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In Marriage on Madison Avenue, the third installment of Ms. Layne’s Pact in Central Park trio, we have a friends-to-lovers, fake dating extravaganza that includes an Instagram influencer, a wedding at the Plaza, and a controlling mother. Combine that with Ms. Layne’s ability to write female friendships and this is a gentle and charming tale.
The introduction to the book is the conceit of the series. On the day of a philanderer’s funeral, the three women he was sleeping with (including his wife!) all meet on a park bench and decide to become friends. Each woman gets her own story and this one is Audrey’s.
A fairly famous influencer, Audrey’s made a living with her authentic and unbiased reviews of life as a single gal in New York. When she starts getting harassed and bullied by a Gossip Girl-esque outlet, she talks her best friend and complete commitment-phobe Clarke into posing as her fake fiancé.
We all know where this is going, don’t we?
What follows is classic Layne – appearances from old favorite characters, women speaking truth to each other, men discovering they can take risks on love. The package is tidy and enjoyable and if she writes your chosen flavor of romance, you can’t go wrong with this one.
My only quibble is a spoiler, so I won’t put it here, but it’s not a deal breaker by any means. It just knocks it from what could have been an A-/B+ for me to a solid B.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
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Grade: B
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Kisses
Review Date: 23/12/20
Publication Date: 01/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Voracious reader, with a preference for sassy romances and happily ever afters. In a relationship with coffee, seeing whiskey on the side.
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Thank you for the review. The series sounds interesting, but I have a side observation. It seems every other book I read about, especially contemporary romances, involves fake dating/fiance tropes. Sometimes it is well done, but it’s so overdone these days that it’s a cliche. I can rattle off at least a half dozen books I’ve read just in the past couple of months with this trope. It’s often associated with either friends-to-lovers or enemies-to-lovers tropes as well. I’m listening to Take a Hint, Dani Brown right now and the premise isn’t working well for me, partly because it’s so predictable as to be boring.
I don’t usually read contemporary, so the fake fiance trope always makes me wonder. In cases where the characters need to fake it to deal with some situation/person that’s likely to be part of their lives in the future (e.g. his parents badgering him to get married), how will this situation/person be staved off once the fake relationship ends?