~ Book Review: Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie (ARC) ~

Author: Jackie Lau

A charming rom-com about a young woman’s desperate attempts to fend off her meddling mother…only to find that maybe mother does know best.

Mark Chan this. Mark Chan that.

Writer and barista Emily Hung is tired of hearing about the great Mark Chan, the son of her parents’ friends. You’d think he single-handedly stopped climate change and ended child poverty from the way her mother raves about him. But in reality, he’s just a boring, sweater-vest-wearing engineer, and when they’re forced together at Emily’s sister’s wedding, it’s obvious he thinks he’s too good for her.

But now that Emily is her family’s last single daughter, her mother is fixated on getting her married and she has her sights on Mark. There’s only one solution, clearly : convince Mark to be in a fake relationship with her long enough to put an end to her mom’s meddling. He reluctantly agrees.

Unfortunately, lying isn’t enough. Family friends keep popping up at their supposed dates—including a bubble tea shop and cake-decorating class—so they’ll have to spend more time together to make their relationship look real. With each fake date, though, Emily realizes that Mark’s not quite what she assumed and maybe that argyle sweater isn’t so ugly after all…

Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie is my first novel by Jackie Lau. While I have heard of the author before, this is my first novel that I had the chance to read. Emily Hung is a writer and barista in Toronto who is the last single daughter of five, and her mother is determined to get her married. To get her mother off her back, Emily creates a plan where she fake dates the son of her parents’ friends, Mark Chan. The two go on fake dates where they run into those that know Emily’s family. The POV in the story stays mostly with Emily, so the reader mainly follows her journey. Mark’s POV does get included later, though, where the reader can finally see his side of the story.

As the story begins mainly with Emily, the reader gets to know her more than Mark. Her career as a writer is explored in a lot of depth, although, for me, it was too much. There were a lot of terms, processes, and other details about being an author that were included. While I can see how they can be interesting, there were too many in the story and, at times, I felt it distracted from the rest of the story. The romance was decent, and I think the characters had great chemistry, however, I think I wanted more exploration on the transition from fake dating to actual feelings. Since most of the novels followed Emily, I feel the reader misses out a lot on learning about Mark. While this does happen in single POV novels, the fact that his was included towards the end, made me wish that it was either included the whole time or not included at all. As for Emily herself, she was not very likable to me, but I can see other readers find her relatable. For me, I couldn’t connect with her, but I can see potential. The general concept of the story was great and lower stakes. I think the author has a lot of potential and I can see myself reading more from her in the future.

**I give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Atria/Emily Bestler Books, for the opportunity to read this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**