Review by Booklist Review
Zinnia is determined to be a wife (and successful business owner)--yesterday. Done with endless swiping and needing more cash for her business, she scraps her original dating profile and replaces it with a marriage-slash-business proposal. The proposal includes a 30-day time line which involves several meetings, contract negotiations, and a walk down the aisle. To her shock and her friends' dismay, Jordan answers the call. He's the very attractive owner of a bookstore with a bakery and coffee bar and is just as eager to find a wife for his own reasons. Jordan believes Zinnia will be the perfect wife "character" to join him on his famous family's reality show. Normally, he avoids the cameras, but to help out his sister, he has agreed to come back to the set. The newlyweds agree on their terms and are swept up into manufactured drama and constant filming. Readers will love getting to peek behind the reality-show curtains and seeing how their relationship blossoms off camera.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
How much of reality TV is real behind the scenes is the question at the center of this fun contemporary from Kann (The Romantic Agenda). Entrepreneur Zinnia is too busy for dating and decides to approach marriage as a "merger"; she's looking for a sensible partnership, not a giddy love match, and she gives herself 30 days to get it done. Her best friends, Grace and Fiona, think she's insane--until Zinnia meets fellow entrepreneur Jordan, who's seeking a similarly passionless arrangement, though for a very different reason. The rest of his family has been starring in a Kardashian-style reality show for years, and though he remains close with them, he doesn't appear on camera, leading the public to dub him "the estranged son." Now, however, the family hopes to keep Jordan's sister Sadie's twin pregnancy out of the news with a splashy distraction: Jordan's emotional return and surprise engagement. As Jordan and Zinnia's marriage of practicality becomes a public spectacle, the lines between performance and reality blur, with Zinnia joining Jordan's family, saving his sister from a stalker, and unexpectedly finding real love. Zinnia's strength of will and self-respect make her an admirable heroine while Jordan's depth and eventual devotion are swoon-worthy. Readers will have no trouble rooting for these two. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Zinnia has made a business decision--about marriage. Tired of dating and being disappointed, she decides to advertise for the perfect marriage/merger partner, someone she can build a life with, even if the relationship is more platonic than romantic. After several red-flag-filled encounters with the respondents to her ad, she meets Jordan, who fulfills all of her requirements. He's trying to foil his family's scheme to marry him off to his ex to garner viewership (he and his family have starred in a popular reality TV show for over a decade), so he quickly agrees to platonically wed Zinnia. However, Zinnia soon begins to realize that acting like she's in love blurs the lines between reality and fiction, though she's not sure if Jordan feels the same way. This unique, messy romance is multilayered, exposing Zinnia's and Jordan's fears, vulnerabilities, and dreams, all set against a reality-TV backdrop. VERDICT Kann's (Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places) latest will pull readers in quickly and won't let them go, staying with them long after the last page.--Heather Miller Cover
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An analytical businesswoman and a man who comes from reality-TV royalty agree to a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience. Zinnia is a small-business owner who's given up on the dating scene. Instead, she decides to get straight to the point with what she calls a "marriage-merger," treating the dating process more like a job interview. Selected applicants will be subjected to screening calls and in-person meetings with the goal of marrying within a month. Her friends aren't quite sold on the idea, but Zinnia feels this is the most efficient way of ticking the nuptials box. Jordan comes from a famous family of reality television stars, whose lives are recorded for salacious entertainment on a show calledZaffre Hours--thinkKeeping Up With the Kardashians--though he's never been part of the cast. The producers have now cooked up a storyline that would entail Jordan officially joining the show, which would include reuniting with and marrying his ex. Jordan would prefer to have more of a say in his love life when he sees Zinnia's marriage-merger dating profile, it strikes him as the perfect opportunity for a mutually beneficial arrangement. This a slow-burn romance, but it's hard to tell if the romance is slow because the main characters start as strangers or because the romantic tension is frequently interrupted and overshadowed by Jordan's toxic family members and drama-hungry TV producers. Meanwhile, Zinnia isn't looking for love, but more of a business partner in life; to her, marriage seems like just an obstacle to overcome. Why she feels this way isn't fully explored, aside from not wanting to be left behind while her friends are getting coupled up. A half-baked setup that's surprisingly low on romantic tension. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
