“It made me cry and laugh and rage…A really important, timely book. Sheer brilliance.” –Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List “Thoughtful, smart and painfully true.” –Cosmopolitan UK He said he was looking for a “partner in crime,” which everyone knows is shorthand for “a woman who isn’t real.” April is kind, pretty and relatively normal–yet she can’t seem to get … normal–yet she can’t seem to get past date five. Every time she thinks she’s found someone to trust, they reveal themselves to be awful, leaving her heartbroken. And angry. Until she realizes that men aren’t looking for real women–they’re looking for Gretel.
Gretel is perfect–beautiful but low-maintenance, sweet but never clingy, sexy but not too easy. She’s your regular, everyday Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl-Next-Door with no problems.
When April starts pretending to be Gretel, dating becomes much more fun–especially once she reels in the unsuspecting Joshua. Finally, April is the one in control. It’s refreshing. Exhilarating, even. But as she and Joshua grow closer, and the pressure of keeping her painful past a secret begins to build, how long will she be able to keep on pretending?
“The most freeing, reassuring book on dating after #MeToo I’ve read. Perceptive. Hilarious. Brilliant.” –Laura Jane Williams, author of Our Stop
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Because of the subject matter – it addresses sexual violence against women – Pretending should be a hard read, but it’s not. It’s warm and funny with characters you’ll root for. It’s also set during a heatwave in London, which Bourney conveys brilliantly, making me forget I was reading on one of the coldest days of the year. I loved Bourne’s first adult novel too. Can’t wait to see what she writes next.
This book was not what I thought it was going to be but it was still a fantastic read. I actually fell pretty hard for the story once I got into it and got to know the characters. This novel was a first for me with this author and I will definitely read her again.
This was more a women fiction then a romance for me but the idea behind it has merit so I enjoyed that portion a lot. I know, confusing.
The idea of changing who you are to protect yourself in the world of love is not a new now bu it was uninteresting way that the author did it. It brought some laughs and definitely got you thinking. For me as a first time reader of this a author, I enjoyed the book.
First, let me say this book surprised me. I went into it thinking I was going to get a cute, funny, silly romance story. What I got was something completely different. A story of trauma, violence, hope, healing, and emotions.
When I first read the blurb I thought what a cute story. I get this girl as we all seem to pretend to be someone else with social media as it is what you see isn’t always what you get. So I thought okay here is a girl pretending to get a guy.
But no what I got was something a whole lot deeper.
April has suffered a traumatic event in her life. She is the victim of a sexual crime. So in the process of trying to get over it, she tries dating. However, they never seem to go very far. This leads April to create the perfect woman in her head, Gretel.
April decides to become Gretel but then she meets Joshua and bits of April leak out and well Joshua doesn’t run. April begins to think he is different.
As April faces her past she begins to heal and find hope. This book took me on an emotional roller coaster. I cried for April, got angry for her, and even found hope with her. It definitely wasn’t the story I was expecting but it was a story I truly enjoyed reading.
I will also say this book needs a trigger warning as the author does not shy away from the hard stuff. She delves into it and takes you along. You must take April’s journey with her to truly appreciate this book.
I think Holly may just become a new favorite author of mine.
I loved the idea of this book. It sounded like fun and I thought it might be funny, too. It turned out to be very different, but I fell in love with it. It’s a heavy women’s fiction novel. It’s about a complex and complicated woman trying to strip the complexity from her in order to be the one doing the dumping. But it also deals heavily with rape and the lifelong trauma of it. This is definitely a book I’ll be ensuring my daughter and my son read when they’re older.
The Plot: Serious Women’s Fiction
After being dumped by Simon after she seemingly freaks out during sex, April is angry. She hates men. She’s pretty, smart, works for a non-profit, is always there for her friends, and is, more or less, as normal as the next woman. But every man she’s dated seems to believe otherwise.
So April creates a woman in her head. The perfect woman who isn’t clingy, has an adventurous life, is always sexy and low-maintenance, and is everything April isn’t. Her name is Gretel. April decides to become her in order to attract a man and then be the one doing the dumping.
And that’s how she meets Joshua. He’s really into Gretel and things get serious fast even though April/Gretel keeps holding him at arms’ length so he does the pursuing. At the same time, bits and pieces of April leak through, and April starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Joshua might be different.
But there’s something holding April back. Something someone she loved did to her. Something that has a heavy impact on her work where she provides assistance to those who have been sexually traumatized. Something that breaks her so she has to build herself back up and face the truth and reality of who she is and who she could have been.
