Blurb:
Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A professor at a respected university, she’s great at witty backchat but terrible at getting personal. Like her four best male friends, she’s perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, they all make a pact to join an online dating service and find plus-ones. But after making the pact, Millie and one of their group, Reid, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, before deciding the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
However, online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with dream dates, Millie’s profile attracts nothing but creeps. So she invents ‘Catherine’ – a dating profile alter ego in who make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. But when ‘Catherine’ and Reid strike up a digital relationship, Millie finds herself struggling to resist temptation – both online and off. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear – intimacy – or risk losing her best friend, for ever.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Side Notes:
- Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary Romance
- Highly recommend for 15 years and above
- TW: Catfishing, loss of a loved one in the past, talk of cancer, diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and some questionable comments about people’s physical appearance
- Romance Trope: Friends to Lovers
Book Quotes:
- “I’m lonely. I’m lonely because I don’t tell people what I need or what I want, and then get hurt when they don’t figure it out on their own. Is it possible to be a highly functioning adult with a successful career, awesome friends and a lovely family, and still be a Level Five Hot Mess? I may be living proof.”
- “I feel like we meet people in life and want so much for them to like us that we suck in our stomachs and pretend we don’t fart and tell them a bunch of things we think they want to know. If it works they fall for the person we want to be, and not for the person we are.”
- “How many mistakes does it take before you’re bad? Does it start with a little white lie, and slowly progress to fraud . . . and worse? Does it matter if you do the wrong thing for the right reason?”
- “The craziest thing about parenting must be that it’s this huge experiment and you have no idea whether it’s successful until, like, decades later.”
- “Sometimes, the thing we want is right in front of us, and we’re the last ones to see it.”
- “I should have been more offended. But I only have one emotion, and it’s hunger.”
- “Me? I was obsessed with serial killers. More specifically, I was obsessed with the idea of female serial killers. Hear the phrase serial killer, and most of us probably picture a man. It’s not surprising—let’s be real, men are responsible for at least ninety-two percent of the evil in the world. For centuries, women have been socially programmed to be the nurturers, after all—the protectors, the emotional bridges—so when we hear of a woman who takes life instead of creating it, it’s instinctively shocking.”
- “I wonder whether I’m single not because I haven’t met the right person yet, but because I’m not the right person yet. The other night, I had the most terrifying thought: Who would I be a good match for? Like, I honestly can’t imagine who that man is.”
- “Forgiveness is so fucking freeing.”
- “Men date younger women all the time and get a pat on the back. Why does dating a younger guy automatically make me a cougar?”
- “You’re honestly too good for me, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want you anyway.”
- “Is it weird that this roomful of straight men is fighting over Reid and not me?”
- “You deserve good. I’m sorry I ever let you believe otherwise.”
- “And that was never his fault, even if it is his greatest failure.”
- “My God, we are too young to be this old.”
- “Emotions are live wires, and mine are DOA.”
- “because I got to have something with Reid that I’ve never had with anyone before, and I fell in love with him.”
- “Listen, if twenty-one-year-old college me had had the chance to bang beautiful twenty-eight-year-old you, I’d have done it in a hot second.” Wait, what?”
- “I’m lonely, too. I know that feeling, and the energy threshold to do something about it sometimes feels insurmountable.”
- “The way he smiles up at me is the same way he always looks at me; like there is nowhere else he’d rather be. There’s no awkwardness or tentative touches. It’s just us.”
- “Maybe it’s because we can be quiet together, and it’s never weird.”
- “I wasn’t thinking as I pulled him through the door and down the hall. All I could do was feel—feel how right we were together, and an overwhelming relief that he was here, and that I didn’t want him to leave.”
- “And I don’t know what it is about this in particular, but I just burst out laughing. At first unsure, Ed finally grins. And then he throws his arms around me, pressing his face to my shoulder. “I missed you so much. I’ve felt like complete shit. I’m so, so sorry, man.”
- “I’m shitty at talking about personal stuff not only because I feel awkard talking about myself, but also because I don’t like turning a conversation into a downer.”
- “I rarely examine myself, never mind share with anyone else.”