Fake Fianceé

By: Ilsa Madden-Mills

Narrated by: Yvonne Syn, Alastair Haynesbridge

Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's Summary

From WSJ best-selling Author Ilsa Madden-Mills comes a new stand-alone contemporary romance.

Fake engaged to the hottest quarterback in the country? Score.

They say nothing compares to your first kiss, but our first kiss was orchestrated for an audience.

Our second kiss...that one was real.

He cradled my face like he was terrified he'd f--k it up.

He stared into my eyes until the air buzzed.

Soft and slow, full of sighs and little laughs, he inhaled me like I was the finest Belgian chocolate, and he'd never get another piece.

A nip of his teeth, his hand at my waist...and I was lost.

I forgot he was paying me to be his fake fiancée.

I forgot we weren't real.

Our kiss was pure magic, and before you laugh and say those kinds of kisses don't exist, then you've never touched lips with Max Kent, the hottest quarterback in college history.

Three months. Two hearts. One fake engagement.

©2017 Ilsa Madden-Mills (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Suprised how much I liked

I was able to get when it was a great whisper-sync deal and honestly was a bit turned off by the title. The story had more meat to it than the title suggested to me. I think the author could have done more with they mystery and stalking but I still liked what was there. The narrators were new; the male wasn't quite as good with the female voices but didn't turn me off. I would explore more from the author and narrators.

Everything I love about New Adult

Story
This book was everything I love about New Adult. I loved the hero and the heroine. Sunny and Max are both fresh off of break-ups. Sunny is just trying to make it through the semester. She picked classes with her ex-boyfriend and she is not enjoying the fact that she has to see him. Max is also not looking forward to seeing his ex. He just want to focus on football and getting nominated for the Heisman. Sunny and Max decide to become a fake couple to make him look good for the nomination and get a little payback on their exes.

I loved that this book was low on drama. Sometimes New Adult has drama just to have drama. Sunny wasn't very experienced with guys but she also wasn't naive. She had her limits and stuck to them. Max also wasn't the typical athlete. He was smart and he was not a manwhore. He was in the past but it wasn't a big plot point in the story. Sunny and Max had a little tragedy in their past but they were strong despite those issues.

Narration
I swear when every I see atypical names for narrators I think its an alias. As far as for these narrators names, this is the first book I have listened to from either narrator but their voices sound very familiar. This book had dual narration so Yvonne Syn read all chapters in the heroine's POV and Alastair Haynesbridge read all of the chapter's in the male POV. I really enjoyed Yvonne as Sunny. I felt her voice really fit the character. She also did a good job with the male characters. Same for Alastair's narration of Max. He fit that character very well and also did a good job with the female characters. There was a British male character in this book and I think both narrators did a good job with the accent.

Overall I listened to this book fairly quickly and it was enjoyable. I enjoyed the narration and would listen to another book from these narrators. I have all this author's books on audio but this is the first one I have listened to. I will definitely be making a dent in those books.

Gah! My heart 😍

I read the book so it only made sense for me to get the audiobook. I knew that Ilsa wouldn't disappoint, I read and heard her previous books and loved them, so her choice for her narrators were spot on. Yvonne and Alastair's performance as Sunny and Max were believable and the chemistry was wow! Loved everything about this story!

4 stars bc it was an enjoyable story w humor

I have to say that in this specific genre stars are not awarded for the complexity, ingenuity, difficulty and research of a subject, story and the characters. Because if it were most of these books should be, if fairly rated, be given 2-3 stars. But let's face it we reward stars for a different reason with these books. I liked the story- it did have a little complexity and I like football and I laughed at the humor.
On a personal note and this doesn't have anything to do w the story per se, but it's a little disappointing that female authors use language and characters that promote certain ongoing and frankly destructive stereotypes such as saying " legs that go on forever". Blah blah blah. Is no other body type interesting to men or considered beautiful r at least acceptable by society as something good to have that a man myth be interested in? And also characterizing a 65 year old woman the way she did- sounding like a crazy, somewhat disabled old lady. Good grief. Wake up- have you met a few 65 year olds? Most are still pretty young - lots of stereotypes.

