What do you do when your fake engagement starts to feel too real…
Aspiring clothes designer Victoria Scott spends her days working in a bar in Chelsea, and her evenings designing vintage clothes, dreaming of one day opening her own boutique. But these aspirations are under threat from the new department store opening at the end of her road. She needs a Christmas miracle, but one is not forthcoming.
Oliver Russell’s Christmas is not looking very festive right now. His family’s new London department store opening is behind schedule, and on top of that his interfering, if well meaning, mother is pressing him to introduce his girlfriend to her. A girlfriend who does not exist. He needs a diversion. Something to keep his mother from interfering while he focuses on the business.
When Oliver meets Victoria, he offers a proposition: pretend to be his girlfriend at the opening of his store and he will provide an opportunity for Victoria to showcase her designs. But what starts as a business arrangement soon becomes something more tempting, as the fake relationship starts to feel very real. But when secrets in Victoria’s past are exposed will Oliver walk away, or will they both follow their hearts and find what neither knew they were looking for…
My review:
Rating: 4/5 stars
Firstly I'd like to thank NetGalley for sending me the ebook and the audiobook for an honest review!
I've followed Georgia's life through Made in Chelsea and I'm a Celeb and was thrilled when I saw that she had written her debut romance, Meet me in London and really wanted to read it. I ended up listening to the audiobook which was narrated by Toff herself. After I got used to her voice I really enjoyed it.
As it is her debut book I tried to look past first time writer issues and focus on the story. It's about Victoria and Oliver who are attracted to each other straight away. They both have their problems and Victoria has a secret she doesn't want to tell. It's the fake relationship trope that I'm finding that I really enjoy. I think that Toff touched on some very important topics and wrote about them sensitively. She also explored how people can react to them in ignorant ways and how this can harm people. (Possible trigger warnings: infertility and seriously ill parents). Overall a very good message. It's definitely full of middle class characters, Oliver being a billionaire and everything. However, Toff showed how even the wealthiest people don't have perfect lives.
The first time writer problems that I touched on earlier were things like overused words (how many times can a heart dance). Also, listening to the audiobook, at points I couldn't tell who was talking as there weren't many dialogue tags at all. Sometimes the characters would think something but I couldn't tell if they said it out loud or in their head until a few lines after. Something as simple as 'she thought' or 'he said' would have really helped. At points the dialogue didn't really seem realistic at all. There was also so much description at points that we didn't need that went on for so long. Things that needed more description, like the park that the characters visit could have used more. It seemed that the character was standing talking to someone and having a ten minute daydream about a memory and the other character would be just standing there frozen in time waiting for a response. Also, a personal problem was that it skipped over the only sex scene!
Having said all this, they are only minor problems and I did really enjoy the story and watching Victoria and Oliver's relationship blossom.