Book Review: Fake-ish

Title: Fake-ish
Author: Winter Renshaw
Genre: Romance, Fiction

What It’s About: As part of a joint bachelor and bachelorette party, Briar goes to the bar and meets Dorian. They start talking at the bar about marriage, and Dorian tells her that he thinks weddings are a waste of time; that the wife and husband to be are toxic enough that they will probably end up divorced soon after the wedding—he gives them five years. He tells Briar that he is a band manager for Phantom Symphony—a band that has exploded and that they are on tour; he had taken time off from managing the band to be at this party, because he won’t be able to make it to the wedding. He takes her to the dance floor and they dance, and before the group is about to leave, he gets some glitter from Briar’s dress in his eye, so they go to the washroom to flush it out. When they return, the bus is gone with the party.

So they walk back to the hotel, and en route he switches Briar’s heels and a $100 bill for flip flops from other women. Briar doesn’t know what to do because she is unable to get into the hotel as she left her purse behind, and only had her phone. Dorian suggests that they will be going to his room that night, but once they’re in the lobby, Vivi (Briar’s cousin and the bride) calls her and apologizes, then tells her that they are coming by the hotel to pick them up. Once at the bus, Vivi tells Briar that Dorian is a heartbreaker, something that he admits is untrue after the fact when she asks him, and Dorian tells her that Vivi keeps setting him up with some of her friends, though he didn’t hit off with any of them. At the second bar, Dorian is absolutely unhappy because it’s pretty busy, so he and Briar go to a bar next door, where they spend time drinking and talking while watching a Yankees vs Red Sox game. After that, they make their way through the beach to the hotel, but take some time to sit on the beach. They end up finding a cabana and having sex on the chairs, spending the night out until the early morning hours before returning to the hotel, where Dorian tells her that he’ll see her at 2pm for the beach, as Briar could not wait to be at the beach. He decides to change his flight back to the United States for the band’s tour from that day, to the same day that Briar is leaving. They continue to spend time together over the course of the remaining two days, and at one point, Briar starts fishing around for information on when Dorian will be back in the East Coast so that she can see him. He realizes what she is doing, and tells her that he doesn’t want to do the long distance thing—but they come to an agreement that they will both wait for each other for two years from now, and he’ll be in touch with her once the tour ends. Then they fly back to their respective locations—Dorian back to his band, and Briar to New York, where she has no job and no boyfriend (she lost both before the trip)—after saying goodbye at the airport and promising each other again that in two years they will be in touch.

In the present day, Briar gets into a car with Burke Roswell to go to Driftwood Island. Burke is the owner of the company she works her and theoretically her boss, but he’s not known for being kind; rather he’s kind of harsh with his people. When he calls her into his office, she fears she is being let go, but then learns that he wants to have her be his fake girlfriend/ fiancée for an 8 week long trip to his family estate. He has her sign a non-disclosure agreement and a contract, at the end of which she will receive 1 million dollars, and if they somehow get found out, she will still make 20,000.00. He asks her as they leave the office if she had read the PDF, and she asks him the same. They make it to the island by taking a boat, and are met by an elderly man who turns out to be Redmond Roswell III, Burke’s father. The man introduces himself and meets Briar, before driving them over to the house— a massive estate with the main house, many guest houses, stables, an Olympic pool and more. They sit around the dinner table and Briar meets Nicola and Dashwell, as well as their children, and she also comes face to face with none other than Dorian, the man she met at the joint bachelor-bachelorette party last year. Dorian is surprised and then angry when he finds out about Briar being engaged to Burke.

Throughout four weeks, they run into each other and even Dorian takes her to the lighthouse which Burke claims that he doesn’t know where it is. Each time, he doesn’t understand how Briar is different and makes passive aggressive comments. Each time Briar wants to tell him something or figure out a way to give him a hint that she’s not really with Burke without breaching the Non-Disclosure Agreement, but she’s unable to find a way. One of the days they are there Burke and Briar go to the city, under the guise of Burke wanting to show her around and get his father’s medication. She notices that he keeps looking at pictures of Audrina—his ex-girlfriend, who he had prepared to propose to only for her to end the relationship a week before the proposal because he had gotten cold feet and downloaded an app. This break-up happened six months ago, so Nicola thinks that the relationship with Briar is not real because Burke never moves on that fast. While Briar and Burke are in the city, and Briar has signal on her phone, she messages Audrina and tells her to call her.

