Review: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Even Better Than the Real Thing by Melanie Summers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Finley Green is an ambitious daughter of a Georgia peanut farmer, she's been in London for ten years studying Art History part-time while working full-time (nights) at a private equity firm, Stuart Equity, as a data entry clerk, although that job got a whole lot easier after her friend Chalani automated the process and now the two of them sit around reading/ scrolling social media while the program takes the strain.

Finley wants to be accepted onto a prestigious Professor's PhD programme, being one of the three students accepted would pave the way into her dream job practically anywhere, but she is shocked when the professor says her thesis is boring, the only way to get the coveted spot is to somehow gain access for the professor to her boss, Hayden Stuart's, ancestral home which she believes may contain a painting which would confirm a centuries old scandal.

Hayden Stuart is a disillusioned rich aristocrat. His father only married his mother to get the requisite heir and then disappeared with the first in a succession of new wives four years later. Hayden Hayden has barely seen or spoken to his father since. Now his father has died, Hayden is set to become the next Lord Stuart, but there is a catch, to inherit the title and all the assets he must be married. With his ghastly half-brother and his wife eager to get him disinherited, Hayden must act quickly to find a wife.

Hayden and Finley enter into the classic marriage of convenience, he gets the title and the castle with all its priceless art (which he fully intends to sell off) while she gets the opportunity to devote her time to her PhD, get the prized place on the professor's programme and study all the amazing art at Hayden's ancestral home. What could go wrong?

First a major niggle. If you are going to write about a foreign city please either create fictional restaurants/hotels/suburbs or do some research. There is a heinous sentence quite early on when (and I paraphrase because I can't be bothered to find the quote) Finley gets the tube from her flat in Croydon to her interview in Mayfair opposite The Savoy, one block back from the Thames. Almost everything in that sentence is wrong. There is no tube station in Croydon, The Savoy is not in Mayfair, and The Savoy is on the banks of the Thames. All of these things can be googled, as I did to double-check that I wasn't getting irate unjustifiably. There were other examples of things just being plain wrong.

I was misled by the art historian and private equity aristocrat labels into thinking this was a more mature marriage of convenience romance, whereas this is most definitely in YA/NA territory despite Finley and Hayden's ages. I mean their names alone should have given me a clue. Consequently, I was a bit disappointed which is all on me for expecting something different.

Overall, barring the factual inaccuracies, and the fact that this was not the book I was expecting, I did enjoy the romance, after the initial YA/NA internal posturing monologue (Hayden: there's no such thing as love, all relationships are transactional, that's what my parents taught me and now I'll never be fooled by love; Finley: aw shug, I'm just a Southern gal, bless your heart) they settled down into nice characters - question why do some many YA/NA characters start the books as one thing and end as something completely different? The romance was sweet, if predictable, and the resolution had an unexpected twist.

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

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