This is a fake-dating romance, which is one of my favorite tropes because it forces two characters who aren't romantically attached to grow that relationship until there is, what is usually, a genuine romantic attachment, and Never Mine succeeds in delivering on that trope. Enter: The band's manager mentions an opportunity - work with a famous musician starting a solo career. Billie is reluctant but agrees. Vero, for her part, has been ignoring her manager so didn't even know Billie was going to be visiting her at her home. I was already grinning from ear to ear when I read the blurb for this book. The premise sounded fun.

Never Mine by Bryce Oakley | Goodreads Never Mine by Bryce Oakley | Goodreads

This book was a nice read after finishing a longer one, this was supposed to be short and fun, but it was a bit more because it turned out to be a bit emotional and charged with real issues like alcohol abuse and in this genre (f/f) that's not common. Their connection was always there and they are so cute together. Sage makes Willa stand up for herself and Willa makes Sage think about what she is doing and what comes next. When the fauxmance contract runs out they don’t part but remain (professional) friends. Sage is pretty clear in what she wants but goes about it all wrong, and sweet Willa just doesn’t know how to get what she really wants. What worked less well is the pace of the relationship. I felt like the last bit, maybe the last third or quarter, was very rushed. So I don't think the relationship really gelled as well as it could have and the whole dark moment felt flat and a bit tedious going through it. It doesn't help that we get an outright villain and a well-meaning friend being destructive to make it happen. So the story tanked a bit from it's early high.

Reviews

Did I think Sage's reasoning for needing a fake girlfriend could use more work? Sure. But I just went along with it. Well, as I was attempting to get to: Billie is still writing but she always edged more in a different direction than the band has positioned itself - her sister 'helped' hmms, smoothing things out. Billie tends to write sappy happy love songs. So they 'can't ' just make the second album be filled with only Billie's songs because that's ...something or other. Sweet, sunshiny Willa Bellamy has a crisis on her hands. She’s used to it — as an events coordinator for the Denver Zoo, it’s her job to handle crises. But when she receives an invite to her ex’s wedding, she’s not so sure it’ll be as easy to handle as an escaped emu during a Girl Scout sleepover. Even worse, when the bachelorette party invite mentions that couples are welcome, she realizes she’s the sole single person invited. Instead of blowing up, though, Willa realises that there is an opportunity here for her to bring Sage with to the bachelorette and at least make it look like she isn’t the loser she feels.

Never Mine: A Lesbian Romance by Bryce Oakley

Oakley wrote a compelling romance with two likeable characters and off the charts chemistry. If you love contemporary romances with great characters and a compelling story then you need this one in your life. I found this audiobook on Storytel. It's the first book of the Kaleidoscope series and the only one to date with an audio version. I really love the narration by Lori Prince and think she's the best choice for this story. Now I love a typical faux romance story, especially when it’s F/F. You always know how it’s going to end and this one was no exception but I went into it, knowing exactly what I was getting myself into.I also found the humanity of the main characters to be so well done that I felt like I knew them in real life. It’s interesting because more often than not fauxmance books tend to have a main character who is a bit of an ice queen. I realised with this book that I also love it when both characters are nice people that I want to cheer on. A "file MD5" is a hash that gets computed from the file contents, and is reasonably unique based on that content. All shadow libraries that we have indexed on here primarily use MD5s to identify files.