Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie

A Novel

By: Jackie Lau

Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Feodor Chin

Jackie Lau, author of the “full of heart” (Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author) The Stand-Up Groomsman, returns with a charming rom-com about a young woman’s desperate attempts to fend off her meddling mother…only to find that maybe mother does know best.

Mark Chan this. Mark Chan that.

Writer and barista Emily Hung is tired of hearing about the great Mark Chan, the son of her parents’ friends. You’d think he single-handedly stopped climate change and ended child poverty from the way her mother raves about him. But in reality, he’s just a boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer, and when they’re forced together at Emily’s sister’s wedding, it’s obvious he thinks he’s too good for her.

But now that Emily is her family’s last single daughter, her mother is fixated on getting her married and she has her sights on Mark. There’s only one solution, clearly: convince Mark to be in a fake relationship with her long enough to put an end to her mom’s meddling. He reluctantly agrees.

Unfortunately, lying isn’t enough. Family friends keep popping up at their supposed dates—including a bubble tea shop and cake-decorating class—so they’ll have to spend more time together to make their relationship look real. With each fake date, though, Emily realizes that Mark’s not quite what she assumed and maybe that argyle sweater isn’t so ugly after all…

Fake dating to a love story!

I enjoyed this fake dating to a real love story audio book. It took me a little while to get used to the inflection of the narrator’s voice, but I did and enjoyed it.

Gotta Love a Good Sweater Vest

I'll likely listen to this one again. The male lead is realistic in all his stodginess with an underlying appreciation for humor and the unexpected. I love how the couple developed a deeper understanding of one another over time and how the lies subtly nudged them along a path to happiness. The one downfall, at least from the perspective of an older reader, was the lead's obsession with age might have been a bit overplayed. It made her sound more like a 40-something than a 30-something.

Not my favorite

I absolutely love Jackie Lau. She’s on my instant buy list, because of her sensitive depiction of interracial relationships with East Asian MCs, disability representation, steamy scenes with enthusiastic consent, realistic family dynamics, literary food porn, and much more. That said, this book was my least favorite so far. I think the narration was a bit flat, which added to my feeling that the FMC was unlikable, the chemistry between her and the MMC was lacking, and the book was overall a bit long and uneventful. If you’re looking for an entry point to this amazing author, I’d start somewhere else, like the Cider Bar Sisters series.