Highly readable and charming. 
Many thanks to Atria and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

⭐️ The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas

I wanted to love this book. I had heard so many good things about it on social media.  Enemies to lovers, fake boyfriend…yummy! But…I couldn’t do it. I made it to Ch. 12 (which is about page 160) and had to unfortunately close the cover for good.

First, the chapters were woefully long. Excessively long. I would often have to pause in a chapter because I couldn’t get to the end in order to finish it. I would flip the pages to see how close I was and I would never be close.

Second, Catalina (Lina) was not a likeable character for me. I could see where she had the potential to be appealing but she was very obnoxious, unfascinating, and dimwitted. Nearly every thought was cringy and her compatibility with Aaron was unbelievable and unworkable.

Third, there seemed to be so many words in this book. It was just word, after word, after word, wordy. I felt like many of the passages were repetitive and drawn out. At about 160 pages in, she hadn’t even made it to Spain with her fake boyfriend…which was the point of the book!

I’m so sorry to give this book such negative feedback. I feel like Ms. Armas has the potential to be a good writer and storyteller…this just wasn’t it…for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this title for review.

Thank you net galley for the advance reader copy of this novel.   This was a contemporary romance about two colleagues Lina and Aaron who go from enemies to lovers.    Thisstory had all the usual tropes for this genre.   It took a while for the story to develop and I felt like there was a lot of repitition of dialogue, plot points, etc.   I didn't like the sex scenes and skipped those.    The ending felt rushed and didn't really resolve well.     Overall an ok read but wouldn't recommend based on the swearing or sex.

A PERFECT fake dating arrangement! Love it with all my heart, and wish to get an Aaron Blackford for my birthday.

I’m going to start by saying I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this one! Did I enjoy it? Absolutely! But unfortunately there are two things I could just never get over when gathering my thoughts. I’d been hesitant on reading this one for a while because of the crazy amounts of hype I’ve seen around and sadly I was expecting just a little more. The second thing was that for myself personally, I never prefer RomComs to be almost 500 pages!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! 

This was definitely a bit of a slow burn but it was bursting with some sizzling chemistry and the eventual steam and built up tension was worth it!

Fake dating and enemies to lovers are always my favourite tropes but they need an entertaining amount of fun witty banter to work well for me and this one had the absolute perfect dosage!

All in all, a solid read and I’m really looking forward to reading the next in the series, The American Roommate Experiment!

I was excited to read this book because I've heard such positive reviews. Personally, this wasn't the book for me. I felt like the storyline was very drawn out which made it hard for me to get into.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for a copy in exchange for an honest review!

This has been on my radar for a long time, and I’m grateful I have finally had a chance to read this. Overall, I enjoyed the story. It was a great beach read, and had me laughing so hard my mom was wondering what I was reading. 

Though it was great to spend so much time with the characters, I did think that the book was a bit too long. Due to the length, I felt that several plot points were a bit disjointed and too long. It kind of felt like whiplash going from one scene to another, as if they were in the story to extend the length, rather than contribute positively to character development.

Despite that, I am excited to see what else Elena Armas has in store.

“I’ll give you the world…The moon. The fucking stars. Anything you ask, it’s yours. I’m yours.” 

Wow, this book… I totally understand why it’s as hyped as it is!

Not going to lie, the pacing felt a bit off in the beginning and I felt myself just wanting and waiting for the plot to pick up. Like in the first 20% where Lina kept going back and forth with accepting Aaron’s help. But once it picked up and they arrived in Spain… that was everything I wanted!

The slow burn… the enemies to lovers… the fake dating… “It was always you” vibe… It not only has all the best tropes and they were all executed in a great way!

My heart went out to Lina and I felt so bad for all the crap she had to go through. Lina cares so much about her job and it was nice to see that her relationships never interfere with her work. We love to see a career oriented female main character!

Lina and Aaron had such great banter and I enjoyed everything about them. Ugh I can’t get over the fake dating! Aaron is so in love with Lina and it made my heart swoon!! It was so beautiful to read, my heart melted every time he smiled at her. His love for her truly blew me away! I love the way physical touch was described and it shows Aaron’s love language. It was done so perfectly!

