This is a silly-but-honest review for the book How to Fake-Date a Vampire by Linsey Hall. There will be spoilers ahead, so if you have yet to read this book and it’s on your TBR list, I suggest not reading past the marked spoiler area below.

How to Fake-Date a Vampire is the second book in the Charming Cove series by Linsey Hall. It’s a standalone cozy romance novel, so you can jump right in.

The premise is simple: Emma is a witch trying to prove herself to her coven by finding the perfect location to host the important magical soiree. Through a series of zany run-ins, she winds up agreeing to pretend to be in a relationship with the local vampire duke, Alaric.
By being his “fake” girlfriend, she’ll get access to his ultra posh, ultra exclusive duchy for said magical event, and he will get to keep his beloved grandmother from finding out that his last relationship went south in a bad way following the betrayal of his ex-girlfriend, who sold family secrets to the press.

Regrettably for me, How to Fake-Date a Vampire is my first, and likely last, foray into Charming Cove. Concept wise, the story sounded promising, and I was interesting to see a light paranormal romance with a cute “candy floss” kind of read.
This book, however, oversold on its main premise: That of being a paranormal romance, which was… not great right out of the gate, tbh.
This book ended up being a bit frustrating to get through because of nonsensical choices, missing plots, McGuffins galore, and indecisive characters badly in need of self-agency and clear motivation/drives.

On a scale of 1-5 stars, I rated this a two, only because I don’t like one-starring books unless they really deserve it, and this one didn’t. Also, because while I have an excessive amount of gripes and snarky commentary, there genuinely were parts of this book I felt were enjoyable… even though I had to fight for those moments among the rest of the novel, which largely pancaked it, in my opinion.

I wanted to love this book—I really did. A cute, cozy romance involving witches and vampires? Count me in!
However, this story almost immediately fell apart within the first 100 or so pages. There were aspects of it I did enjoy and thought were cute, like the sweet, snack-eating skunk, Penelope, who is one of my favorite characters in the entire book (scratch that, she is my favorite). But ultimately, having failed at its first and foremost promise to give us supernatural magical creatures having a cutie li’l romance, I was already in for disappointment.

(Barring Penelope, naturally. As far as magical-creature relationships go, I would have probably been more invested in reading about her budding romance with the badger familiar than about Emma and Alaric.)

At the end of it all, however, I just couldn’t get past the faults in this story and the fact that it felt like a bait and switch. I actually finished this book feeling as though I’d been duped, because this book is NOT a paranormal romance. It was actually closer to something like “dating a millionaire/billionaire” romance that the author decided to rebrand with paranormal aspects—none of which made sense.
You could honestly remove EVERYTHING to do with vampires and quite literally nothing in the story would change. You could even basically remove all the witchy factors and just make it into a story about a young woman trying to get into some kind of political position in her small-town Cornwallian council by volunteering to plan the year-end fundraising shindig, and it would actually have made MORE sense.

None of the paranormal elements in this story were foundational to the plot, and it was painfully apparent from the get-go. If you can remove/shift entire portions of a book and it’s not only still functional and sensical, but also IMPROVES upon the premise, then you’re writing the wrong book.

I cannot stress enough how unnecessary the “paranormal” parts of this book were.

SPOILERS AHEAD!
You have been warned!

Ultimately, there was no reason/necessity/purpose/wherewithal/logic/you name it, behind suggesting that Alaric was a vampire. He could have just been “some duke” and the story would have soldiered on without a hitch.
I say “suggesting” vampirism because the author didn’t just eschew traditional vampire tropes or try to subvert them to better suit a cozy romance, she simply… removed them entirely.

Does a rose by any other name still smell as sweet? Perhaps. But could a vampire who is basically just a rich human still be a vampire? …No. No, he cannot.

