My Library Blog

Destination Wedding and Fake-Dating: Which Book Does It Better?

Introduction

Fake-Dating is a popular romance trope where two characters agree to pretend to be a (romantic) couple for mutual benefit before developing true feelings for each other and falling in love for real. In other words, the main characters are pretending to be in love while trying very hard not to actually fall in love.

Some popular novels that use this trope include The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez, The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren, A Proposal They Can’t Refuse by Natalie Caña, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren and Bridesmaid for Hire by Meghan Quinn. In this article, I’m going to compare two of these novels, The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren and Bridesmaid for Hire by Meghan Quinn, to determine which one does the Destination Wedding, Fake-Dating plot better. But first, I am going to add a brief synopsis for both of them:

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren

Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch. Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife. But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie (Book synopsis borrowed from Goodreads).

Bridesmaid for Hire by Meghan Quinn

After years of working her tail off at her event-planning business, Maggie Mitchell is ready for a vacation. With nothing on her mind but R & R, she’s enjoying the warm weather of Bora Bora when in saunters Brody McFadden, her brother’s best friend and also her sworn enemy. Thanks to years of tension between the two—kicked off by a make-out session at her brother’s wedding that ended horribly—Maggie has sworn to stay away from the man. That is, until she finds out he’s in Bora Bora for his boss’s daughter’s wedding, hoping to use the trip to win a real future at the company.

Maggie promised herself she wouldn’t even think of work on the island, but as word spreads about the “wedding of the century” taking place in the midst of her vacation, she realizes offering her services as a bridesmaid and planner could bring her business to the next level. The only catch? She needs to pose as Brody’s girlfriend to get the job…while letting him stay in her peaceful bungalow.

Tensions rise, irritation flairs, and despite years’ worth of bickering behind closed doors, Maggie can’t quite squash the sparks building between her and her new fake boyfriend, especially when she learns the real reason their first kiss was cut short. But as the wedding day draws closer and everything starts to go wrong, it just might be Brody who sends Maggie’s business crashing down—and her heart along with it (Book synopsis borrowed from Goodreads).

Let’s begin with the similarities between these two novels:

Similarities

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren and Bridesmaid for Hire by Meghan Quinn have the following things in common:

Destination Wedding

In both of these novels there is a wedding hosted by a rich family. In The Paradise Problem, the wedding takes place in Pulau Jingga, near Bali, Indonesia, while in Bridesmaid for Hire the wedding occurs in Bora Bora, a luxurious island located in French Polynesia. The location of these weddings isn’t really that important for the development of the plot and romance, but both of them do serve as the background in which all the drama and twists of the story take place.

The Antagonist

The antagonist of both of these novels (and I don’t know if this is on purpose or not) is the father of that rich family. The wedding is also his daughter’s wedding, usually the youngest child and only girl in the family. The other kids, boys, are also the ones that disagree with the way their father is running things at the company and ultimately help the protagonists, who are being blackmailed by him in some way, bring the antagonist down.

Only One Bed Trope

The Fake-Dating trope forces intimacy between the protagonists despite them, at first, not liking each other. And in public, they put up an act. In private, however, the main characters always find themselves in the conundrum of having to share a bed. This is the Only One Bed trope and it is very common in books that use Fake-Dating as part of their plot. In fact, you almost always find it. This is because the proximity it forces the characters into allows for emotions to slowly shift and built-in tension to rise. Consequently, the lines start to blur and it is harder and harder for the protagonists to keep maintaining a distance between themselves. One of the ways the characters try to maintain that distance, for example, is by drawing up a contract (and this occurs both in The Paradise Problem and Bridesmaid for Hire), but it is almost always the female main character who breaks that contract first because (shocking!) she can’t help finding herself in awkward and uncomfortable situations in bed with the male protagonist every morning. Yeah, this is something I didn’t like very much in Bridesmaid for Hire. I expected it, and one time is funny. Two, ok…three, it’s a little too much. But some authors keep doing it and it is not funny anymore. At all.

Author Style and Theme

The Fake-Dating trope in romance novels allows the protagonists to embark on a journey of self-discovery where they learn to forgive and embrace vulnerability.

Christina Lauren is the pen name of the duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings who have published several popular standalone contemporary romance novels together. I have only read The Paradise Problem and I found that their writing style is a fast-paced narrative where characters flirt with one another through snappy and witty banter that highlights the chemistry between the two leads and drives the story forward. I liked that. Their protagonists in The Paradise Problem are adults in their mid-20s/early 30s with a strong narrative voice; they are also easy to connect with and like. For example, it is easy to connect with Anna because we all know what it is to have to work odd jobs to make ends meet. Liam, for his part, is easy to connect with because some of us know what it is like to try to make amends for something we did in the past. At the beginning of the novel, he is in a better place than Anna three years after their graduation―he is a professor at Stanford―and money is not something he’s ever had to worry about yet Liam is easy to like, despite the rich family he comes from, because he is grounded, honest, and selfless. He is the good one; the book boyfriend we fantasize about and swoon over.