Pretending is so far from a light, fluffy women’s fiction read. It seems fun and like it might have a cute romance, but it’s so much more than that. It’s serious and knows just where to hit the reader. It’s easy to see where April has been coming from, easy to sympathize with her. At some points, I even felt like she should pretend to be Gretel and should go out breaking men’s hearts on purpose! It is, in some ways, a sweet romance, and the sweetness was even sweeter because of everything that had happened.
Pretending deals heavily with rape and the trauma women will forever carry with them from it. It’s not easy to read. It’s painful. I’ve never experienced it, so can’t comment on what it’s like, but April’s pain felt real to me. My heart broke for her and I couldn’t help but root for her as she learned to pick up the pieces of herself, to see herself as beautiful and lovable, to accept the damaged parts of herself and still see her worth.
Pretending presents two twining stories, stories that perfectly twist around each other to paint the picture of a traumatized woman who still longs for love. There’s the story of April going all in to reclaim the power in a relationship, to feel like she’s in control. Then there’s the story of April grappling with her trauma. The latter constantly intrudes on the former and the former is always trying to pin down the latter. But it never feels like a push and pull. It’s just April trying to reclaim her life.
The Characters: A Couple with Plenty of Baggage
Pretending is focused around April and Joshua, though the reader does get to see some of the people around both of them. The supporting cast is lovely and each of them adds a little bit to April and Joshua as well as the story. I just wish they could have been seen more, especially Megan and the kickboxing group April joins, as they mostly just felt like a plot tool to support April despite having some wonderful personalities.
April is forever pretending. Even when she’s April she’s always pretending to be someone. Throughout the novel, though, the reader gets to see her, gets to know her, as she’s stripped down to her core. Her life has been heavily impacted from being raped. She’s complex and feels like a normal woman, but, like normal women, only thinks she’s crazy. Gretel made me cringe a little, but I did love that it takes her a step closer to being able to take control of her life, despite the price it demands.
Then there’s Joshua. Since the story is focused on April, the reader doesn’t get to become intimately familiar with Joshua, so he sometimes felt a little bland. But that’s okay because April brought tons of color so Joshua felt like a perfect counterpoint to her. He was so sweet and so eager, and was dealing with his own relationship failures that had him acting a certain way at times. The reader gets to see how honest and caring he is, but April is so busy pretending it takes her a while, but it never gave me a moment of thinking it was taking too long.
The Setting: London Heat Wave
Set in London, I found it interesting that there seemed to be a rather serious and prolonged heat wave going on for most of the book. But it was a brilliant plot device. London itself wasn’t too fascinating, though the reader is taken around the city a bit. Instead it’s the general behavior of everyone that had me thinking of London.
The weather, though, really made the setting. It was wonderfully used to provide even more characterization to April. Sometimes I wonder if the weather was influencing April, but I think it was a way of commenting on what’s going on in April’s world. Because, when it rained, April is different. I felt it was done to great effect and added yet another layer to an already layered story.
Overall: Serious, Yet Beautiful
Pretending was not at all what I expected. I thought it would be a fun, quick read that would have me smiling. It was not quick. It had tears prickling my eyes. It was heavy, so it took a few days to read as I had to put it down now and then. And yet it somehow reminded me of rom-coms. It captured the neuroses women usually have when it comes to romantic relationships. It also provided a beautifully painful account of one woman’s battle with trauma from rape. There were so many layers to this story that worked wonderfully together to create a very solid, breathing story. It’s definitely a book my children will read when they’re older.
Thank you to Justine Sha and MIRA-Harlequin for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.
I went into Pretending not knowing what to expect. Yes, I’d read the blurb, but the blurb has very little on the actual story. I believe this book needs a trigger warning of sorts. You see, April is trying to recover from a horrific ordeal at the hands of a man that’s now her ex. As she meets new men, they all leave somewhere around date five. It doesn’t help April that she works for a charity that answers questions for people and some of them deal with the same thing that April went through. Finally, she reaches her breaking point at work and replies to an email in a way that gets her in trouble. The pain and the anger from her past has spewed up and over her life, jeopardizing a career that she truly loves.
During all this, she’d some up with a plan to meet a man using a dating app. As she creates her profile, she creates a new version of herself, “Gretel”. “Gretel” is perfect in every way, breezy, light, funny, charming. Everything a man would want. At least in April’s head. When she meets Joshua, she actually finds a good man, but all the years of not getting treatment for the trauma has taken a toll and she doesn’t know just how good of a man he really is.
