Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Charlie tries to be realistic about who he is. He always feels like the nerd, the geek, the loser. Charlie likes his studies and tries to stay in his own lane at college. His best friend is always trying to get him to go to parties, but a social life is just one more disaster waiting to happen when Charlie spills a drink on hot jock, Theo.
Charlie runs into Theo again a week later and, of all the crazy things, Theo asks Charlie to be his fake boyfriend. Theo is tired of his friends trying to hook him up all the time and, if he has a boyfriend, they will back off. But Theo’s friends will always be judgmental and don’t understand what he is doing with Charlie.
A spring break road trip with friends has Charlie and Theo spending even more time together and sharing the one bed. They may discover that their feelings aren’t as fake as they want everyone to believe.
Spring Fakers starts a new series by new-to-me author Catherine Cloverdale and is set against the backdrop of college and then spring break. The book is told in alternating POVs from Charlie and Theo and, even though they are opposites in many ways, their voices do sound the same to me.
The premise of the book is not new, but it can be done in a fun way, which is what I was of course hoping for. The book followed the expected beats of the men having awkward first meetings, deciding to enter a fake relationship for a questionable reason, and then falling for each other. My main issue was that the book never hit on any emotion, and everything felt flat and even in the book with nothing to draw me in. The characters also sounded much older than they were, sometimes generations older, and the dialogue did not capture the feel of college students.
Theo decides he needs a fake boyfriend to get his friends off of his back and it was an odd set up for me. The guys spend a lot of time with Theo’s friends and there is lots of set up for future books, but again, the style didn’t capture my attention. Charlie’s best friend, Micah, also has a story, but since it’s not gone into in any detail here, what was learned about him seemed out of place and he also didn’t come off as a good friend to Charlie.
Charlie is so used to everyone having issues with him and it takes a lot for him to enter the social scene. Of course, the guys don’t talk about anything happening between them, so there is the end of the book miscommunication. The story here was expected, which could have been fine, but the actions of all of the characters, as well as the dialogue, didn’t do anything to elevate this story for me.
