Review: Not Your Valentine

I love a good holiday novella. Normally they take place around Christmas so when I find one featuring another holiday and written by a Canadian author I’ve been meaning to check out? Count me in! Not Your Valentine, a new Kobo Originals work from author Jackie Lau, was published on January 24 and was a short read that was perfect to get into the Love Day mood.

Here’s the book’s description:

Helen Tsang is tired of the pitying looks. From her parents, her friends, and even the bubble tea shop guy, who recognized her from the video. Almost one year ago, some loser couldn’t mind their own damn business and filmed an unsuspecting Helen's very public break-up during what was supposed to be a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. A video of her ex-boyfriend saying, "It's not me, it's you. You're holding me back" went viral.
Desperate to give everyone something else to talk about and with Valentine’s Day approaching once again, she asks her long-time friend Taylor Li to be her fake boyfriend, just to prove that she's moved on and hasn’t sworn off love. (Spoiler alert: She's totally sworn off love.) Taylor is the perfect option—single for once, and for some godforsaken reason, he loves Valentine’s Day.
But Helen didn't expect was how easy it would be to get Taylor on board, fitting right into the boyfriend-shaped hole in her life. All she wanted was a couple sickeningly sweet dates to fill her social feeds, not corny text messages of silly heart-shaped cakes, and bouquets of flowers that harbor hidden meanings. Wanting to be around his sunshine attitude and delicious forearms all the time? That definitely wasn't expected.
With February 14 quickly approaching, it's getting increasingly difficult to ignore her feelings, especially when she starts wishing it wasn’t all an act.
Oh God. What has she done?

I’ll be honest that it took a bit of time to understand Helen and get into the flow of how Lau wrote. And I’ve spent the last few weeks wondering how on earth I would try to describe what I meant by that. This was a short book - Goodreads puts it at 136 pages - so it’s tricky when some of those precious pages are spent trying to get the hang of a character and their story. I liked Helen a lot but I think I was being too Elder Millennial and forgot what it was like to be younger. And the lying to friends and family about dating someone? That was hard for me to get into. I also struggled with the assumption that everyone would still be thinking of Helen and the viral video a year later (before it was ultimately brought up by the “news” cycle again). It all seemed a bit too…like Helen was the centre of the universe, maybe?

Speaking of fake dating though… As much as I hated the reason why Helen got into it, I do enjoy a good fake dating trope. Lau made it work pretty well, though there seemed to be a lot of set up and explanation for why Helen and Taylor knew each other and why he’d be perfect for shenanigans. That said, I did really like them together and was rooting for them the whole time. I love when characters are so clearly a good match for each other!

Have you ever noticed that, for some reason, romance books need to tell you the first and last names of every single character the first time they’re introduced? It’s something I’ve noticed myself for years and I don’t get it. I don’t actually care what the character's last name is - unless it's somehow connected to the plot. And when you’re meeting four characters in a page and a half (of a short novella), it’s a bit much. I don’t necessarily blame Lau (though I do question why a romance novella needed to have the heroine, a group of four girlfriends plus mom, dad, sister, sister-in-law, plus a romantic interest…) for giving each character first and last names. I blame the genre and the expectations the publishers assume readers have. I do acknowledge that sometimes using last names is a quick way to get an idea of the background of the character. But I don’t really love the expectation that I’m supposed to assume something about someone based on their name. Am I reading too much into this? Anyone else have thoughts?

But back to the romance in this book. It is STEAMY. For a short book, it packs in a lot of sexy moments and I was here for it. It’s sex positive too which is always great to see in romance novels. The sex scenes weren’t too much for the novella, in my opinion, and they were honest and felt right for the story as a whole.

A final note: I don’t think you have to read this around Valentine’s Day but it is a perfect book to tuck into near the beginning of the year. I loved that it started on New Year’s Day and then had a few scenes centred on Lunar New Year. But since this novella is so short, you can get this baby finished in no time so you can buy it today and have it done by the end of Valentine’s Day!

All in all, Not Your Valentine was a ton of fun. It had me craving all sorts of food while reading it and I was fully invested in the Happily Ever After. I’m really looking forward to reading more from Jackie Lau!

*An egalley of this novella was provided by the publisher, Kobo Originals, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*