I don't actually remember why I have this book - was it one of the weekly free Nook selections? Probably. If I paid money for it, I'm going to be upset.
The premise sounded great, if a little bit over the top: a young Aussie arrives in a random small town in Wisconsin, thinking she's going to marry her Internet boyfriend. Turns out he scammed her out of her life savings, and now she's stranded with nothing but a couple of suitcases and a visa. She'll begin the classic adversarial relationship with the guy who tries to help, but over time, the actual tension becomes sexual tension, and they fall in love.
And to be fair, there were definitely parts of the story that were great. The two main characters had rich backstories that went a long way toward explaining why they approached relationships the way they did. The conclusion Matilda reaches in the end, about forging her own destiny instead of being bound to her family's legends, is great too. Whenever the author is writing about anything but sex, the narrative voice is terrific and kept me interested in what was going to happen next.
So what killed this book for me? Well, for starters, Matilda was just too damn perfect. She's witty, smart, cooks like a dream, and allegedly she's not conventionally beautiful, but for some reason Marc finds her irresistible (even he doesn't know why). Oh yeah, and she's able to get a booming wedding-consulting business up and running in a matter of minutes, she's computer savvy (even though she apparently didn't ever try to google the guy who was Catfishing her or the town she was moving to), and when Marc's sister needs round-the-clock medical care, guess who's also a nurse? And don't forget, she's Australian, and that's exotic! They have different words for EVERYTHING and you will learn ALL OF THEM because the book does not go a page without reminding you that she's an Aussie.
Also, once the romance gathered some steam (such as it was...the sex scenes were almost entirely ludicrous), it was like all of the other plot points fell to the wayside. Mainly, there was no closure with Matilda's con man. I'm sure her money is long gone, but it would have been much more satisfying for the authorities to nab him, or for her to otherwise have to confront him again. As it was, the police said they were close to catching him, but it was never revealed whether they did or not.
And then there was also that undercurrent of subtle misogyny that, to be fair, kills almost every romance novel I read. The tired old trope of the woman having never been sexually satisfied until she meets the main love interest just ruins every book for me. It's apparently okay if Matilda had a little sex before Marc, just as long as she didn't ENJOY it. Marc, on the other hand, banged every girl in New York City and loved every minute of it. Why can't Matilda have had good (or even just better than "perfunctory") sex with someone else? What is the story going to lose if she has some control over her own pleasure, or if she's dated around a little in search of the great love that she's felt so much pressure to find? The idea that she requires this particular man to show her what's what, and the idea that she's somehow a more sympathetic character because of her relative inexperience, irritates me to no end.
And of course the happy ending is that Matilda has a houseful of kids who are just mini versions of her and Marc. Sure, that's logical given the central ideas of family and home and how the characters come to find them, but it was so bland, and the exposition dump in the epilogue felt kind of lazy.