This is a deep story, there’s trauma, pain, anger. But there’s also healing, hope, and eventually love. This isn’t your everyday contemporary romance, there’s a lot of self-help spread through the pages. Phrases, thoughts, ideas, and activities I’ve personally used while dealing with my own trauma. There’s flashback scenes to April’s trauma, so be prepared if you have your own.
I’ve never read a book from Holly Bourne before, but I’m truly glad I read this one. Even though there’s a dark theme running through the core of this story, it’s well written with enjoyable, real characters and it made reading the story easy.
*I received an ARC of this story and this is my honest and voluntary review.
4.5 stars
This is an extremely emotional book. April feels as if she’s a bit crazy, but I don’t agree. April is so much like the average woman who is made to believe she’s crazy because she doesn’t fit in an easy mold of one specific thing. The thoughts April has running through her head, whether it’s just before having sex or sitting and watching Dawson’s Creek, are so real. In fact, they are so real that I think a straight cis man would think there’s no way women think these things. That’s how far this author goes into April’s thoughts.
As I said at the beginning, this is an emotional story. In April’s past is a very abusive relationship, emotionally and sexually. So be warned if these are things you need to avoid for your own mental health. This story is April’s mental health journey. At least part of it. One of the interesting things the author did was to pick up this story a couple of years post-relationship. I appreciate her showing that these issues do not just go away over time. In fact, if you try to ignore your trauma it often just gets worse. April’s struggles are coming to a head, and it’s not pretty.
There were many times in this book where I wanted to be mad at April. I wanted to dislike her and yell at her and leave her in the dust. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. While she does some terrible things, all the things she does make sense due to her past and the things she sees daily in her job. You see, April decides to have some revenge on men. That’s over simplifying things, but the easiest way to explain what she does. The problem is, you can’t really have revenge over every man in the world. So she narrows it down and picks one at random. Only, Joshua seems like a legitimately nice and decent guy. That’s where I end up having my issues with April. Again, I wasn’t able to ever get truly upset with her. As much as I love Joshua, I understand April’s blindness to the true goodness of any straight male.
This is a difficult read. Not because it’s bad, but because the writer really delves into some uncomfortable things. I’m purposely not going into too much detail because I don’t want to give anything away, and I think you need to take April’s journey with her. From start to finish. It’s the best way to really understand her for yourself.
**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**
Holly Bourne is a new author to me. I’ve seen other reviews saying this was a regurgitated novel of hers with a different name. So my review will be of Pretending and not comparing it to her early works.
This book has sensitive issues regarding sexual assault, and other milder areas regarding the human condition dealing with emotions and feminism.
The heroine, April is tired of men. Generally she hates them. At first you’re not sure why but as the story develops you get a deeper meaning and side of why some women are the way they are. The invisible scars that some of us wear everyday. And how hopeless it may seem at times when you’re dealing with who you can trust.
Instead she creates a new personality to stop from being hurt again. No one can break down that wall she’s built around herself. She feels invincible. But things take a turn when she meets Joshua, the hero. For once pretending doesn’t seem like something she needs to do. Will her insecurities prove to be to much for their relationship.
Is he the one she can fully trust and love? Can he break those bearers that she has up?
This is definitely a thought provoking story with a tragic backstory that will stay with you long after reading. It definitely touched my heart.
I want to thank Harper Collins and Justin Sha with Harlequin/Mira for gifting me with a digital and printed copy.
This is the second book I’ve read by Holly Bourne and as I reflect on the first – The Places I’ve Cried In Public – and this one – PRETENDING – I can see similarities in the narratives as well as my reactions to them.
Bourne writes books that make it difficult for readers to remain aloof; she writes about sensitive topics with such rawness that I can’t help be invested in the emotional journey of the characters. I find myself thinking about the surface and underlying messages Bourne is writing about, and I like that she makes me stop and think about how I would react if confronted in certain situations.
For all this, I found PRETENDING to be a disappointing read for one very simple and very important reason. Not once did any of these characters think about or do anything to help themselves reach a point where they liked themselves; where they were content with themselves or the selves they were working towards being. Instead, the key message that I got from reading this book was all about the importance of finding and keeping “the one” to avoid being lonely and alone. How utterly depressing that with all they go through, April, her flatmate Megan and other female characters were striving for was the approval of someone else – a man.
Bourne’s writing can tug at the heartstrings. It can make you laugh as well as bring out the most cynical side of you. This book has so many important things to say but, in my opinion, she focused on the wrong thing and as a result, the power of her intended message is diminished.
I do think the book is worth reading for the messages that it is trying to convey. And while this was just an okay read overall, I would not discourage anyone – especially men – from giving it a go.