Fashion influencer Melanie gets thrown for a loop when she is forced to stay at a shabby B&B after unintentionally arriving a week early in Nova Scotia to promote a luxury resort. When the grumpy B&B owner/ lobster fisherman Evan sustains an injury whilst taking Melanie whale watching, Melanie poses as Evan’s fiancé in order to be permitted into the ICU. The next day, Evan’s family, who are feuding over the fate of the B&B, arrive at the hospital excited to meet Melanie, whom they are told is Evan’s fiancé. With the hopes of easing this family conflict, Melanie agrees to pretend to be fake engaged to Evan for the remainder of the week in exchange for help with her social media content.
The Catch is the third installment of Amy Lea’s Influencer series but can be read as a standalone. The Catch is a contemporary smalltown rom com featuring the grumpy x sunshine, opposites attract, forced proximity, and fake engagement tropes. It reminded me of The Proposal movie, and I think it would be perfect for fans of smalltown and/ or fake dating romances like In the Weeds by B.K. Borison, Unfortunately Yours by Tessa Bailey, Hopeless by Elsie Silver, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez, The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas, or With You Forever by Chloe Liese. Themes and topics present include found family, vulnerability, abandonment, adoption, love and sacrifice, mental health, grief, appearance versus reality, confidence and self love, loneliness and isolation, conflict, vulnerability, and social media. Some potential trigger warnings include death of family members (off page), abandonment, depression, and seizures. I believe that the moral of this story is that home is where the heart is. Out of all three books in Amy Lea’s The Influencer series, I think that The Catch was my favourite; furthermore, I thought that The Catch I had a good mix of humor (including an embarrassing case of poison ivy), heartwarming family moments, and swoon-worthy romance. Even though the romance in The Catch was very much a slow burn (with a few spicy moments), in my opinion the plot was relatively fast paced and engaging. Lastly, being Canadian myself, I appreciated the Nova Scotia setting and the Canadian references (like Timbits) as those aren’t things that I see in romance novels very often. My initial impression of The Catch was that it may be too similar to Tessa Bailey’s It Happened One Summer (one of my all-time favourites) since the covers and descriptions seemed so alike. After reading I found that, even though The Catch and It Happened One Summer had very similar coastal smalltown and grumpy x sunshine vibes, there were noticeable differences in the plots. Overall, I really enjoyed The Catch and would highly recommend it to fans of smalltown romances, grumpy x sunshine couples, and the fake engagement trope.
0 Comments
|
Go to Reviews from:
February 2024
|