Mini Review: The Perfect Illusion

Title: The Perfect Ilusion 
Series: N/A
Author: Winter Renshaw 
Genre: Adult, Romance 
Publisher: Self Published 
Publication Date: April 4, 2017 
Source: Bought

It’s only pretend…
And it’s only three months.
I’m in the midst of scrawling “I QUIT!” onto his fancy cardstock letterhead when my boss corners me. He needs a favor, he says. And then he asks how well I can act …
Hudson Rutherford needs a fiancée.
With his old-moneyed parents forcing him to marry some bratty hotel heiress and his hedonistic, playboy lifestyle at stake, the only way to get them to back off is to make them think he’s truly, madly, deeply in love … with me—his third personal assistant this year.
But I can hardly stand working for him as it is.
Hudson is crazy hot and well-aware. He’s arrogant, spoiled, and silver-spooned. He checks me out when he thinks I’m not looking, and his life is a revolving door of beautiful women. Plus, he can’t even pronounce my name correctly—how’s he going to convince his family he’s in love with me?!
I’m seconds from giving him a resounding “no” when he flashes his signature dimpled smirk and gives me a number that happens to contain a whole mess of zeroes …
On second thought, I think I can swallow my pride.
But, oh baby, there’s one thing I haven’t told him, one teensy-tiny thing that could make this just a hair complicated …
Here’s hoping this entire thing doesn’t explode in our faces.

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I wish I could say I liked this one but I just really didn't.  I felt like it didn't deliver on anything laid out in the blurb.  The whole hate-to-love thing?  Yeah, the main character, Mari, hates Hudson for maybe like, ten pages, before things just so blah with them.  There was no spark between them, not even when they "hated" each other.  Everything just felt very juvenile and angsty.  

I found Mari to mostly be obnoxious and fairly soft willed.  She didn't come off to me as strong, despite claiming to be so throughout the story.  I wanted to feel more of a spark with her and I wanted to root for her, but the motivation behind a lot of her actions didn't make sense to me.  Hudson was much the same.  Basically think of any other book you're read with a jerk CEO and that's Hudson, except slightly less interesting.  There were some moments that I began to feel invested in their relationship and story, some threads I wanted to follow, but in the end, I just couldn't bring myself to get into it.   

While a fairly quick and easy read, this book left much to be desired and the resolution felt over simplified.  I didn't feel the spark between the main couple and thought the characters were unoriginal.  I wish I had liked it more but, unfortunately, it wasn't for me. 

“I thought it would feel like work, like a job. But it doesn’t. It’s effortless. I’ve never had that with anyone else.”

Two Teapots