Written in the Stars - Alexandria Bellefleur

[goodreads]

Title: Written in the Stars
Author: Alexandria Bellefleur
Genre: Chick-lit, LGBTQ+
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~11hrs
Date read: October, 2022

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest set up was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date? Because... awkward.

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

But maybe opposites can attract when true love is written in the stars?


Could have been a really sweet take on the fake-dating trope, but it just fell flat to me in so many ways. The "3rd act misunderstanding" is one of my biggest pet peeves in chick-lits, and it was even worse here than usual - to the point that I gave up on listening to it, and read the rest as an ebook, because I wanted to do the opposite of dwelling on it. In its defense (and one of the reasons I'm still rating this 3 stars on Goodreads) it handled to follow-up on the misunderstanding quite well, but it never should have happened in the first place. And the ending was far too quick and with far too little follow-up afterwards.

A 2.5 star rating. Rounded up, because I did enjoy most of it - but I'm not going to read any more of this series.