Novel Review: Faking It (Losing it, #2) by Cora Carmack

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Genre: NA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: HarperCollins (William Morrow)

Publish Date: June, 2013

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Mackenzie “Max” Miller has a problem. Her parents have arrived in town for a surprise visit, and if they see her dyed hair, tattoos, and piercings, they just might disown her. Even worse, they’re expecting to meet a nice, wholesome boyfriend, not a guy named Mace who has a neck tattoo and plays in a band. All her lies are about to come crashing down around her, but then she meets Cade.

Cade moved to Philadelphia to act and to leave his problems behind in Texas. So far though, he’s kept the problems and had very little opportunity to take the stage. When Max approaches him in a coffee shop with a crazy request to pretend to be her boyfriend, he agrees to play the part. But when Cade plays the role a little too well, they’re forced to keep the ruse going. And the more they fake the relationship, the more real it begins to feel.

Something Specific:
Quotes: 

• "Looking at him, I knew this wasn’t the kind of fear that sent you running for the hills. It was the kind of fear that made people jump off cliffs and climb from mountains—the kind of fear that told you something miraculous was waiting at the end of it, if you could only get there.” (Pg. 65)
• "There was a beat. Another one of those moments when the winds shifted, time turned, and life started again in a new direction.” (Pg. 184-185)
• "'Living is hard. And every day our feet get heavier and we pick up more baggage. So, we stop and take a breath, close our eyes, reset our minds. It’s natural. As long as you open your eyes and keep going.’” (Pg. 190)
• "'The world holds money over everyone’s head. It’s a fact of life.’” (Pg. 274)

Quotes pertaining to female/male gender roles and whatnot that I liked:

• "I’d gotten my heart broken by my best friend, and now everyone tiptoed around me like I was on the verge of a meltdown, like a girl with PMS. Apparently having emotions equated to having a vagina.” (Paperback, pg. 7)
• "'Because you’ve got balls of steel.’ I hated when people said that, like it was assumed strength and being a male were synonymous. There was strength in being a woman.” (Pg. 49-50)

The Cover:

I really like the cover of this book. It's embarrassing, sure, but it's also really cute, and fitting. It's giving the right feel of the book: that's it's a romantic NA, lighthearted story. Plus, the models actually resemble what I imagine the characters look like, and I really appreciate that.

Review:

This book surprised me. I was expecting to like it a lot, and I did, but it still surprised me.

I wasn’t expecting there to be alternating points of view, for one. I don’t know why, but I’m really glad that there were, if only because I really like multiple points of view.

I liked both of the characters, a lot. There’s Max, the heroine, who’s in a band with a friend and her current boyfriend, whose parents don’t know anything about who she really is and want to believe that she’s still the good, cheerleading girl that her sister was and she used to be. But she’s not, and she tries her best by trying to hide her hair color and tattoos and job and current boyfriend from them when they surprise her with a visit.

Which is when she ropes Cade into being her pretend boyfriend. The boy she meets in the coffee shop before they come in. Cade is in love with a friend of his, a friend who has a loving boyfriend and who is doing a lot of good things in her life. Cade is in college, and he’s an actor, and he’s a good boy, even if sometimes he’s kind of not.

Max is fun, and she’s having problems with her family, which are understandable and I totally felt that, and liked reading how that all turned out for her. I understood Cade’s fixation on the girl he lost (although I probably would understand more, had I read the first book in the series first), and I really wanted him to move on. And I liked his progression to getting over her and falling for Max.

I generally just liked Max and Cade’s relationship. They’re fun together, they’re hot together, and they work really well together. They’re very similar, and yet even the other one out really well. I loved their relationship together, as well as their growing on their own, and their relationships with their friends.

The writing was good, the story was really easy to read and kept me wanting to read more. I haven’t had the chance to pick up any of Carmack’s other books, and really only ended up with this one by chance, but I’m hoping to get more soon. This one was really, really good, and Carmack has definitely been added to my list of authors to collect/follow.