TEST
The Dating Plan is Sara Desai’s follow-up to last year’s The Marriage Game, and like its predecessor, it’s an enjoyable – if predictable – rom-com, this time a second-chance romance/fake-relationship story. But – also like its predecessor – it falls into some storytelling traps and incorporates some seriously overused tropes; and although I had fun (mostly) reading it, it’s not what I’d call a memorable read, and I could only assign it a middling grade.
When we meet Daisy Patel in the opening chapter, she’s in the ladies bathroom at a hotel where she’s attending a conference, trying to obtain some sanitary towels from the dispenser while simultaneously trying to ignore the fact that her most recent ex- and her most recent ex-boss are nosily sucking face in one of the stalls. We know immediately that Daisy Is Not Like Other Girls; she describes herself as a neurotic software engineer who lives by plans and quantifiable results, a woman who wields fashion like a shield, and whose tendency to blurt out whatever was on her mind had gotten her into trouble too many times. And just in case we didn’t get the message, she carries a tote bag with Marvel characters on it and wears Avengers underwear.
Anyway.
She’s a mega-intelligent software designer, and her current employer is Organicare, a small company that is developing sustainable, organic menstrual products, and Daisy has accompanied her boss to this conference, where they’re due to make a pitch to a group of venture capitalists in order to secure more funding. She’s on her way back to the meeting room when she hears her name being called by a familiar voice; Salena Auntie (one of her four busybody, matchmaking but well-meaning aunts) has, through sheer (not) coincidence tracked Daisy down at the conference hotel and has a young man in tow, a friend’s son who is looking for a wife. As Daisy makes her escape – carrying many more sanitary towels than she actually needs – she (literally) bumps into the-one-that-got-away – Liam Murphy (aka Liam Freaking Bastard Murphy), her teenage crush and the boy who broke her heart ten years before when he stood her up for the Prom. Needless to say, she’s hated him with a passion ever since. (When she’s not hearing his voice every day or fantasising about him every night, that is.) I’ll say that again. She’s hated him for TEN YEARS because he didn’t turn up on Prom night. Seriously? It’s not as if he killed her cat or made rabbit stew from her favourite pet! Okay, so younger Daisy was devastated. But to hold on to that for ten years seems wildly immature. (And in case you’re wondering, yes we do find out why and yes, he had a good reason.)
To avoid Salena Auntie’s matchmaking scheme, Salena impulsively introduces Liam as her fiancé – and he’s only too delighted to play along.
Liam is in San Francisco to attend his grandfather’s funeral and to oversee the setting up of a new office for the venture capital company he works for, and once that’s done, he’s set to return to New York to take up a partnership. He doesn’t see his family often and his relationship with his older brother Brendan is strained, to say the least. Things go from bad to worse when his grandfather’s will is read; traditionally, the family business – a distillery that’s seen better days – has been handed down from father to eldest son, and Brendan is just waiting for that to happen so he can knock the place down and sell the land to provide a cash injection for his own business. But under the terms of the old man’s will, Liam will inherit the distillery – provided he’s married by his next birthday and remains married for a minimum of one year. Of course, Brendan is furious and Liam is shocked… and surprised to find that he actually wants to continue his grandfather’s legacy. But how? Liam’s birthday is six weeks away, he doesn’t do relationships, and for something like this, he’d have to marry someone who won’t fall in love with him or want to continue with the marriage. In fact, the ideal candidate would be someone who actively hates him.
You guessed it.
Liam and Daisy make a deal. In return for help finding an investor for Organicare (and because it will get her marriage-minded relatives off her back) Daisy agrees to marry Liam, and in order to sell it to her family, she says they should go on some dates – and even draws up a spreadsheet with dates and times and objectives. It’s the titular Dating Plan.