Anna and Liam’s witty banter as well as their sense of humor blend delightfully with real emotional stakes and you are right there with them cheering them on when they’re about to get together and/or biting your nails because you know everything is about to fall apart. The big black moment arrives and you’re crying because they break up. And at how they broke up. You feel everything the characters are feeling, and I was there for all of it. I laughed at Anna’s thoughts and reactions when she is high or when it is blatantly obvious that she doesn’t know the first thing about being rich and blunders over and over. I also enjoyed the scenes where each one of them was checking the other out in the bungalow despite trying very hard not to. It is all very real, funny, and when appropriate, sexy. And I like that the authors are very careful at writing it in a way that is not coarse and abrasive.  The writing is focused on the development of the romantic relationship.

This, however, is not what I experienced in Bridesmaid for Hire. This book has a fair amount of adult language in it and I get that at times the coarseness and foulness of that language are part of what makes a scene funny and a laugh-out-loud moment. And there were a lot of those. In fact, this book is chockful of laugh-out-moments. And yet, I am one of those people that can only tolerate so much of this kind of banter. It got to a point where the rough language rubbed me the wrong way a little the further along into the novel I got. Also, Bridesmaid for Hire has moments that feel rather forced and exaggerated and where the characters’ reactions to these moments are a tidbit unrealistic and immature. Yet, these laugh-out-moments are how the author says she “wants to bring joy and laughter” into her readers’ lives. So, I would say that Meghan Quinn wants to make her readers laugh by making them forget a little bit about reality.

Strengths

The Paradise Problem

This novel has a compelling dual narration between the protagonists that gives readers full access to Anna and Liam’s internal thoughts. This helped improve the dynamics between the characters, their chemistry, and the pacing of the story.  However, I do think that I would’ve enjoyed it more if Liam’s chapters had been read by a male narrator in the audiobook.

Trigger warning: This novel has a pretty spot-on portrayal of a narcissistic parent; it also does a very good job at portraying the emotional immaturity of everyone else in the family.

Bridesmaid for Hire

The dual first-person point of view in this novel is also a strong suit. Through it, we get to experience Maggie and Brody’s internal battle trying to resist the other, the sexual tension between them and their chemistry. This book did have an alternating M/F audiobook narrator that both accentuated the banter between the two leads and gave the funny/hilarious moments a bigger spotlight. I liked that.

Areas for Improvement

In romance novels, the choice of clothing for the FMC can drive pivotal scenes signaling character growth, vulnerability or power shifts. But in both these novels, the FMC wears minimal clothing when she’s in the bungalow with the MMC or very sexy and revelatory clothing in public. Bridesmaid for Hire even does the MMC’s oversized shirt trope where Maggie grabs one of Brody’s shirts and puts it on for bed after the couple first sleep together to indicate intimacy between them, comfort, and claimed territory, and that is fine. I didn’t appreciate that we were constantly reminded how much clothing the FMC didn’t have though.

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here. A good setup is important to make the Fake-Dating trope work. And unfortunately, neither one of these books has a good setup. In The Paradise Problem, Anna and Liam begin their relationship as two strangers who get married to afford family housing at UCLA. Once they graduate, they get divorced. However, when Liam arrives at Anna’s doorstep three years later, he realizes that she didn’t read the fine print on the “divorce” papers (because they were not divorce papers) and that they are still married. The fact that Anna didn’t realize this during the three years they were apart is hard to believe. I mean, if she’d paid her taxes, she’d noticed. For me, though, this was something I could get over.

The setup for Bridesmaid for Hire was a problem for me. Despite the laugh-out moments and the likeable male protagonist in this book, I had a very hard time connecting and rooting for the female protagonist. When she agrees to fake-date the male protagonist, the cost for her (the agreement between the leads has to cost something) isn’t that substantial or life-altering. In other words, the stakes aren’t high enough. Yes, she wants to expand her business and open a storefront but that is something we learn about much later on in the novel. It isn’t something on the line until after she has agreed to fake-date the male protagonist and is discovered by the antagonist.

I also felt that Brody couldn’t catch a break. From the first sticky and embarrassing situation he finds himself in (with the linen tan suit) to another, it felt as if these situations just kept being thrown at him. Later on, we learn that they were indeed concocted and forced upon him but some of them were exaggerated and a bit over the top. The book is heavy with this sort of slapstick situations (and not so slapstick) you can’t help but think that he is “an absolute lightning rod for calamity” (AAR; Bridesmaid for Hire). Poor Brody. However, it is one embarrassing situation after another that eventually it gets repetitive and exhausting and the plot stagnates. I was grateful when the author was done trying to force these sticky situations to create laugh-out-moments at this character’s expense and moved on. In my opinion, the more Brody got beat up, the less funny it was. And the more she did it, the more it felt deliberate and mean instead of a serendipitous and funny moment where this character just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

The Couple(s)