One night, she wanders into the kitchen at the same time Redmond does, and he tells her stories of his life—how he had met his first wife and how he lost her and his daughters, then how he met his second wife and all the things in between. Then, he asks her to tell her how she met and fell in love with Burke—but Briar doesn’t have anything for him, because he’s not the most romantic person and the way that they met is at work, so she decides to tell him the story of how she met Dorian and how in love she is with him. Redmond tells her that this is pretty special, and they call it a night. He leaves, and Briar wishes that Dorian had overheard all this. Then when Briar looks around, she realizes that Dorian had been sitting in the shadow of the breakfast nook and had indeed overheard everything.

Not too long after, there’s an extremely rainy day and Briar is sitting in a nook to get the best light to read, while Burke and one of the employees of the estate are out to try to get the electricity back on as the electricity goes out. Dorian comes by and they talk—he wants to know why Briar is with Burke and Briar is unable to tell him because of the non-disclosure agreement. Suddenly, one of the workers comes by and asks Dorian if he has seen his father because she cannot find him, and he’s left his medicine untouched. Everyone starts searching for Redmond, only for Nicola to find their father passed out in the gardening shed. He is airlifted out, and the rest of the family takes the boat and the car into Boston, where they pile into the hospital’s ICU room where Redmond is. Briar offers to get coffee, and Dashwell decides to go put the children down and get the family hotel rooms. Nicola comes by and tells Briar that she could get free coffee and drinks not too far, then tries to talk to her about Burke and tells her that she sees how she looks at Dorian. Nicola then returns to the ICU and tells Dorian that there’s something off about Briar and Burke. She suggests bringing Audrina in to see how Burke reacts, but Dorian tells her that if she does, he will never speak to her ever again.

The next day, while Briar and Burke are in their hotel room, Briar gets a call from an unknown number, which turns out to be Audrina. She tells her that Redmond is in the hospital, and Audrina decides to change the flight direction, though she does ask if Dorian is there, and Briar tells her that yes. Dorian is in the room, when Audrina waltzes in to speak to Redmond, telling him that she’s here to say her goodbyes. Dorian walks out, not wanting to hear that, and then walks up to Nicola, asking her why she didn’t listen to his wishes, and Nicola goes to check the room. She’s just as surprised and tells him she swears she didn’t call her, but he can check her phone. Burke arrives and is surprised to see Audrina, so they talk. Dorian notices Briar lingering, and thinks that Briar shouldn’t be okay with this, but then Briar disappears. Nicola finds her, and tells her that she must be a better woman than she is if she’s not upset about Burke’s ex-girlfriend being here and lets slip that the inheritance clause makes it clear that you have to be engaged or married in order to get the money. Audrina comes by and thanks her for telling her, before telling her that she used to be engaged to Dorian, but then broke it off with Dorian to be with Burke. She then tells her that Burke started telling all of these lies—inconsequential lies too, about small things, that had her fed up with him, which is why she broke it off with him. Audrina tells her that the application thing that Burke stated is a lie, and that she actually realized that she made a huge mistake by leaving Dorian, so she reached out to him to reconcile only for him to tell her after the second message that she sent that he’s in love with someone else and to leave him alone. She asks that Briar pass the message on to Dorian. Redmond passes away, and Burke expects her to play the ever-supportive fiancée.

Once Redmond is buried, Dorian takes off. Briar sees him packing a week after the funeral, and speaks to him in his bedroom. He doesn’t say much, besides what he’s already said, and walks off. Burke sees them coming out of his room, but makes no mention of it until later that night, once Nicola had gone off to put her kids to bed. He tells her that she has no chance with Dorian because he told her as recently as a few days ago that he’s still in love with the girl he met a year ago. That gives Briar hope. They return to their lives—Dorian to the band, and Briar and Burke to the company—after only four weeks, not the initial 8 weeks that were planned.

While in the office, Briar searches for a picture of Dorian, and saves a photo that she finds of him on Instagram while he is on tour with Phantom Symphony. Burke interrupts her and asks if she got his invite, which she says she did—it’s the reading of the will and testament.