Alaric is a “vampire,” which in this world means that he is essentially human—but with fangs, I guess? I mean, I don’t recall a single time in this entire book that they even mentioned his teeth—except to say they retracted when he wasn’t drinking blood—which was basically 100% of the time. He never really drank any blood, and you don’t “see” his fangs or any vampire’s fangs. Ever.
He has the same lifespan as a human; he is born, and dies, just like a human. He has a grandmother and an aunt who are vampires. None of them are preternaturally stronger, faster, immortal, or any other trope that would make sense in a paranormal world of magical realism.
They can go out in sunlight without problem. No religious qualms—heck, they even have a family bible! They eat regular food. They don’t have any “Bat!” abilities or mist powers, and though it wasn’t brought up in the book, I’m fairly certain they can’t summon wolves at will or illicit mind control over human beings, either.

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Alaric doesn’t have to want to kill/eat our protag, but c’mon! Who’s reading vampire romance without hoping for a little bit of vampy sexiness? The author could have just as easily named Alaric “Bruce Wayne,” because his only actual superpower is that he’s exceptionally wealthy and has too much time on his hands to brood and come up with elaborate ruses following his parents’ deaths when he was a boy.
His biggest concern is what he believes to be his grandmother’s failing health, but it turns out she was just not sleeping enough at night because she was binge-watching TV—as though she’d only discovered the talkies this century.
This is in spite of the fact that, as I mentioned, these vampires are not immortal, so she’s only like 60 or 70 something. Also—she’s a vampire???
I thought staying up at night without having to worry about morning people was one of the perks, and yet her sleeping in until 10:00-11:00 a.m. gave our boy Alaric pause enough to be concerned over her health to fake a relationship with the first eligible woman of convenience he meets.
He is literally only fake-dating Emma to begin with because she was… there.

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The premise was… flimsy, at best, but I rolled with it because I wanted to give it a fair shake and let it find its footing, but I really should have just stopped there, because it soon became obvious it wasn’t going to be the book I’d been promised.

Moving on to our girlie protag, Emma: I simply could. not. like. her. I tried—I swear I did!—but she was so wishy-washy, it felt like my head was on a swivel while I tried to figure out her intentions and desires at any given time.
What were her motivations outside of preparing for the witch ball? I still don’t know, and I finished the book.

She’s written in the tropes of a girl who is: “beautiful but doesn’t pay attention to how gorgeous she is,” and “despite being so pretty, apparently the male lead (ML) is the only man to ever notice just how blindingly hot she is and act on it.”
Truthfully, I was glad (at first) that she didn’t get stuck with the “insecure about my beauty and has to be assured by the ML that I’m actually supermodel material” persona, but don’t worry, that was there too—it had just been translated to: “I’m secretly a super powerful witch, but I don’t believe in myself because darn it if I don’t just mess up everything and have to constantly have my self-doubt assuaged by others assuring me I’ll be a great witch someday for sure!”
Her motivations were the most complex part of this story—but only because everything was so one-dimensional on her end that I couldn’t understand what drove her to do anything except accomplish the witch ball.
She doesn’t want money, and therefore doesn’t want to marry a duke, but then she falls in love with him and gets engaged.
She doesn’t like the mansion Alaric lives in, but ends up wanting to live there all the same, even though she preached against the size/wastefulness of it for 75 percent of the book.
She has deep-seated issues with wanting family after growing up as an orphan, yet consistently fails to recognize the very supportive found family she does have until like, 90 percent of the way through the book.
She is frustrated by her lack of ability to do extremely simple witchy things, yet is stubbornly confident in her assertion that there’s no obstacle that she can’t overcome with her magical skills.
She has a major negative connection to Alaric’s deceased father that has haunted her since she was a little girl (more TK on that), yet she gives all of that up effortlessly the moment it’s necessary for them to put aside their differences for the sake of pushing the plot/relationship forward.

