Cassie has had so many bad blind dates that she has a full escape plan in place. She is ready to walk away from the dating scene when Jett Bentley shows up and decides to pursue her, the girl who he admired from afar in high school. Each has stated up front that they're not interested in having kids, but it's not quite the whole truth for either of them. When complicated situations leave each of them with 3 kids in their individual custody, they must decide how to, or whether to, fill the other one in, with the risk of scaring them away for good.
This is one of those cases where I almost let a cover and title keep me from reading a good book; I was expecting the whole book to read like the introduction - a woman running from disastrous dates, a firefighter rescuing old ladies. While that beginning was humorous, and would have made for a fun light-hearted book, but instead, the story got much much deeper. Touching on infertility, foster care, child abuse and neglect, and unmet dreams and expectations, Jett and Cassie traveled a very emotional path both separately and together. With well-placed revelations about each of the characters, the story blended past hurts and current struggles. My one disappointment was that when Jett and Cassie came to a seemingly impassable argument, there was no real work to resolve it; somehow, it magically became a non-issue.
I give this book 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I loved this book for all of the tough topics it tackled, but I did wish that the characters would have reflected a little more on how to work through some of them. I have not been closely involved with foster care, but I did appreciate that the book didn't make it all seem perfect and peachy, for either the parents or the children.
You can find The Dating Charade HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.
(This is her debut novel, and I'm looking forward to more from her!)
I received a digital copy of this book, via NetGalley, from the publisher, in exchange for my honest review.
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