I admit that the ‘I’ve-hated-you-for-ten-years’ thing bugged me a lot, but once Liam and Daisy start spending time together and interacting more naturally, I began to enjoy myself a bit more. There’s considerable warmth and humour in the book, and while Liam comes off as a bit of a dickhead to start with, once Daisy – and we – get to spend some time with him, we see beyond that to the funny, charming and decent, vulnerable guy underneath. I did, however, have to wonder how someone who spent a few years living on the fringes of a biker gang suddenly became a millionaire venture capitalist. I liked Daisy’s smarts and snark, but there are contradictions to her character, too; she’s super-intelligent at some times and clueless at others, and she’s an introvert, yet she’s randomly flirty and has had lots of hook-ups. (I’m not condemning her for them – just suggesting it doesn’t fit with her being introverted.)
There are a lot of secondary characters in the story who are really just window-dressing; we’ve got the stereotypical marriage-obsessed aunties (four of them!) who come across as almost stalker-ish at times, and the stereotypical Irish family of drinkers, bruisers and brawlers. In places, so much information is randomly thrown out that it seems the author is so desperate to get it out there that it doesn’t matter if it interferes with the flow of the storytelling, and some of the plot-points just don’t make sense. (Such as – how did Liam’s grandfather know he was going to die and leave enough time for Liam to get married? Suppose he’d died the day before Liam’s next birthday? ) Fortunately, the romance itself is cute and banter-y and the sex scenes are well-written, but there’s little tension or relationship development as it’s very clear Daisy and Liam are into each other right from the start (despite Daisy’s professed hatred of Liam – which we hear about constantly!).
But despite that, I was enjoying a bit of sexy fluff until the last quarter of the book happened and ruined it. One of the issues Liam has carried with him since childhood is a sense of unworthiness; he never went to college and doesn’t have a degree (although it’s a point of pride that he’ll be the only partner at his firm without an MBA), so of course, the author has to trot out the I-am-not-worthy-and-I-am-leaving-you-for-your-own-good trope – and I wanted to spit. In the old days (pre-Kindle) it might even have been a wallbanger moment.
The Dating Plan is light and frothy, but ultimately lacks substance and consistency. While we can all say of a romance, ‘it’s nothing I haven’t read before’, the best authors take those old, well-used tropes and refashion them into something new. Sadly, that doesn’t happen here.
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Grade: C+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 18/03/21
Publication Date: 03/2021
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.
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Wow. I think your grade is very generous!
Well, I liked bits of it…
Apparently! Different strokes for different folks and all that!!!
A question for any lawyers out there: Is it even legal in the 21st century to make someone’s inheritance dependent on his/her marriage? Is this discussed in the book at all?
No, it’s not discussed. I’m not at all familiar with the law and certainly not in America, but I would imagine that someone can dispose of their property in whatever way they wish – it’s not like it’s entailed or anything. Like I said in the review, it’s pretty daft that the “next birthday” thing is part of the condition – if grandfather had died the day before Liam’s birthday; Liam would have had no chance of fulfilling it!
To my mind, it was just a convenient and unimaginative way of putting the plot moving.
The answer is…maybe, even probably I’d guess. As crazy and outmoded as it sounds.
It’s actually much easier to control things how you want after you are gone with a Trust than with a Will, but courts have upheld some crazy stuff relating to wills. Up to and including things like not allowing someone to inherit if they marry someone of a different religion if that’s what the will specifies.
They won’t uphold anything illegal or “against public policy” like saying someone has to divorce their spouse to inherit or commit a crime, but it’s very possible the courts would uphold that someone has to be married, or marry to inherit.
‘If you’re interested this site lists a bunch of cases where some odd (even kind of horrible things) as conditions were upheld by the courts.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/conditional-gifts-wills-trusts.html
Interesting link, thanks, Chrisreader. My mum died with a trust that allowed me discretion in disbursements to my brother who was a drug addict with severe mental health issues. It was a way for her to continue to “take care” of him via me. He tried to challenge it as he wanted the whole inheritance at once but his lawyer said he would fail in court.