Dorian enters into the lawyer’s office, where Briar, Burke, Nicola and Dashwell are already seated. He is certain that Dashwell and Nicola will be divorcing fairly soon, based on what Nicola had confided in him while they were in Driftwood. He ignores everyone. The lawyer comes out and tells them that the estate is going to be split 8% towards 8 lifelong employees of the family, and the rest is to be split three ways across the children, including Dorian. Both Nicola and Burke are indignant because they’ve done everything that they were supposed to do, but Dorian is still getting away with a third of the estate—and Burke had wanted to do everything that he could to secure the money in his inheritance. The Lawyer gives them videos for them to watch, mentions that their mother’s engagement ring goes to Dorian, and that all of the properties except Driftwood Island can be sold along with any other jewelry and antiques that they do not one, with the caveat that 1% each goes to the 8 employees, and the rest is split evenly across the three. He also tells them that it’s their father’s wish that they spend two weeks every summer together in Driftwood Island. Everyone signs the paperwork, and Burke seems to be defeated though he mentions something about fighting the inheritance, to which the lawyer tells him it will be costly.

Dorian leaves the office as soon as possible and heads for his flight, shaking off Briar who had come up to talk to him. Briar meets up with Burke and asks him to let her go and let her get out of the NDA and keep the money. He tells her absolutely not, that she will get her money and that he will not be a laughingstock of the family; besides, she can’t go after his brother because he’s in love with someone else. Briar tells him that the woman that Dorian has been in love with is her, and she with him. Burke is about to answer back to her, when he looks up and sees Nicola had heard every single piece of the conversation. Briar then watches them get into an argument, before they get into a car, leaving Briar alone by the law offices. Briar returns home, deciding to get out of work early and specifically decides to quit the job because she wants to be free.

Dorian is getting on the plane when his phone is buzzing with text messages—he’s certain it’s Nicola because only she could be this dramatic. The woman sitting next to him keeps mentioning that he should take a look at it, so he finally takes a look at the messages from Nicola, all of which is her telling him that Burke and Briar had been a lie. Finally he calls her to get this over with and she explains to him that Burke had Briar pretend to be his fiancée to get a larger pie of the inheritance and had her sign the NDA, but that she’s really in love with him, though she couldn’t tell him. She tells Dorian to get off the plane and go get her. So Dorian gets off the plane, and rides to what he thinks is her apartment—getting her information off a website that he paid 50 bucks for—and knocks on the door, only to come face to face with a girl in pink hair, Briar’s roommate Maeve. Maeve tells him that she’s not here, and that she went for a walk, so he goes outside and sits down on the stairs knowing that you can walk a lot in New York and still miss people. Suddenly Briar shows up and they end up talking, declaring their love for each other, and then going up to her apartment where they have sex. Then in the afternoon sun, they talk and he asks her to come with him on tour as he doesn’t want to do this without her and potentially lose her—not that he ever did lose her—and she agrees.

Five years later, they are sitting in Greece drinking wine and eating. Briar has engagement ring willed to Dorian on her right hand, something that was suggested by Redmond in the video he left for Dorian. In the year after Redmond’s death, Burke’s firm went under as he wasn’t doing well financially and had been hoping to get money from his inheritance to shore it up, but in the end he got engaged to some steel heiress who is just as self-absorbed as him. Nicola and Dashwell divorced and it was ugly—it took 2 years for it to end, as they both hid assets and things from each other including infidelity. Briar in the meantime traveled and toured with Dorian, and they had the time of their lives. On their first anniversary—the second anniversary of their meeting, Dorian quit the band, and then they’ve traveled as much as they wanted. They talk about putting down roots, but ultimately they decide to just take it a day at a time.

My Thoughts: Overall, it’s an entertaining story and I enjoyed the heat between Dorian and Briar at the beginning, but I’m left wondering why Briar didn’t say something to Dorian even with the NDA—I’m sure something as simple as “its not what it seems, but i can’t speak about it, please understand” would have sufficed. I do love how Briar brought Audrina in, and learnt the whole story, which changed her perspective on Burke. And how she stood up to him at the lawyer’s office after the reading of the will, revealing the truth to Nicola. I also did enjoy the epilogue where it shows that Dorian and Briar stuck to their principles, and I do like that the author didn’t go with the trope of them settling down and what not, but it didn’t feel like a complete ending for the story in question. It was a nice read, but I probably wouldn’t read this book again as I didn’t feel like it had a lot of connection and depth—but rather a struggle of two people who are in love with each other, continually hurting each other, which is not exactly what I’m looking for in a romance book. It doesn’t have to be smutty, but I do enjoy the heat and the steam.