Emma’s beef with one of her coven members is a prominent point in the story, as this girl, Lily, happens to be her main rival. Although they never actually resolve anything, they end up as “begrudging” acquaintance-frenemies, even following part of the story where a paparazzo is sniffing around looking to question Emma about her relationship with the duke. Our girl confronts Lily post-haste—on more than one occasion!—to ask her outrightly if she’s the one who gave up the information.
While it turns out that Lily did not sink that low, it’s never actually revealed who did or if the guy was just really good at snooping. He just eventually went away, because… magic, or something? It was like the author forgot about the potential consequences and the character entirely.
There is even a major plot hole wherein the paparazzo questions Emma about the authenticity of her relationship with Alaric, which means someone told him they were only “fake” dating (even though they’ve had sex by this point, so are they really???), and the kicker is that only Emma, Alaric, and Emma’s bestie knew about the “fake” part of their relationship—literally no one else in the entire book knows. DUNDUNDUN!
Is this ever addressed? Nope, it’s just… it just goes away quietly.
Personally, I was hoping for the bestie to be secretly jealous of her friend’s budding success in the coven, as well as her dating/falling in love with the excessively rich and handsome duke, which spurred her to leak the romance deets to the press, given that this is a common theme in the book. Then, upon seeing the distress she’s caused her friend, she would be overcome with the need to make things right and stop the paparazzo when he causes trouble for them, but no… he just goes away.
The tabloid paper he works for is never mentioned before or after this brief interlude, even though the fake relationship wasn’t the horrible truth the duke was hoping to hide from his grandmother. That’s still out there, just suspended by yet another off-screen McGuffin in the form of some kind of magic spell that makes the news people leave him alone.

All’s well that ends, I suppose?

There were many subplots within this story—none of which required paranormal situationships, btw—and all of which could have been resolved in a pretty mundane, nonmagical manner with the heinous amounts of money Alaric’s family has in his duchy.

9 major problems that went against the story’s grain and genuinely frustrated me as a reader:

