Review: Straight Up Irish

Straight Up Irish by Magan Vernon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Connor Murphy is the middle of three sons and the CFO of the Murphy' Pub group based in the USA. He has returned to Dublin for the reading of his father's will. Expecting the will to be a formality, leaving the business equally between the three boys, they are horrified that their father has made inheriting the business dependant upon all three of them being married within the year.

Connor is the playboy of the trio, a different girl every night. In fact the only woman he has any kind of relationship with is his older brother Jack's assistant. Fallon Smith seems to spend half her professional life phoning Connor to wake him up or to remind him about important calls/ meetings. The two of them have never met but they each know each other's direct dial number by heart.

Half-jokingly Connor asks Fallon to enter into a fake marriage with him, stay married for six months and she can have a massive divorce settlement. Fallon shouldn't agree but her poor old nana is in an expensive nursing home and needs costly dialysis which her medicare won't cover. Fallon's parents are drunks and wasters who won't help so Fallon uses nearly all of her extensive salary to support her nana and lives on PB&J sandwiches. Connor's offer would get her out from the mountain of debt she is sinking under and secure nana's future.

Having just read a book which also featured an Irishman I was pleasantly surprised that the brogue was kept to a minimum in this book. Enough to establish that Connor is Irish but not too much and no fake Irishness. Although having said that I thought his aunts were crudely drawn caricatures, surely they wouldn't say things like that in front of impressionable children?

Right from their first meeting Connor is struck by how sweet and kind and caring Fallon is. She is a bit sickly sweet TBH, the sort that farts perfume. When he sees that she has no furniture other than a bed in her rented flat he buys her a whole load of furniture as a surprise. In fact aside from the opening chapter Connor's reputation as a playboy is not in evidence. He's kind and caring and generous. He buys Fallon a new phone and sends a tablet to her nana in America just so they can Facetime each other.

Overall, this is a sweet romance between two endearing characters, even if they are both too good to be true. Both soon realise they are falling for each other but worry that they shouldn't get too attached because their impending marriage has an expiry date.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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