The Paradise Problem

A lot of people don’t like Anna. She is frequently classified as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a one-dimensional character who exists only to help a sad, depressed, and brooding male lead learn to enjoy life. Zooey Deschanel’s character Summer in 500 Days of Summer is also said to personify this stereotype. I disagree. Anna is not one-dimensional. She is “relatable for her struggles (among them, dealing with her father’s cancer). Anna went to college with ambition and drive but—like so many of us—her options on the job market do not reflect the talent and her degree. Anna was so ambitious in nature but also struck down by a system that makes you question your own merit and I think anyone who’s ever tried to get a job (or venture out with your own artistic talents) will relate to the feeling of being lost even when you made all the right choices in life” (Nerd Daily; The Paradise Problem Review). And because of this, Anna is everything Liam’s dysfunctional rich family is not: down-to-earth and loyal.

Liam is Anna’s opposite (and this is where the Opposites Attract Trope kicks in): Anna is “grounded, free-spirited, and a struggling artist, while Liam is a buttoned-up Stanford professor and billionaire grocery-chain heir (Goodreads)”. They are from different worlds, and yet there are layers to Liam as well. Unlike his family, he is less materialistic, less concerned about making a lot of money, and he wants to make amends for something in his past. He is the black sheep in the family and the opposite of his father and brothers (Alex and Jake). Like I say before, he is the good one; the book boyfriend we fantasize about and swoon over. Yet, there is a touch of the unrealistic in his character. Who is romanticizing billionaires in this time and economy? Not anyone I know, and nobody they know either so this premise is a tidbit improbable it borders on the fantastic.

However, Anna and Liam are perfect for one another.

Bridesmaid for Hire

Now, I had a harder time connecting with Maggie. Yes, she’s a businesswoman and, like many of us, working really hard to get her company up and going (by experience, I know that this is not easy). However, the fact that she is a businesswoman wasn’t enough for me to connect with her because I never see her struggles as an event planner and the problems that come with all that. At the beginning of the novel, she’s already on vacation and we never get to see her life before she goes to Bora Bora. As the novel progresses, the stakes get higher for her and her company is involved in those stakes yet the connection between her and the reader by that point is not as strong as it could be (at least in my case) had it been well established from the beginning.

Brody is the good guy with the façade of a player. He’s always been attracted to Maggie but has kept his feelings for her in check because his best friend (and her brother) told him she was off-limits (Forbidden Love Trope). I had a problem with this. Someone who tells you can’t date a girl you both know because he doesn’t want to jeopardize the friendship between the two of you is immature and childish. Middle-school kids behave like this (insert here The Kissing Booth flashes), not grown men. And Gary does come across as someone who never outlived his middle school years. Brody, however, is considerate (to his best friend), loving, and selfless. He is the epitome of a good man because he always puts those he loves first, especially Maggie, no matter the consequences for him. People can mess with him, but not her. His grand gesture at the end of the novel, despite everything he put up with, was GRAND and that made me like him even more.

Other Tropes and Spice and Steam (S&S) Rating

The Paradise Problem

This novel combines the following tropes: Fake-Marriage (Dating)/Arranged-Marriage, Opposites Attract, Only One Bed/Forced Proximity and Billionaire Catch.

Its rating on the Spice and Steam (S&S) Scale is a 4; that is, there are open door detailed, graphic, and descriptive sexual scenes throughout the novel.

Bridesmaid for Hire

This novel combines Fake-Dating with Enemies-to-Lovers, Forbidden Love, Only One Bed/Forced Proximity, and Brother’s Best Friend.

Its rating on the Spice and Steam (S&S) Scale is a mix between 4 and 5; there are explicit open door sex scenes, yes, but these sex scenes have adult language and are graphic enough to border on the erotic.  

Which Book Does the Destination Wedding, Fake-Dating Plot Better?

In my opinion, it’s a mix. The Paradise Problem set up the Fake-Dating trope better (though not by much), with a credible dose of family drama and high monetary stakes, but the ending of Bridesmaid for Hire is the winner between the two. Don’t get me wrong, the ending for The Paradise Problem is cute but most of the crisis is solved ‘off-page’. And I am not a big fan of that. We do, however, get a glimpse of Anna and Liam as a couple in the epilogue; this does not happen with Maggie and Brody, but it is deliberate. To see them as a couple, you need to pick up another one of the author’s books in a different series. And I am not sure how I feel about this. Maggie’s best friend, Hattie, is the protagonist in one of the books of that other series. The best friend (of the FMC) is a staple in romance novels, equivalent to the figure of the mentor (Gandalf) in fantasy novels. But Hattie is no Gandalf. In fact, she’s a forgettable background character that only has sex with her boyfriend (if this is the only thing readers remember about a pivotal character, it’s not good). Anna’s best friend Viv, on the other hand, is loyal and reliable. She’s also funny. I enjoyed the few scenes in which she shows up.

Conclusion

Overall, I liked The Paradise Problem more than Bridesmaid for Hire.