Rainy Saraladevi’s mother arrives with a groom already picked out. Her stepbrother has a better — and far more inconvenient — idea.
When her mother arrives in Port Camosun for an extended visit — trailing her new husband, a hopeful suitor, and the stepbrother who made their parents’ wedding miserable — Rainy’s carefully built life as a diversity and inclusion counsellor collapses into chaos. Her mother has a husband picked out for her. Rainy has other plans. So when Kiran Kamdar, her new stepfather’s brilliant, infuriating son, offers her an out, she takes it: a fake engagement, just long enough to survive the visit.
There’s just one problem. Kiran isn’t supposed to be the appealing one.
He’s a leading biotech researcher with no time for love and even less patience for pretending — until forced proximity, family dinners, and a friend group that refuses to mind its own business start making the fake part feel dangerously optional. They’ve never shared a childhood, a home, or a single day of actually liking each other. Now they can’t stop.
But Kiran’s whole life is built on being brilliant somewhere else, and Rainy’s is built on staying exactly here. Loving each other might mean losing everything they were each so good at building alone.
For fans of Sonali Dev, Sara Desai, and Nisha Sharma — a fake-engagement romance where family, ambition, and desire all show up uninvited.
Great story. I loved the topsyturvy premise of this story and the plot. It was great to turn the second chances trope on its head and give the reader something out of the box to think about.
Cecly Ann Mitchell, Amazon 5 star review
Second chance small town romance😍. I enjoyed this slow burn romantic story with really good main and supporting characters with a happily ever after.
Cannot wait for the next book in the series. I hope all the characters get their own stories.
Noreen, Amazon UK 5 star review
I have read all of Ms. Clarke’s books, and loved them all – especially this one. Having just come from a reunion of old high school friends, it captures beautifully the questions we all have about those we once cared about who moved away, or relationships that were so strong when we were young, only to have had life intervene. The writing is lovely, compelling and elegant, and the romance, well, it’s perfect for a quiet night in…….. I highly recommend.
Gail Avery Halverson, Author of The Stockbridge Series
