I had some trouble with this one. FIRST BRIDE TO FALL follows Nell on her path to love. Nell's family owns a coffee shop that is in financial trouble, largely due to a cheating business partner years before. Now, there's a scheme to marry the son of the former partner couple for 5 years as a marriage of convenience and then split the profits. It has to take place within a month, so Nell and her sisters decide that whoever is not engaged by then will be the one to marry him. Nell decides that now is the time to make a move on the guy she has been crushing on since high school, but her overconfidence and lies makes it all backfire when he finds out about the agreement and decides to be horrible until she breaks up with him.
I liked the premise, but there were a lot of unexplained elements around why marriage was the answer and why the parents were cool with this plot. It was also kind of a huge plothole in the agreement about the marriage, because none of them were close to being engaged, and how were at least 2 of them supposed to get there in 30 days?! There was some suspension of belief there. Luckily, everything seemed to be going perfectly for Nell until it wasn't.
Nell was a bit of a stalker having made him birthday presents every year (though not having given them to him) and following up on him since high school. I was a bit troubled by this, as it seemed strange and not a great foundation for a relationship. This would have seemed way creepier in reverse, especially with the way she continues to lie to him as they are getting to know each other.
The plot thickens when he finds out and decides to make things miserable so she will break it off (and the reasons for this also require some suspension of belief, because I think people would take his side). The way this all goes down is pretty rough with a heavy dose of misogyny (but I guess because he is pretending it is supposed to be OK?). Things escalate when she acquiesces to all demands and surprises him by doing all the domestic tasks well (yay for her, I guess), all while healing from a bad sprain that he cared about before he hated her.
By the end, I was not sure if I liked either them with all their lies and his cruelty, but maybe that means they deserved each other. The ending resolution was also way too fast and did not include the necessary apologies they both deserved. It needed more oomph, especially after all the pain of those few days.
Overall, this was really just not for me. Please note that I received an eARC. All opinions are my own.