Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple-until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. En route, the tale of two women battling corporate giants also takes on straight White male privilege.Ī Sapphic novel in which opposites attract offers a new twist on an old trope.Įxes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation. In the manner of Four Weddings and a Funeral or Notting Hill, a crisis delays the happy ending, and two grand gestures and a public proposal facilitate it. Text messages between the two women serve as romantic banter, while in-person sex talk and on-page sex scenes show the sparks of their chemistry. A backstory about how the groom sexually shamed Tansy in high school introduces a more serious theme, balancing out the weaker poor-little-rich-girl narrative given to Gemma. Bellefleur peppers the novel with callouts to the romance genre plus oddball supporting characters, including rich jerks who want to foil the two women’s plans. Once they learn how each other's families have hurt them in the past, they're both determined to protect their newfound mutual affection while turning their fake relationship into a real one. Former party girl Gemma is interested only in inheriting and running her grandfather's newspaper publishing empire, but she quickly finds her heart ensnared by the softer, more diffident Tansy. Suddenly, Tansy is saying yes to Gemma’s proposal, which will let her have the millions she needs to buy her late father's Seattle bookstore from her stepmother, who wants to sell it to a chain, while letting Gemma fulfill the terms of her late grandfather’s will. Put on the spot, Gemma surprises everyone by going along with Tansy's lie and even-gasp!-proposing to Tansy in front of everyone. It turns out she's actually Gemma van Dalen, a publishing heiress and estranged cousin of the man marrying into Tansy's family. Then, at a family wedding, who should walk in but Gemma West, the romance cover model whose name and photo Tansy had appropriated to represent her fake girlfriend. Tansy Adams has been fibbing about having a girlfriend to fend off her pushy stepmother's demands. A bi indie bookstore manager agrees to a marriage of convenience with a bi romance cover model to save their family legacies.

The fiancee farce