I think that if it was shorter, and the build-up was less slow, then we would have had a much better and more enjoyable story (in my opinion). Between the six days of reading this one book, I read two others and felt at one point that I was never going to finish this one. It wasn't bad per say, but it was just too slow. The character development was also lackluster. I could see some growth with Jamie but not so much with Laurie. 

Rating: 3 Stars

Dream Cast:

Jamie Carter: Ed Westwick

Laurie Watkinson: Kyla Pratt

Dan Price: Chris Pine