"Ten Rules for Faking It" by Sophie Sullivan

Ten Rules for Faking It is a contemporary romance novel which I received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. It is always tricky to rate a romance novel. I tend to give them a star rating based on my level of enjoyment and if there were any particular aspects in the plot that I really liked. Ten Rules for Faking It ended up being a 3 star book for me. Here are the things that I really liked:

The main character Everly has a severe social anxiety. I thought the author did an amazing job describing Everly's panic attacks and her struggles with anxiety. I don't think I've ever encountered such vivid descriptions in any other book. I also really enjoyed Everly's relationship with her friend Stacey. Finally, the hero and the main love interest Chris is a truly swoon worthy character. His ability to understand Everly's anxiety and read her mood is uncanny. Obviously, romance novels rarely have realistic heroes. Chris is young, rich, understanding and completely in love with Everly. She on the other hand, does act quite unreasonably on several occasions towards him in second half of the book, and his patience and loyalty were truly astonishing to me.

In terms of the shortcomings, I think this book could benefit from some editing. I think at least 50 to 75 pages could be edited out. The author gets way into too much detail on what the characters think or feel and gets overly repetitive on some points. I think she might lose some of the readers who read a lot of romance because they will simply get bored with unnecessary descriptions. 

Finally, I would like to note that this is a clean romance. There are no explicit sex scenes and the entire relationship is quite slow developing and angsty. Overall, I did like the book and as I already mentioned the anxiety representation was outstanding.