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Reviewed by Priya Mathew for Readers' Favorite
The Girlfriend Agreement by Rowan Croft starts with a drunken one-night stand that Lexi Dornan wishes to forget, until financial desperation pushes her back in contact with the very man who humiliated her once before. Damian Navarro needs to prove to his family that he can commit to something beyond parties and scandals. A Craigslist ad for hiring a fake girlfriend feels like the tidiest solution. Nine months. One arrangement. Zero chance of anyone developing feelings. What starts as strictly transactional, with an NDA, a laundry list of rules, et al., in between fake dates and staged photos, slowly moves toward something real. In the end, will this equation add up to something neither of them planned?
The Girlfriend Agreement by Rowan Croft leans on familiar tropes like fake dating, grumpy meets sunshine, but the story is also grounded in real stakes. Croft has deliberately used the fake dating trope to talk about masks, the ones we build to survive, and what it would cost to finally put them down. The spice is frequent and unfiltered. I loved the brisk pace of the story with alternate POVs between Lexi and Damian. The banter between the characters felt like watching a tennis match, back and forth, with no one willing to miss. Some of the barbs were sharp enough to sting, but there was also enough in them to earn genuine laughs. Underneath all the jokes is real heartbreak: a sick mom, a cold and calculating family, a girl who has spent years being told she is too much for the people who were supposed to love her the best. Lexi's friends Ronnie and Andie round out the supporting cast, adding comic relief and loyalty in equal measures. The Spanish phrases scattered throughout the chapter headers made me smile too, a nice bit of bonus practice for the new language I'm currently learning. I tore through this in a weekend and want to start book two of the Conwick U series.
