Boyfriend by Sarina Bowen is live!
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Blurb
The hottest player on the Moo U hockey team hangs a flyer on the bulletin board, and I am spellbound:
Rent a boyfriend for the holiday. For $25, I will be your Thanksgiving date. I will talk hockey with your dad. I will bring your mother flowers. I will be polite, and wear a nicely ironed shirt…
Now everyone knows it’s a bad idea to introduce your long-time crush to your messed-up family. But I really do need a date for Thanksgiving, even if I’m not willing to say why. So I tear his phone number off of that flyer… and accidentally entangle our star defenseman in a ruse that neither of us can easily unwind.
Because Weston’s family is even nuttier than mine. He needs a date, too, for the most uncomfortable holiday engagement party ever thrown.
There will be hors d’oeuvre. There will be faked PDA. And there will be pro-level awkwardness…
Boyfriend is a full-length stand-alone romance for Weston and Abbi!
Review
4 short and sweet stars!
This book started life as a novella in the ’Tis the Season for Romance anthology that was released for a brief time in 2021. I loved meeting Weston and Abbi then, and was thrilled when I learned that Sarina Bowen was expanding their story into a full-length (though still rather short) novel.
Abbi is a college student who works at a local sports bar where the college hockey team hang out – providing her with the perfect opportunity to perve on her crush, hockey player, Weston. When she learns that Weston hires himself out as a fake boyfriend for Thanksgiving events, she jumps at the random opportunity and hires him to accompany her to an awkward family dinner.
Weston is thrilled to pick up his ‘date’ for Thanksgiving and learns that it’s the hot waitress from his local bar. Over the course of a car ride and a family dinner, the two of them banter and flirt, and Weston is the perfect ‘boyfriend’ when he meets her family. They get on so well, that when Weston needs a date to go home to his family for Christmas, he invites Abbi to return the favour and come along as his fake girlfriend.
I love a fake romance set-up, and these two are so freaking cute together! They have moments of awkwardness, but their friendship is easy and natural, and their banter is so much fun. And when the trips are all over and done with and neither of them are ready to say goodbye to the other, their friendship continues, and their not-so-secret attraction builds until they finally decide to act on it.
I’m driving her wild, and I feel like a superhero. If the superhero were a super horny, college guy who’s fallen deeply in like with his fake girlfriend.
I love these characters! Abbi has had a really hard life but she’s brave and strong, and I love her resilience and determination. Weston is a genuinely good guy, and he’s so much fun. He’s exactly who Abbi needs. But while Abbi is desperate for love and a connection with somebody, Weston actively shuns love and doesn’t want a relationship. They have a lot they need to figure out, and it’s a gorgeous journey watching them do just that.
This is such a cute read. It’s quite short (only 265) pages, so it moves pretty quickly, but there’s still quite a bit of depth in Abbi and Weston’s backstories. There’s a bit of drama and minimal angst before a very satisfying ending, and I finished this book with a big smile on my face.
4 stars.
An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
For more great reads, check out our Sarina Bowen Author Spotlight