Cover Image: Face It

Face It

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Member Reviews

Thank you, NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book.

I wish I had something good to say about this book, but I don't.
This was bad from the beginning and at the end it felt like the beginning again.

The whole plot of this story makes absolutely no sense at all. The woman was trying to get an annulment on her marriage by faking a lesbian relationship after she was married for years to a man. I don't think you need to even be a law graduate (which I am) to frown at the absurdity of this plot. It was so ridiculous and the first will to DNF I had.
But I braved it out thinking the romance would make up for it.
It didn't.
Elizabeth and Michelle had no chemistry whatsoever. Sure, we find out why later on but until we get to this point the whole book is just a huge disappointment. Elizabeth often behaves like a 16-year-old boy with thoughts of "Look, boobs, I am so gay" but then she goes on and on about how she is Pan. You would think that someone who is in for 25k would learn how to behave for a Christmas long weekend but nope. There is zero build-up between Elizabeth and Michelle and then between Elizabeth and Anne. The book focused a lot on the side characters so much that I skipped entire chapters and it made no difference to the story and honestly I did not care at all about them.
The conversations in this book were all ridiculous, senseless, and from time to time slightly homophobic, transphobic, and racist.
Everyone was extremely entitled and self-centered except when destroying one another.
The writing style is also very fanfiction, I don't know if this was a fanfic before but it sure felt very amateur.

I really, really, really cannot recommend this book at all unless you are in the mood to get upset and roll your eyes.

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I appreciate NetGalley and the publisher allowing me a copy of this book to read. This was such a hard pass for me I’m sorry but the sex scenes in this were so cringe it made me wonder if a straight woman was the author. I wouldn’t recommend this book nor would I read any of her other books.

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The main characters are Michelle and Elizabeth. Once Michelle and Elizabeth had a fling in college and then went there separate ways. Now, Michelle has an offer for Elizabeth. She wants her to pretend to be her lover when she goes home for Christmas to get back at her cheating husband.
This book was not like most of the other fake girlfriend books. It does not (spoiler!) end up with the women getting together in the end, which is how most books like that end. I don't know how anyone would buy that story of the women being together. There was no chemistry between them, fake or otherwise. This book was not my cup of tea.
I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this second book in the series

i did find this book very wordy.... and maybe there could have been a bit more action between the main characters

elizabeth is approached by her college roommate michelle...to help make her husband think that she is a lesbian and that elizabeth is her partner, elizabeth has never really gotten over her crush on michelle and agrees to the charade

so christmas is spent with michelles family and there she becomes embroiled in an age old dispute with another family, then she witnesses michelle snogging someone else but in all that time elizabeth starts to have feelings for michelles sister

can michelle pull the wool over everyones eyes even her husbands to get the divorce she wants and can elizabeth sort out her feelings and maybe find herself a life partner....

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I always try to focus on the positive things when I post a review because I believe authors need to hear it. This story, however, was primarily a compilation of metaphors, similes, and analogies than narrative and dialogue to develop the story or characters. Characters and scenes felt random to me. The blurb had me interested, but it didn’t live up to it, IMHO. No spoilers.
I couldn’t find a good pace at all. It seemed to be mostly independent scenes without any flow from one to the next. I did finish the story but I’m having trouble choosing a rating here. Just sayin’.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for providing this book for my review consideration—opinions here are exclusively mine.

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Elizabeth and Michelle have known each other a long time. Elizabeth always had feelings for Michelle that \were not returned. When Michelle comes to see Elizabeth, she has a plan for her divorce. Michelle wants Elizabeth to be her fake girlfriend to save her money in her divorce. The plot is good but the book is sl0w developing. The characters involved are good. There are twists in the book which are u expected. I recommend this book for romance readers.

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This is a story from "Scissor Link" universum.

Elizabeth, who is secretly pining after her friend Michell from collage, is suprised, when she got the offer of her dreams. It is a story about dreams, wishes and the courage to face the true. Beside it shows that pretending is a dangerous thing.

I really liked the story, because I liked the first book as well. This is a possibility to get to know some character better.

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Unfortunately, Face It was a DNF for me. The premise of the book was interesting, but the writing style was lack lustre. Face It did not flow well. I was not able to understand most of the dialogue as ideas changed too often.

I did love the character of Anne. Anne had a great storyline and her character was the comedic value of the book.

I have to give Face It 1 star.

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I really liked the idea of this story but let’s “Face It” , it fell short of expectations. It began with a looking back scene that was meant to set up the idea that Elizabeth was madly in love with straight girl Michelle and thus spent 10 years unable to have meaningful relationships because of it. However, then it dives into present day with two very different characters (which I discovered were from a previous book)and some weird work place sex scene. This was just the first of many times where secondary characters over shadowed the main protagonists.

