The Spanish Love Deception

A Novel

By: Elena Armas

Narrated by: Scarlette Hayes

Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A TikTok sensation, this rom-com about a young woman who agrees to fake date a colleague and bring him to her sister’s wedding has “everything you could want in a romance” (Helen Hoang, New York Times bestselling author).

Catalina Martín desperately needs a date to her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiraled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him.

She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. New York to Spain is no short flight and her raucous family won’t be easy to fool.

Enter Aaron Blackford—her tall, handsome, condescending colleague—who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating, blood-boiling, and insufferable man.

But Catalina is desperate, and as the wedding draws nearer, Aaron looks like her best option. And she begins to realize he might not be as terrible in the real world as he is at the office.

©2021 Elena Arma (P)2021 Simon & Schuster Audio

I'm convinced the TikTok hype was sponsored.

The male love interest never says more than ten words at a time and the female main character is terribly unlikable. I don't know how this made it past an editor. And the narrator of the audiobook uses a male voice for Aaron that is the ghost of a chain-smoker. I held on for the smut, but by the time I got there I couldn't stop cringing when the narrator spoke it. DNF'D after 9 hours.

Not very good

The narrator has a smoker’s voice and a subtle but irritating accent. The pace is painfully slow. The main character’s behavior is idiotic and even though it is entirely predictable, it still made me cringe uncomfortably. Overall, just not good.

Pulling teeth

The dialogue is painful and stilted. Way too much description of eye colour. The author makes thing way more complicated than it needs too be. And I feel like she thinks the reader is stupid with how many times she repeats simple information.
Not halfway through yet, but I doubt I will finish it. It just hurts my brain to listen to it.

Absolutely loved this book!! ❤️

This book was just wonderful. It made my heart squeeze so much with love!! I love Aaron!!!!❤️

Catalina reminds me of myself.

I loved the pace of this story. It included the usual up and downs and included really nice cultural nods.

Magnificent, Swoon-Worthy Slow Burn

Aaron Blackford is what book boyfriend dreams are made of!!! This was such a perfect enemies-to-lovers, fake-dating read. My heart is completely destroyed in the best possible way. Read it, read it, read it!!! What are you waiting for?!

Great book. VERY slow burn. 3/5🌶

Loved this story and the performance. Wished there were a male voice but didn’t ruin the book for me.

Cute and cheeky light-hearted and fun

The book is super cute. Highly recommend. The first 3-4 hours of the book could’ve been condensed into 1 hour, but it’s worth it. Great summer book for the pool, beach or back porch!

A top 2022 read - a brilliant debut novel!

Amazing - absolutely a contender for my top book of the year! This was stunningly fantastic! I knew going in that this one had rave reviews by practically everyone out there in the Bookstagram / Good Reads community, as well as critical reviews (and newspapers, etc.) ... but sometimes those widely loved books don't live up to the hype (for me). This one absolutely did!

I truly loved the enemies to lovers storyline, the workplace romance trope, and that it was very reminiscent of The Hating Game - I kept seeing that book and movie as I read through this (it's not that plot at all, but it's got hints of it throughout, of Lucy and Joshua's little games and rivalry, and how Joshua didn't actually hate Lucy from the start, she just thought he did - similar thing here).

Catalina, or Cat to her friends, has worked in a large engineering company in a pretty high-up supervisory position for several years since coming to the USA, and some of the "old boys club" still has a problem with that - continuing to make those snide, misogynistic comments and assigning tasks "because you're the attractive option" and knowing how to plan a party must be something that a woman knows how to do. No one else speaks up at meetings to defend her, even those she thought might be on her side, so in order to keep her position and for women's rights, she smiles, takes it, and works harder and longer hours than any of the men. When one of the men, who she overheard on a call during his first week at work asking the boss to reassign him to any team but hers, tries to later step in to help her with planning this party she's been tasked with (since he has past experience and she has none), and she "hates" him, she accepts it as her only choice. Since the day she overheard the call, immediately after she tried to be very nice and welcoming him to the company, he has been nothing but distant, aloof, and even outright rude to her.

This guy, Aaron, has also offered himself up to attend her sister's wedding in Spain as her "boyfriend" since she doesn't seem to have an alternative option, one day when he's listening in on her private conversation with her coworker. Eventually, she gives in and agrees, because he is clearly right, there is no one else she can bring. He starts playing the role of her friend and asks her, in return, to do just a single favor for her, which is to attend a charity bachelor auction and bid on him.

As the two coworkers start spending time together, with the auction, the work event planning, and eventually heading to Spain for the family wedding, they realize that perhaps they don't actually hate each other so much and could be friends - until a promotion pops up that could change absolutely everything.


The only thing on my wishlist for this book would have been to get some of Aaron's POV (the entire thing was from Cat's POV, so we never got inside his head to know where his thoughts and feelings were, though we could certainly guess at times).


This is a longer book, but once it got going, it didn't feel long enough and I simply wanted MORE of the story! I just didn't want it to end! I needed more of Cat and Aaron. I absolutely loved this book and as Elena Armas' debut novel, I wasn't able to go searching out her back catalogue for more books and now have to wait for her to publish her next one - which isn't coming for several more months, and now I'm left hanging! I cannot wait for The American Roommate Experiment, and I'm sure it's going to be just as fantastic!! Only 6 more months to go...


I absolutely recommend this book to everybody - just make sure you carve yourselves out an entire day from morning to night, because you are not going to want to stop once you get going on this one!

100% a 5-star read, and 5-stars for the narration by Scarlette Hayes!

Recommend

I love this book I enjoyed it so much! I already miss them :(
And the narrator is incredibly talented, very well done