1. Emma was raised as an orphan and resents the hell out of the man who rescinded funds from her care home as a child—this just so happens to be our ML’s dad.
   In my opinion, there was literally no reason for this connection to be in the story. It added absolutely nothing but a plot point to tie up in the weirdest way possible: by which I mean she eventually admits how she knows of Alaric’s father; he explains that his father was a bad dude; she forgives him; they suck each other’s faces.
   Lifetime of pain, or a hot rich dude? Which would you want to hold onto?
2. The paparazzi/leaked family secrets/evil ex plot line just disappeared altogether.
   I was hoping for a showdown between the evil ex and Emma, but the ex was yet another McGuffin to motivate the story and our boy Alaric’s broodiness, much like his grandmother’s perceived failing health.
3. Alaric seemingly forgets his worries over his grandmother’s health once he finds out she’s got a case of the internet binge streamies and ignores altogether that her life is likely to end soon even if she isn’t sickly.
   I don’t know why the author apparently forgot that the vampire powers she afforded in this world equate to basically nil, and that as an elderly woman somewhere north of 60 or 70 without an extended/immortal lifespan, it’s entirely possible she’ll pass on in the next few years.
   Alaric was raised by this woman, and goes to extreme lengths to keep her happy—yet fails to realize that she’s not exactly the spring vampire chicken anymore. If he was already upset about her failing health when she was perfectly fine, what will he do when she actually is sick? This issue is never addressed. I guess we choose to live in ignorance a little while longer?
4. Emma and Alaric are “fake” dating, but literally fall insta-in-love, and this is somehow a subplot.
   Oh, and the subplots in this book 100 percent sidelined the main romance at every given opportunity. It doesn’t even make sense how quickly Emma and Alaric fell for each other (which is saying a lot in a romance novel), and then how little encouragement they needed to get into bed together. The whole while, they are each professing their pending break up to each other and simultaneously confessing to their important people (Emma’s bestie, Alaric’s grandma) about how they might actually be in love.
5. The witch’s ball was a poor plot motivator that somehow managed to take up the most time in the book, putting the romance elements on the back burner.
   I love a good plot-driven story, but this premise was so flimsy as a means of connecting the two lovers that it ended up actually detracting from the romance and all the subplots that came with it—like dealing with the “joy batteries” and the ghost side quest.
   I was still hoping for some bestie sabotage by this point, because every time something went wrong with the witch’s ball, Emma’s bestie was there—but only to provide support.
   For example, Emma and the bestie are gathering the “joy batteries” necessary to collect magic at the ball to work spells for the coming year—it’s a big friggin’ deal. They go out to the garden shed, where they discover that all 100 or so have been broken. This is a devastating moment, because they’re kind of intrinsic to the ball’s purpose.
   Yet, bestie is quick to point out that it looks like the work of gophers, which is a giant leap and was suspicious AF to me, but Emma never even questioned her logic.
   I, on the other hand, had a lot of questions, like, “Why does the bestie seem to easily recognize the bizarre situation wherein a bunch of critters busted into the shed, broke a joy battery, got high on ‘joy magic,’ and then smashed the rest for fun?” and “Are you telling me that they didn’t put a concrete base under this garden shed and it’s just a dirt floor, which means that their most precious resource for magic is easily accessible to being destroyed by either a human with a shovel or a curious creature with tiny paws?” or, “Why would they keep something so important in a shed in the garden, and if they have magic keeping the door locked, why wouldn’t they have magic around the entire shed to prevent this very thing from happening?“
6. All “conflicts” were either unresolved or needed no resolution because they were solved virtually within moments of occurring or really represented no threat to the underpinning story.
   I understand it’s a cozy romance, but we know the HEA is coming at the end, so it’s fine to introduce a little more spice and situational danger to raise the stakes (buh-dun-tssh). The introduced conflicts were the equivalent of eating a meal with absolutely no seasoning.
7. On the subject of “spice”… this book would rate a 0.5 out of 10 for me, as there was next to none.
   Cozy roms are frequently about the build-up to rather than the finished product, but… this is a paranormal romance, which carries its own genre-setting rules. Honestly, I cringed through most of the first sex scene, just because it was extremely awkward and contrived, barely lasted for a few paragraphs, and happens to be the most sex you see in this book. Other scenes are literally fade to black.
   Again… I know this is a cozy romance and it’s not going to be paired next to Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton or Kelley Armstrong, but this is supposed to be a paranormal romance, and therefore should have at least rated as jalapeño on the Scoville scale.
8. The main characters themselves were fairly unlikable/unremarkable, and the eleventh-hour breakup was as predictable as it was short lived.
   The icing on the cake was that the silly miscommunication behind it made me dislike the characters all the more. How can you turn on someone that quickly without even speaking to them about it? Rational adult concepts were completely out the window. And more importantly, why would Emma want to get back together with Alaric after his behavior?
   By this point in the book, he’s shown this disturbingly petulant, crappy attitude to her on multiple occasions and lashed out easily when he was mad.
   I can oftentimes overlook red-flag men in romance novels (who among us hasn’t hoped for the reformed bad boy?), but this… this just seemed like the sort of thing he’d keep doing forever—or however long he lives since he’s not immortal. He wasn’t so much exhibiting a single bad behavior as he was showcasing an entire flaw as his personality. Even toward the end when he’s trying to win her back, he never “grew” as a person—vampire, whatever—he just used his money to buy Emma’s forgiveness, which was… ick.
   I was almost rooting for her to break up with him by the end and focus on her career in the coven, because that goal was the one singular motivation that remained constant throughout the story.
9. All of the paranormal aspects of this had to be cobbled together a bit clumsily to make all the other paranormal aspects work.
   I genuinely felt at times like the author forgot about the vampires altogether and hoped that we would, too.
   BUT WE DIDN’T FORGET.

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Sorry, I’m just gonna stay salty about it.

Ultimately, I didn’t hate this book, but I really, really struggled to get past the above glaring issues. There were some moments in there that were cute, but these were far superseded by how hard I had to work to enjoy them.
All in all, this is a rich-guy romance; not a paranormal one, and would have benefitted to be written as a modern-day nonmagical story without so many elements interfering with the main plot. I do encourage you to read How to Fake-Date a Vampire for yourself so you can meet Penelope, our stink queen, a gem of a skunk among the crack-addled gophers eating joy in Cornwall.