Annie Darling, True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

Despite her job at a bookstore specializing in romantic fiction, Verity Love is happy being single. But her well-meaning friends continue to set her up with every single man they know, and Verity’s tired of it—so tired, in fact, that she’s invented a fake boyfriend to deter their matchmaking. When her friends insist on meeting him, however, she quickly realizes she needs a real person to substantiate her scheme. Enter Johnny, a handsome stranger who also wouldn’t mind having a fake girlfriend to prevent being set up by his own interfering friends. Verity and Johnny agree to be each other’s dates to various social functions for one summer, at the end of which they’ll amicably part ways. But of course, the more time they spend together, the more blurry the boundaries of their relationship become.

Every chapter of this book begins with a quote from Pride and Prejudice, which immediately told me that I’d either love it or hate it. I’m happy to say that I mostly loved it, although occasionally the book does get a bit too twee and cutesy for its own good. But I really liked and related to Verity as a character; she’s an extreme introvert who needs alone time to recharge, but with her large, loving-but-noisy family, she never gets enough of it. As an introvert myself (though definitely not to Verity’s level), I empathized with her when she just couldn’t handle any more socializing. I also love a good “fake relationship” plot, so I was on board for Verity and Johnny’s romance. I was very pleasantly surprised by the writing style as well, give or take a minor copyediting error. Overall, this novel is just the charming, fun romance I was hoping for, and I’m definitely interested in reading the other books in this series at some point.