“If you get any more perfect, I’m going to believe you were made just for me.”

Thank you to NetGalley for the ebook in exchange for an honest review!

Literally 10/10, The Spanish Love Deception is SO good. You are going to fall in love with the main characters, the banter and the plot line. It reminded me a little bit of the Hating Game but with a different backdrop and it was unique all in it's own way. Loved it!!!

The Spanish Love Deception has such a fun and interesting premise for a romance. Lina, an engineer living in NYC is heading home to Spain for her sister’s wedding. After leaving home years ago after a messy breakup, she’s loathe to return home for the wedding single - especially as her ex is the best man. She invites her colleague/work nemesis Aaron to join her as her fake boyfriend.

While I though the premise was a good one, the whole story didn’t quite click for me. Her arch nemesis being her *only* option as a date was very unlikely. The first half until they went to Spain was really slow. The dialogue felt stilted and there was a lot of rehashing of Lina’s angst. I held on in the hopes that the wedding weekend would be great, as other reviewers seemed to really enjoy this one. The wedding segment was like a whole other book - it felt like Twilight. Aaron suddenly has this possessive, protective, starry-eyed thing happening, and our strong heroine suddenly can’t breathe without her new man. The tonal shift wasn’t believable for me. 

Overall, I did finish the book, and while it definitely isn’t a favourite, I think if you are looking for a romance with a fake dating and one bed tropes, you might enjoy this. Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for free access to an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own,

I will be recommending this to my followers who are obsessed with romance. Suck a fun summer read!!!!

This was a fun enemies to lovers rom-com. Similar to the Hating Game, but more smut and the Spanish setting made it more interesting. Pretty typical in the tropes used and plot line.

I read the entirety of THE SPANISH LOVE DECEPTION next to the beach and I’m glad I did because it was a cute fast paced cheesy rom com! Lina needs a date to her sisters wedding in Spain and she’s desperate because her ex is the best man! After some back and forth, Lina finally agrees to bring her Clark Kent lookalike coworker (that she doesn’t get along with) and pose him as her new American boyfriend! 

I loveeed Aaron and I think I may have enjoyed this book better if we would have gotten his POV! Catalina was very much in her head the entire time and at a certain point it just became too much for me. I also didn’t love how the entire enemies to lovers was basically just a bunch of early miscommunication🥲. This one definitely reminded me of The Hating Game + a few other fake dating books, but it was only Armas’s debut and I look forward to reading her subsequent novels!

A charming and bubbly love story with all the swoon, steam and feels! Brimming with tropes, Elena Armas writes enemies to lovers/fake dating/workplace romance/grump/sunshine in a way that was fresh, fun, and teeming with the delightful tension all good romances have-the kind where you know the passion on the other side will be worth it! The chemistry between the two love interests practically sizzled off the page and there were so many laugh out loud moments as well.  Extremely excited for her next in this series! Thank you so much to Atria and Netgalley for my copy.

Catalina needs a date for her sister's wedding especially since the man who she thought she was going to marry but instead broke up with her in a scandal that was made out to be all on her and not her boyfriend the professor will be there with his fiance.
  Aaron Blackford steps up to the plate, volunteer of course because Catalina would have never asked Aaron at all. All he does is irritate her, he does a good job at though not just in the office but also in the meetings and now after talking to her he does it by driving her to her home in Brooklyn how did she get to where Aaron is at her house, even taking her shopping? Then when he thinks she will go by herself to the wedding in Spain no, she just happens to be in his car when a call comes in and yes he does talk to them, now she is stuck with him going. Once there they are sharing a room and then another of many surprises he speaks Spanish and wait for it her family loves him. OH my, what is she to do? There are so many things I liked about this story one because I did marry into a large Hispanic family from my little family and not so loud and not so many people. But was taken right in, one I loved to eat so both her Nani’s loved feeding me. This is a good funny at time story with many good characters and moves along at a good pace, a very good book.

