Thirty-Day Fiancé

Olivia Polnecek is a twenty-six year old college freshman who seems to like stripping naked in front of her open window to apply oil after her showers. When her apartment catches on fire one evening, she is rescued by her sexy neighbour, Nick Nolan. Nick is a member of the Bad Boys Club which we met in The You-Can't-Make-Me-Bride. He also happens to be Olivia's childhood saviour who sustained a broken nose protecting her and her barbie dolls from her bullying brother, Butch. Nick suggests Olivia move in with him until she can find a new place to stay. One day a society reporter decides to announce in a newspaper that Nick and Olivia are engaged.

The way Nick and Olivia handle the erroneous engagement announcement is simply ludicrous. For some reason, Nick decides that they must now pretend to be madly in love with each other and engaged to each other for a month before they can pretend to break up. I tried not to think too deeply about this and just accept it in the spirit of enjoying a trashy romance, but I really couldn't understand why Olivia feels pressured to act like she loves him in public. If they're going to break up in a month's time, it would actually make more sense for them to be a little cool with each other. Anyway, they obviously end up falling in love and into bed, even though Olivia was determined not to get involved with anyone for her first semester of college and Nick is a confirmed bachelor. Nick suggests they continue with their current living arrangement and fake engagement for longer than the thirty days, to which Olivia realises that she is in love with him and must therefore behave in the typical non-sensical romance heroine way by packing her bags and running away whilst Nick is at work. This sort of thing just annoys me. She doesn't try to talk to Nick. She doesn't give him any chance at all to respond to her feelings. Olivia just packs her bags with no warning and leaves a pathetic terse note on the kitchen table. This wasn't a bad book, but I don't like characters who make absolutely no effort to fight for their love. Nick's a nice enough guy but I just couldn't make myself like Olivia.