Pretending Ever After

by Chiara Crane

I need him to help save my job. He needs me to pretend we’re engaged.

Talking to attractive men always gets me flustered, and when I saw Adam Nguyen’s face for the first time—well, I kind of lost it.

I work for a reality TV show, and his parents are slated to be our next guests. They’re not cooperating, and I need someone to wrangle them into the same room for long enough to film an episode, or I’ll lose my job.

Adam agrees, but on one condition. To help him dodge his creepy boss, I need to pretend to be his fiancee.

It’s just two parties. I can hold it together for two parties, right?

Once I meet him and feel the instant, soul-deep connection between us, I realize the hard part isn’t going to be pretending we’re engaged. It’s going to be pretending I don’t want to jump his bones then and there.

Then again…maybe I do.



Enjoy steamy nights and heartfelt instalove in this 100-page novella. Meet the world of The Ever After Show in this prequel set ten years before the series.

100 pages, ebook

Published April 14, 2022

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shannon Bryce is the associate producer of the Ever After Show, a reality program focused on saving relationships that are in trouble. A big part of her job is finding couples to be featured on the show and preparing them to film their episodes. When she has trouble getting the latest guests to cooperate, she reaches out to their adult son, software developer Adam Nguyen. He promises to convince his parents to fall in line in exchange for Shannon's agreement to act as his fake fiancee while she's in town. His much older female boss has been harassing him, and he hopes that bringing his "fiancee" to the company's upcoming product launch celebrations will convince her to stop. When Adam and Shannon finally meet in person, they find that there's an instant connection between them that has nothing to do with the roles they're playing, but Shannon is concerned that getting involved with Adam for real will jeopardize her job. Besides, she's only in town for a few days. That's not enough time to fall in love...or is it?

I really enjoyed this fast-paced, funny, and sweet story. Adam and Shannon were both kind of shy and awkward at times, but they were somehow perfect when they were together. Even though their relationship developed quickly, I believed in the strength of their feelings for each other, and it was easy for me to cheer them on to their HFN/HEA.

I recommend this story for all romantic comedy fans. It's a great introduction to a new series and I look forward to finding out what's to come in future books.