Recommended if you like reading:
1. Fake dating
2. Enemies to lovers
3. Workplace romance
4. Slow burn
5. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

'The Spanish Love Deception' is a cute rom-com for the obvious reasons. It is witty, entertaining and gives you everything what a rom-com does.....almost! 

As much as I want to love this book, I still feel that it is a bit overrated. Perhaps, I just felt that it was too cliché at times. I didn't feel completely invested in the main characters' banter. Also, I found the book a bit repetitive at times. The book could have been less than 400 pages.

Nonetheless, I'll still recommend it to rom-com lovers since it is a quick summer read.

The MC is sooooo dumb! It's so very obvious from the beginning that he likes her, but she's the dumbest.

It's not as frustrating as the Hating Game, but it's also not at all as entertaining as the Hating Game 🤔 especially the second half!

Lotsss of cringe moments towards the end... He lets calling her baby and it was so weird.

I just don't understand the hype. I was able to finish this because I listened to the audiobook but I don't think I could have read the paperback.. It would have been too painful 😆

The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas has gotten a lot of attention in the romance community, and also became a NYT bestseller upon paperback release. I’d heard good things, although the book has also got some negative feedback, and I was excited to read it.

Catalina – Lina – Martín is returning to Spain to attend her sister’s wedding, and she desperately needs a date – her ex-boyfriend is engaged, and she cannot show up pathetically alone – and to her great surprise, her coworker Aaron offers to go with her. They’re not friends – after getting off on the wrong foot, they’ve been barely civil. Still, as the wedding grows closer, Aaron starts surprising Lina, and she wonders if her taciturn coworker might be better company than first impressions indicated.

I really did enjoy this book, though it didn’t bowl me over. Lina’s is a very vivid depiction of a young woman in recovery from trauma and trying to succeed in her field. She feels very human and flawed, and she’s self-aware of the ways in which she can’t fully realize her hopes. She hasn’t had a romantic relationship recently because of her inability to trust, and she’s not able to consciously take that step without great trepidation. She still does have close friendships and positive working relationships, but Lina has mostly closed herself off to love. Aaron works as a love interest and his characterization is at least consistent, but he’s a little flatter as a character then I would like. My main issue with the book overall is that we’re told more about the way he looks – the readers who talked about how often Aaron’s blue eyes are mentioned and how big he is were not exaggerating – than about his internal life, and I had to infer a lot until the midpoint of the story. Still, the romance is pretty strong on the whole, with the central obstacles being a lack of communication and Lina’s trust issues.

I liked the trip to Spain itself. Lina’s family is the perfect blend of loving and concerned, involved in her life but not too meddling. Lina standing up for herself, both in a work setting and with her ex, were some of my favorite parts of the story.

However, the book is a little bloated; trimming it down in some places would have made it stronger, and the pacing is a bit off because of the story being so front-loaded. The tension flags in places because too much pre-trip ground is laid; the plot can’t really get going until Lina and Aaron are in Spain, and that doesn’t happen as soon as it should.

I also noted a lot of similarities to The Hating Game and The Love Hypothesis here. Obviously, there are going to be some common threads in enemies-to-lovers workplace romances, but this one doesn’t feel too derivative; it handles the premise better than most and isn’t too formulaic. I did think the book would have benefited from dual points of view, to give the reader context for Aaron’s feelings for Lina. In the end, I found The Spanish Love Deception to be fairly average but enjoyable. I’m not surprised it has become so popular, given that it hits the same beats as a lot of mainstream books right now, but I didn’t fall in love with it.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer

Thoroughly enjoyed this enemies to overs office romance. The banter between Catalina and Aaron was amazing and loved their chemistry. If i had one complaint it would be that the ending was ruched and the third act breakuo was totally unnecessary. Other than that this book was a great fun read.

I really liked this book! It was a bit slow to start but once they got going with the banter I liked it a lot! It's a great slow burn workplace romance with a bit of spice. Hating Game vibes but with a trip to Spain. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the e-ARC