REVIEW: My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein

KaetrinA Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsContemporary / England / fake relationship / NetGalley / only one bed2 Comments

CW:

Henry Samuel Beckett (“Beck”), is an American editor who came across the Atlantic to work in London and edit Mabel’s book. Mabel knew there was a vacancy in Connie’s building and let Henry know, so he ended up renting the apartment across the hall from Connie.

Just like Alfie Harding was inspired by Roy Kent, Beck is inspired by Ted Lasso himself. He’s not Ted but it’s not hard to see the similarities either. For one thing, Beck is 6’5″ and a beefy guy. He has dark hair and a large straight mustache and a very hairy chest. And he’s kind. He is the kindest man Connie has ever met. She doesn’t trust it at all of course. Her experience of men is that they are mostly rubbish. Alfie is one of the few exceptions she’s met in real life.

Connie’s dating history is pretty tragic.

I am the sort of woman who’d have a fucking nightmare like that for a husband. In fact I can almost see him now, in my mind’s eye. He’s wearing a jacket he claims he got off David Bowie’s corpse but really it came from a shop like Fatface, and two cigarettes are dangling from his lips for reasons he never explains, and every time we go out he tells everyone terrible things, like how only he knows the moon isn’t real.

She’s used to men being critical of her body, her personality and not caring if she experiences pleasure – in sex or anything else. She’s had plenty of experience of being treated badly by men and the “Nice Guys” are the worst. They’re the ones who immediately turn on her if she says or does something they don’t like. So yeah, she’s super suspicious of Beck.

And he’s not the only one I remember suffering through a date with, or having to work alongside, or accidentally ending up stuck with at a party. One “nice guy” brought me a can of Pringles at my sister’s birthday, and then tried to lock me in a random bedroom. Another felt that praising me in a meeting meant I should return the favor with a blow job in the supply cupboard.

And it made zero difference that this man had told me he was married.

A lot of the time, married Nice Guys are even worse than single ones. They harbor secret seething hatred for their wives under a veneer of jovial sweetness and hollow laughter. Like the laughter he aimed at me the other day, when we passed each other in the hall and I asked how his wife was doing without him, over there in America, and he did this big ha, ha, ha.

Beck bakes her pies and cakes and leaves them outside her door with lovely little notes. He’s unfailingly polite and cheery. Connie is baffled by the attention. And then she accidentally sees the inside of Beck’s apartment and it gets so much worse. I’ll let readers discover why Connie believes (with good reason) for a few hours that Beck is actually a serial killer.

Except… poor Beck has become trapped in a lie and things in his apartment are all in aid of that lie. He’s not married. His wife is entirely fictional. A (shitty) work colleague by the name of Doug (who “has a Tesla” so that tells you all you need to know – bang on descriptive work right there. A+. No notes) has been bullying Beck and needling him about everything. Mostly Beck can shrug it off but his sore spot is being single. Like all bullies, Doug has honed in on it and all of a sudden Beck finds himself with an invented (albeit absent) wife.  Beck does not like to lie – it makes him nauseous. As a result he’s been living on motion sickness pills for months.

Connie has a lot of baggage from her childhood. Her parents always wanted her to be someone she was not. Her mum would make fun of her for liking anything nerdy and encouraged her to hide her big brain and focus on being attractive to men. It’s had an impact. Connie has been largely hiding herself ever since. In fact, Connie is not even her real name. She just adopted it because she thought it was cooler than her actual given name – Hazel.

Whereas Hazel is not always great at advocating for herself, she finds herself entirely outraged on Beck’s behalf. This Doug guy needs to be taken down a peg or a hundred. Before you know it, Hazel has told Doug she’s Beck’s wife. Oops.

The massive problem with that is that Beck is just about to host a writer’s retreat. Doug is going too and they are both staying in the same two bedroom cabin on the property. Hazel was going as well but now she has to stay with Beck in the same cabin as Doug and there’s only one bed.

Beck and Hazel do a crash “getting to know you 101” course and freak out about how to make it look believable that they’re married. If Doug finds out he lied, his Beck’s boss finds out he lied, well, Beck won’t have a job anymore.

