The Spanish Love Deception
By Elena Armas
- Genre
- Romance & Contemporary Relationships
- Publisher
- Self-published (2021); Atria Books (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
- Publication year
- 2021
- ISBN
- 9781668002520
Desperate for a wedding date to avoid her ex, Catalina asks a colleague she cannot stand, the infuriatingly perfect Aaron Blackford, to fly to Spain and pose as her boyfriend. He surprises her by saying yes. Elena Armas's fake-dating debut became a BookTok sensation and won the 2021 Goodreads...
Needing a date to her sister's wedding in Spain - and desperate to avoid the ex who will be there - Catalina Martin does the unthinkable and asks Aaron Blackford, the coworker she has spent years loathing, to come along as her fake boyfriend. Elena Armas's debut runs on that engine of mutual antagonism slowly, deliciously curdling into something else, playing every enemies-to-lovers and fake-dating beat with unabashed relish across a slow-burn of a novel. Written in English by a Spanish author and originally self-published, it became a defining BookTok success, the kind of book passed hand to hand until a major publisher came calling. It is long, tropey and steamy, more interested in yearning and banter than in literary polish, and its huge readership clearly would not have it any other way. For readers who love a grumpy hero, a stubborn heroine and the exquisite tension of two people refusing to admit the obvious, it is a landmark of the genre's recent boom - and a Goodreads-crowned debut.