Synopsis

She brought him to save her pride. He showed up ready to steal her heart.

When Reese Cameron learns that her annual friend’s Christmas getaway will include her ex coming as her friend’s plus one, she considers a few options:

1. Stay home and nurse her pride
2. Break her leg skiing for a rock-solid excuse not to go
3. Ask someone to come as her fake boyfriend

Enter Cole Bradley. He may be a contractor rather than an actor, but he’s convincing enough at the boyfriend gig to make Reese question if it’s really all an act. But Cole has a strict two-date policy, and Reese’s heart isn’t built for casual. Which means she may leave this holiday getaway with her pride intact—and her heart broken.

(via Amazon)

Review

This contemporary romance was the first I have read of Martha Keyes. She seems to mainly dabble in the modern and regency romance scene, so I plan on checking out some of her other books at some point. ‘Acting Merry’ is a cozy romance that deploys the fake-dating and forced proximity tropes to a ‘T’. I was not expecting to feel such an emotional attachment to the characters due to the shorter length of the book, but I found myself quite invested in Cole and Reese’s relationship by the time the last scene danced across the pages. The dual-POVs between Reese and Cole assisted my attachment greatly.

The majority of this book takes place in a cabin up in the mountains of Washington state. The snowy backdrop, along with the cozy cottage, gave me the best mental images of what this place looks and smells like. This was made even better due to the fact I read this during my own winter storm, making the story feel alive in a way. Besides the cabin, we also get to experience Reese’s new home (which happens to be Cole’s old house that he had a hand in building). You could tell he cared deeply about the house and had some big plans for it. Both places just gave off so much coziness in this book that I found endearing.

The Christmas traditions of the friend group, I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in. The fact these women have consistently gotten together for Christmas in this same cabin over the years, sharing in the same gingerbread house making, movie watching, dinner having activities, was beautiful to read. Especially when they begin bringing their plus ones with them. In the story one friend was even married and began bringing her husband along. The loveliness of having a friend group like this has always been one of my desires throughout life for sure.

Reese is the main female love interest in this story. She is a dental hygienist with some buried emotional plights with her parents (she feels shut out by them since they live all the way down in Florida with Reese’s siblings and grandchildren), and one of her friends she is spending this getaway with (since her ex-boyfriend got with this friend not even a month after Reese and him broke things off). My main issue with Reese was the fact that she struggled to be open and up front about her feelings. She straight up tells her friend who broke the girl code, that she had no ill feelings towards that whole situation, when it was clearly a lie. Luckily, Cole encourages her to be more open with how she was actually feeling which helped recover and rebuild those relationships by the end.

Cole is the golden retriever male love interest in this story and was probably the most misunderstood character of all. In the beginning when his ex-shows up at Reese’s house, not knowing Cole had just moved out, you are set up with the image that Cole is a bit of a playboy. This is further solidified when he claims he has a two-date rule with any and all women he finds himself in relationships with. This is why both Reese and Cole initially found no issue with the whole fake-dating scenario, because they assumed it would be casual enough for no feelings to get attached. Anyways, as the story goes on, you begin to ascertain that those commitment issues he has comes from deeper-rooted trauma he has held onto since childhood. Even so, he begins to question the walls he has built up when it comes to his true feelings for Reese. He is a very sensitive guy, of which I loved, and he was definitely putting on a show for everyone in the cabin with his obvious attachment to Reese. At times, he was showing genuine concern for Reese’s mental wellbeing with the whole ex is now dating her best friend situation. He was by far, my favorite character in the story.

Per the fake-dating trope, Cole and Reese start out as strangers when this whole idea comes alive. Reese does not want to be the seventh wheel on the friend group weekend trip and Cole does not commit to anything serious, so their relationship begins as a casual get together just pretending to be enamored with each other. I will say, at first, I found it hard to believe that anybody would buy their relationship since it truly came out of left field for everybody but based on how realistic Reese and Cole’s interactions with each other were, I would buy into that myself. They were pretty much finding any and every excuse to be super close and touching each other (appropriately of course). They even shared some swoony kisses with other while still putting on the facade. Basically, they were great actors, even confusing themselves and each other by the end. As these types of books go, they both begin questioning the mutual validity of the inescapable attractions they have been having for each other. At one point, Cole’s feelings end up scaring him a bit, which leads to the climax of the story, and my favorite part in the book. The point in which they were both finally open and honest with each other was such a vulnerable moment for both of them, that I felt as though they were real people. Such a truly sweet story to enjoy and curl up with.

All in all, if you enjoy contemporary fake-dating romance in which the characters no longer know if this is fake or not, I think you would enjoy this short read. The only reason I am giving it four stars is because I do feel the side characters could have been explored a bit more as well, instead of just feeling like faceless plot devices in the background. Besides that, the romance was pretty quick paced and felt very convincing from the beginning.