The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson [Review]

The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson
Format: ebook
Source: purchased
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: June 5, 2024

Purchase Links: Paperback | Kindle

Lana Ferguson
| Amazon |

Synopsis (Goodreads):

Mackenzie Carter has had some very bad dates lately. Model train experts, mansplainers, guys weirdly obsessed with her tail—she hasn’t had a successful date in months. Only a year out of residency, her grandmother’s obsession with Mackenzie finding the perfect mate to settle down with threatens to drive Mackenzie barking mad. Out of options, it feels like a small thing to tell her grandmother that she’s met someone. That is, until she blurts out the name of the first man she sees and the last man she would ever date: Noah Taylor, the big bad wolf of Denver General.

Noah Taylor, interventional cardiologist and all around grump, has spent his entire life hiding what he is. With outdated stigmas surrounding unmated alphas that have people wondering if they still howl at the moon, Noah has been careful to keep his designation under wraps. It’s worked for years, until an anonymous tip has everything coming to light. Noah is left with two options: come clean to the board and risk his career—or find himself a mate. The chatty, overly friendly ER doctor asking him to be her fake boyfriend on the same day he’s called to meet the board has to be kismet, right?

Mackenzie will keep her grandmother off her back, and Noah will get a chance to prove he can continue to work without a real mate—a mutually beneficial business transaction, they both rationalize. But when the fake-mate act turns into a very real friends-with-benefits arrangement, lines start to blur, and they quickly realize love is a whole different kind of animal.

Thoughts on The Fake Mate: No joke, I really liked this book. And this was BEFORE I found out Mack's favorite food was soup. SOUP. This is a lady after my own heart. What I'm trying to say is that fake dating (fake mating?) and prodigious soup love are just awesome. Also awesome? Food truck soup date. GLORIOUS!

So. Mackenzie is looking for a little breathing room from her grandmother's terrible blind date set-ups. Honestly, I don't even know if they're *blind* dates, I just know they were bad. At least from Mackenzie's perspective. Noah happens to be in the right place at the right time and since HE needs a fake mate thanks to his Alpha status THINGS HAPPEN. I mean, things don't happen right away. They agree to a mutually beneficial dating/mating agreement which is HILARIOUS since they know next to nothing about one another. Well, mostly nothing. Heck, a lot of what Mackenzie knows about Noah is grossly overexaggerated.

What they do have going for them is a certain something that happens only between an Alpha and an Omega. And that something is worth writing home about, if you ask me.

A little fake dating, a glorious love of soup, scent-marking, territorial displays, a hormone-induced cabin getaway, a man who has been locking part of himself away so long he barely knows what he wants anymore, and a lady who likes the grumpy side of her fake mate far more than she ever expected to. MAN, this was a good one.