Faking It

i like carmack’s writing a lot, but cade and max seemed less developed and more cliche than bliss and garrick. i will be reading more in the series, though!

Oh my goodness! I LOVED this story. Way to go, Cora!!!

Max is in trouble. Her parents are coming, expecting her to be the well-behaved and presentable young lady they think she should be, and then there's the matter of the non-existent perfect boyfriend. Okay, so she does have someone, but he's nothing like the kind of guy they think she should be with, and that means she's got to come up with a plan. Enter "Golden Boy," perfectly dressed, well-spoke, and absolutely presentable. Now they just have to convince her parents that they're a couple, wait till her parents leave, and then they'll just go their separate ways… Right?

The Verdict: I absolutely loved Losing It, and watching Cade walk away broken hearted when Bliss fell for Garrick was hard. So I was thrilled that the super-sweet guy would get his own story — and happily ever after, with any luck — in Faking It.

I suppose the plot is a bit standard; there are an awful lot of stories that start with the whole "will you pretend to be my significant other?" bit, but that didn't make me look forward to it any less. On the outside, Max is edgy, refusing to conform, but she's really quite normal in that she simply wants the independence to pursue her passion – music. Cade, on the other hand, is not what he seems at first glance. He looks straight laced and somewhat conservative, but we know he's fun loving, teasing, and even a bit mischievous at time. He and Max may at first seem like an odd couple, but they really are quite perfect for each other.

Unfortunately, I read Faking It directly on the heels of Losing It, and it's impossible not to compare the two. In fact, I loved the first book so much that I was dying for more, so I guess in that sense I went in with really high expectations. But where Garrick and Bliss were both sweet and hilarious, where I spent just as much time laughing at Bliss's antics as I did swooning over Garrick, Faking It, while sweet, lacks a lot of that crazy fun. I imagine if I picked this book up entirely on its own, without having a clue about the story that came before it, I probably would given it a higher rating, but since I picked it up primarily because I wanted more of what book one so perfectly offered, I ended up being a little disappointed. Faking It is a sweet, solid love story, and it's great to see Cade get his well-deserved happily ever after, but I wanted the insanity of the first book, and it didn't really carry over into this one.