The actual reason Michelle wants Elizabeth to be her fake girlfriend was a very thin plot line and throughout the story we find that even Michelle can’t quite make enough of an effort to convince anyone of it either. I feel like the author was out to tick some diversity boxes here and certainly covered a few with Michelle’s family. They are a very unusual collection of characters, who instead of adding to the story, in fact distract the reader from this supposedly romance one.

It was very difficult to feel any warmth towards these characters because it felt like I was watching a sitcom where characters were forever snarky and talking in movie quotes/references I didn’t get. The writing style made it even harder. I see there were three editors and I think that is where some the problems might lie, because this did feel like it was trying to be several books. With some good editing and the addition of more time for the “real” romance to unfold without getting buried under secondary characters problems, this might turn my opinion round.

It was an interesting but highly unsatisfactory reading experience.

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⭐⭐⭐⭐
Face It by Georgette Kaplan it's a lesbian romance but there is not so much romance as I would want in this kind of book. There is a lot of diversity in this book and I liked it as this shows reality!
I can't say I particularly liked any of the characters, probably the best one was Michelle's sister Anne. She was fun.

Michelle convinces Elizabeth to be her pretend girlfriend for a week while they visit Michelle's family. Michelle has liked Elizabeth for years but I struggled to feel the connection. If you like someone for some time you definitely do a lot to show that, but I struggle to catch where there were that feelings.
And I wasn't surprised that others struggled to believe that there was a connection between them.

In general, I enjoyed this book as I laughed out loud so many times! But I would like more connection between characters.

Thank you, NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for this copy!

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Thank you to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for the ARC. Unfortunately, this one was a miss for me. The prologue itself was very uneven, but I kept on reading until I gave up halfway through. Most plot changes seemed abrupt and unjustified. Overall, I just didn’t find it believable and did not enjoy the writing style.

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1.0 star

Thank you to Ylva Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with this eARC, in exchange for my honest review.

I knew about 20% into this book that it just wouldn’t be my cup of tea. I pushed through so I could give a proper review, but oh how I wished I would’ve dnf’d because I simply wasted a few hours of my life.

I liked the idea of the snarky banter between characters, yet why did so many have this ability? It just seemed to be unbalanced.

I like the idea of fake-dating trope born out of comedy, instead of like full on desperation.

Some of the language/jokes seemed to be out of poor taste while, others were completely offensive. I truly don’t know how this got published in 2018. I definitely wasn’t the target audience for this.

I think I know what the writer was going for? or maybe i’m just being optimistic? but it just fell flat. maybe if I was in my 60s/70s, I would’ve enjoyed this.

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A stand alone sequel to Scissor Link (Dec 2016). Elizabeth Smile fell in love with her very straight college roommate Michelle Harlow. Years later Michelle shows up asking Liz to pretend to be her girlfriend. It is somehow going to keep her cheating husband from half of her money. Liz enjoys having Michelle back in her life and agrees. Then the two head to Michelle’s family home in Ohio to celebrate the holiday for a week.

This book has very funny, laugh out loud moments. The family conversations just seem to be set up after set for zingers and witticisms. Sadly, more of the story is that then actually having the character interact, share about themselves etc. Basic details of life aren’t shared. But there is mayhem, and physical comedy that could be right out of a tv comedy. I did love the mention of the “Hell is Real” sign that is famous in Ohio only because I saw it on various visits to the state. The author uses pop references which is great when using classics like Star Wars. But mentions of show Lost or McDreamy from Grey’s Anatomy instantly feel dated.

I enjoyed the funny moments but I didn’t care about the characters or their HEA. The jump to the L word felt like a big leap for how little time is actually spent together. And I should mention one of the leads doesn’t show up till 25 percent into the book. Read for the funny bits as the romance isn’t memorable.

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Frustrating read (2.5 stars)
This is the second book in the series and takes place chronologically after Scissor Link; Janet and Wendy, the main characters from Scissor Link, appear in this story but are secondary characters so the focus is instead on their friend Elizabeth. I enjoyed this book less than Scissor Link and wonder if I’m simply not the target audience for these stories.
The fake relationship setup here is one where the ‘show don’t tell’ rule of writing was not well applied; Michelle particularly puts so little effort into making her lesbian relationship with Elizabeth believable to others (including the reader) that there was no incentive to be emotionally invested or interested in their characters or relationship to one another. Michelle warns Elizabeth about her sister Anne possibly having an agenda while they’re all staying at the family home over the holidays, yet she does nothing to keep Anne away from Elizabeth, nor do Elizabeth and Michelle spend any time together beyond the bare minimum. Michelle’s behavior was baffling and contradictory as was the change in Elizabeth and other characters thru the course of the story. I found myself frequently wanting to put the book down or hoping the story would get better eventually; not liking any of the characters in the book made caring about them impossible for me.
There are some funny scenes and dialogue between Elizabeth and Anne (Michelle’s sister) and between family members at Michelle’s father’s house but they were not predominant in the story and they weren’t enough to make up for the rest of the book’s shortcomings for me.

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