👧👦👧👦
LET’S PRETEND THIS WILL WORK
Maddie Dawson
Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: May 21st, 2024
349 Pages
Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop.org
I have been in a reading slump for over a month and Maddie Dawson saved the day! I shouldn’t be surprised as this is my fourth read by her and the first three were all four-star reads as well. Matchmaking for Beginners, A Happy Catastrophe and Snap Out of It all gave me great joy and Let’s Pretend This Will Work is no different. In this one Mimi follows her fiancé from MAnhatten to New Haven because his ex-wife has been in an accident and he needs to help his daughters help their mother. Mimi goes into this with hopes and wishes and fairy dreams of finally having a family…let’s just say it isn’t exactly what she’s hoping for.
Mimi ends up getting an apartment on top of a daycare and that’s when she starts to feel she fits in. The way the daycare children were written really touched my heart it was so realistic. Their vocabulary had me laughing out loud and it reminded me so much of when my boys were little. My boys were 80s/90s babies and this takes place in the 80s before cell phones and the internet and I thought that was great. The book is filled with quirky characters that I love. I liked that all the characters were so well written and acted like real-life people, the kind I would want to be friends with and have looking after my kids. I think my favourite character was Alice, I just loved her to bits. Dawson’s ability to write a four-year-old so spot on gave me all the feels.
I hated the character of Ren so much, I have no idea what Mimi saw in him in the first place. His daughters are 19 and 23 and they acted like children and he let them get away with it. I felt a passionate dislike for both Jenna and Parker. I think of myself as a strong and fiercely independent woman so I would have kicked his ass to the curb tout de suite!
The ending kinda threw me for a loop and then Dawson added a curveball and it made me so happy. Mimi finally finds her true self and even though her behaviour frustrated me at times I was pleased when she learned that if someone really loves you they love you just the way you are. (Don’t go changing to try and please me…) I am so grateful to Maddie Dawson for finally giving me a great read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
Leave a Reply