The plan is for them to attend the retreat together and then, over time, Beck can indicate there’s trouble in their (fake) marriage and they can quietly (fake) divorce. It’s not real of course. Hazel knows that Beck could never want anyone like her, not really. And Beck knows that Hazel would never truly want him.  We readers know that’s not the case at all but it takes them a while to work it out.

Beck thinks he’s a dull dork. Not without some reason. People have told him. To his face. He has an even worse dating history than Hazel does.

Just like with When Grumpy Met Sunshine, I highlighted large portions of the book and laughed out loud at the humour and the banter. I also loved how fierce Hazel was for Beck. He’s so used to being treated poorly it barely registers. When others around him are treated badly, that’s when he’ll say something. He won’t stand for that. But for himself? He’s not important enough to defend it seems. And then Hazel comes along and just defends him all over the place.  

“You’re not going to die alone. Or at least, not unless you want to die alone. Which is a perfectly valid choice, and not something anyone should be an asshole to you about,” I say, and now his astonishment at how hard I’m going about this is starting to settle into something else. Delighted bemusement, I think it is. Actually no—I know it is. Because he has that big face, and his emotions are equally enormous, and so it’s just easy with him. He’s like a complicated adult story, told via the medium of a beautiful pop-up book.

And for some reason, I think I like reading it.

Beck, for his part, starts doing sneaky things like encouraging Hazel to wear whatever she’s comfortable in and be open about her love of Quantum Leap and to believe in herself that she really can be a romance writer. At first she thinks it’s because she’s fitting into the mold of the wife Beck invented. It turns out that mold looks an awful lot like Hazel.

“I don’t want you to have to fit me. I don’t want you to contort yourself for this silly thing. And anyway, my ideal woman is just someone I can get along with. Someone I can talk to, and not worry about what I’m saying. Someone I can confide in. Someone who gives great advice. None of which are things you really seem to struggle with. I mean, you’re considerate and gracious enough with me that I doubt anyone would think, whoa, she really loathes every word he says,” he tells me.

And though I wait for him to seem queasy, it never happens.

He’s telling the truth. He really does see me as what sounds like a good person.

All of which sinks through me, like warm syrup. It sticks…

All that proximity at the retreat, especially after kinda sort dancing around one another for months before then, has the expected effect. Of course, Beck and Hazel have to show affection in public to make sure their fake marriage is believable to the suspicious Doug. Their first public kiss is such a disaster they have to practice privately – which leads to them finding out they are very sexually compatible.

Hazel and Beck have some delightfully frank conversations about what they want, sexually and otherwise. Other times they’re painfully shy with each other and resort to sending each emails or texts while they’re doing separate things at the retreat. Hazel is the more forthright of the pair though and, over time, Beck opens up even more. He’s never not kind but he does reveal an enjoyment of and for dirty talk and fucking. I loved watching Beck open up to Hazel’s encouragement, to speak aloud what he wanted and what he liked.  Beck being baffled by Hazel’s desire for all of him was one of the many delights of the book.

Beck is inexperienced from a sexual perspective (not ignorant, just inexperienced). Hazel has lots of experience. But as they explore their attraction it seems to Hazel that she’s the real virgin. Beck introduces her to feelings – both the pants kind and the heart kind – she’s not ever had before. It’s heady stuff.

Beyond the banter and the humour and the kindness of the main characters, the book also contains some lovely turns of phrase and word pictures.

That flummoxes him, quite clearly. He looks at me like I just trapped him in a maze of complete accuracy, and he has no idea how to get back out.

I mean, are these not just wonderful?

I joke salute on the end. Mostly to disguise the fact that everything he’s said just makes me want to throw myself at him like a bug against an extremely kind and protective windshield.

My criticism of When Grumpy Met Sunshine was that I thought it took too long for Mabel and Alfie to work out they were wrong to think the other didn’t love them. My Big Fat Fake Marriage does not have that same delay, something I was so very pleased about I can’t even tell you. The story did not lack in tension because of it. It’s clear that Hazel and Beck had the benefit of learning from Mabel and Alfie’s mistakes. 

Both books are fake relationship stories but both are very different. My Big Fat Fake Marriage has a much shorter timeline for one thing. It’s testament that a skilled author can take a similar premise and write an entirely unique story and I am so here for it.

Grade: A

Regards,

Kaetrin

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