Review: My Phony Valentine by Courtney Walsh

Genre: Contempary Romance 
Released: Feb. 8, 2023
373 pages

About the Book:

A chance meeting. A hunky hockey player. A fake romance.
Hardly an ordinary day in the life of Poppy Hart.

My days usually consist of agonizing over my failing restaurant, worrying about my mountain of debt and nursing my broken heart.

Everything changes when I bump into a man in the coffee shop and claim him as my new boyfriend. To my absolute horror, he turns out to be hockey’s most renowned bad boy, Dallas Burke. To my absolute delight, he goes along with my story.

When his no-nonsense manager and meddling grandmother jump in the picture, they see a win-win solution for my failing restaurant and Dallas’s less-than-stellar reputation.

A full-fledged fake romance complete with contract negotiations, pretend dates and phony PDA.

But as I get to know the real Dallas Burke, who is not the man the press says he is, it becomes clear that if this isn’t real. . . someone better tell it to my heart.  

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Poppy meets Dallas in a coffee shop and randomly claims him as her boyfriend when someone is putting her down. Dallas plays along to help Poppy out, and Poppy offers to cook dinner for him as she is a chef as a thank you. Due to some prompting from Dallas’ grandmother the two begin a fake dating scheme in order to help each other out. Dallas is a famous hockey player and people begin flocking to Poppy’s restaurant in hopes of seeing him. And Poppy will help improve Dallas’ bad boy reputation. I liked how Poppy refused to lie to her family and let them in on the plan. Dallas’ manager wants to set the rules and appearances but instead Poppy and Dallas worked together to come up with the rules and what they would and would not do. I loved how they could be real with one another and shared their true thoughts and feelings, there was no bit miscommunication thrown in to complicate things. I did feel like it might have pushed some of the boundaries a bit with the falling asleep on the couch incidents. This is not prompted as a Christian book, but they were trying to keep their relationship as friendship and I feel as adults they could have realized when they should go home. I really enjoyed following the relationship and seeing it bloom from strangers to friends to more. My favourite character had to be the grandmother, she spoke her mind and was entertaining. Overall, it was a light fluffy read perfect for Valentine’s day. 

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)

Other books from this author that I have reviewed:   

   

Change of Heart Review

Hometown Girl Review 

Just Look Up Review

Just Let Go Review