Everything you ever wanted in a fake fiancee!

Who doesn't love the fake fiancee trope!?! Come on it's the epitome of fairytale!

A rugged good looking guy trusts you to help him and in the midst of chaos, drama, conniving hos, and bad people....the possibility of Love!

Yeah this hopeless romantic was sold on the blurb! I even got over the man bun once I realized why...because I previously was anti- man bun. Okay I still am with an exception for a certain hot quarterback!

It's all kinds of naughty and nice. And worth every twist of the circumstances.

Anticlimactic :-(

So this one started off great and I couldn't wait to see where Ilsa would take this story. Unfortunately it didn't go anywhere. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen and it never did! Maybe I was writing a different story in my head. LOL. I just knew that Bianca or Felix would do something crazy and get caught. But no, everyone just grew up, went on with life and put everthing behind them like nothing happened. Huh?? At the end I just felt like the entire book built up to a big fat zero!

Just One Small Request

I enjoyed this audiobook. It had the right mix of romance and storyline. The only thing that I did not like the insinuation that a 40 year old man was old and that Mimi who was 65 had to be in assisted living. I hope that you are not in assisted living when you are 65. Other than that, it was enjoyable. TY.

Pretty Good

I thought this book started out really good with the whole car accident and the mysterious girl but it kind of went down hill in the middle. Max was kind of a jerk. I thought Sunny was really sweet and didn't understand why she would even want to talk to a jerk like him. It took Max way to long to decide Sunny was worth more than his football game if he ever did figure that out. He was kind of selfish. I really was hoping that something more would happen with Felix like maybe he went a little nuts and did something to Sunny but it never really happened. I felt like the ending was a little rushed. It seemed like the author got tired of writing before everything was resolved and just decided to resolve it all in a couple of chapters. I hate epilogues like the one in this book. I feel like they are kind of a waste. Over all it was worth the listen even if it wasn't my most favorite Ilsa Madden-Mills book.
I found Alastair Haynesbridge to be really good for this book but I didn't really like Yvonne Syn.

Promising new narrators!

I really liked Sunny & Max and their sweet story. There was enough heat between them to make it sexy without it just being a series of "bedroom" scenes. (Although there are times when a sizzling hot book is just what's needed!) I also enjoyed how they would tease each other and laugh. Humor is essential in a good relationship!

The nice surprise for me was the narration. Both of these narrators were new to me, but each did a really good job with expressing multiple characters. I never lost track of who was speaking. I could easily see them becoming--or at least competing with--the next Andi Arndt and Sebastion York, with experience and a little more maturity, at least for Alastair. For now, he's perfect in the New Adult genre.

My only negative is one that other reviewers have mentioned. It seems to be difficult for narrators to convey older characters without adding too much vibrato to their voice, which just makes them sound feeble, but even in this I think Yvonne & Alastair did okay. Mimi wasn't as bad as some others I've heard, or maybe she just didn't have as much dialog as some featured characters in other books who were voiced so badly that I had to return the book. I can forgive the story for portraying Max's dad and Sunny's grandmother as old considering the intended reader. When I was the age of the H & h, I thought my parents were old and my grandparents were ancient. As I grow up, the threshold for "old" and "elderly" keeps getting pushed further into the future. Recently I had an 85 year old coworker who could run rings around the rest of us and sounded nothing like Mimi. Maybe Audible needs to consider adding an age-appropriate narrator to the cast of readers.

surprisingly good

I was hesitant about this one but it turned out to be a quick easy listen. Typical romance story, a tad predictable but the narration is decent and the story held my interest to the end.

Nope!

I slept through the first half of the book and even when I backtracked I still didn't know what was happening. The second half was... Smh. Just no.