Fake Flame
Adele Buck makes her traditional publishing debut with Fake Flame, a fake-dating rom com that has its ups and downs but is ultimately a good contemporary romance.
Set in the world of academia, Fake Flame follows the story of forty-one-year-old literature and pop culture professor Eva Campbell and Sean Hannigan, the slightly younger (at thirty-six) firefighter who comes to her rescue. Eva’s ex, Darren, is tone deaf to her hard ‘no’ to the big romantic gestures he keeps making in the attempt to win her back. She’s SO done with his cheating ass, but even setting fire to the baby grand he’s hauled onto campus so he can publicly serenade her doesn’t cool his unwelcome ardor.
Here’s where Sean enters the picture, with his big, brawny, bravery set on saving the day. Putting out the fire is nothing for this competent do-gooder, who could do it in his sleep. He goes above and beyond when he steps up to provide Eva with a fake boyfriend intended to be a barrier to Darren’s advances. It should come as no surprise that Darren doesn’t take the bait, and continues with his misguided mission, despite Eva’s evident lack of interest.
I find the fake dating trope to be either really good or really bad, with little wiggle room in between. Buck falls on the side of good, but to consider this romance as just a fake dating trope is doing it a disservice. Here we have mature characters who’ve come through their twenties and thirties (in Sean’s case, most of his thirties) and are successful in their careers. They’re settled in their home lives for the most part, and know who they are in this big, wide world. I like that. I liked that one of the main points of conflict between Eva and Sean is children. Both have strong opinions based on experience, goals, and insight, yet both are able to have a mature, adult conversation on the topic. (Because there is no one right or wrong answer here.)
I also like that Eva’s coarse language and imaginative names for Darren just set her free – I’m looking at you, “assweasel”. From the beginning, I thought, this is the character for me because I’m all about retribution. But I found the frequent old-school head hopping distracting, and some important details feel a little rushed in their resolution.
Ultimately, though, Fake Flame is fun, and the characters are interesting. It’s a good opener for the author’s First Responders series.
Recent Comments
Have this one on my TBR!
I find myself wishing for the flower cover to come back!
I hated it at the time, but at least, it was not so demeaning – these endless cartoon covers make me feel like I am treated like a child, especially since they are used for adult books – teenage fantasy has the better covers!
The last 5 books all have these horrible neons color blocky cartoons – I feel like the Barbie movie on endless repeat…
I think it’s part of the homogeneity of popular culture. Book covers are to me like the endless sequels in movies–easily confused and rarely impressive.
Agree about the cartoon covers. They are often so childish. It seems to me that covers often follow a pattern. Everyone is similar until one successful book breaks the mold, then all at once it’s “oh that’s different” and everyone does it and it’s no longer different, just boring. Remember when 50 SHades came out, then there were dozens of books with just a tie or cufflinks or something like that on the cover. Now all the YA fantasy (and sone adult) are all titled The __ of ___ and _____, and they all have similar covers. Publishers/authors are trying to cash in on the success of another book/series/style. It’s understandable, but it always goes on too long before someone comes up with another “original” idea and we’re off to the races again. :-)
Take a look at all the incredible foreign covers for KJ Charles’ Charm of Magpies series. I would pay some serious money for covers like the Thai, Taiwanese, or Japanese covers! Especially the Japanese ones.
https://kjcharleswriter.com/2022/11/28/seven-for-a-secret-a-covers-gallery/
Oh yes, these covers are stunning!
Wish we had those!
Those covers are gorgeous. What a shame there appears not to be anyone in US/UK publishing with the imagination or creativity to come up with something like that. (And yes, I realise the artists work to a brief – it’s the people who commission the covers I’m talking about.)
And yes to everything else you said. I don’t really care much about the covers of the books I read – I’m e-books exclusively these days so little black and white thumbnails don’t mean much to me, but seeing all the same-old, same-old covers of so many of the books we review does make me sad.
The e-book version of KJ Charles’ Band Sinister is exactly the same as e-book version of Georgette Heyer’s False Colors!
True – but it’s a public domain image, and I think the Heyer cover has changed several times since that edition was published.
We happened to stop at Barnes and Noble today for the first time in a while and I looked at the Romance aisle. Several takeaways:
1- There are SO MANY cartoon covers like this one. So. Many. It looked like a grade school section as far as style and colors.
2- There were way more LGBTQ authors represented with at least a book or two than I’d ever seen. Alexis Hall had almost an entire shelf, but I also saw Annabeth Alberts, KJ Charles, Jess Everlee, and 5 or 6 more. So that’s good.
3- There are only trade paperbacks for sale, and a few hardcovers. The starting price was around $15 and it went up from there, and I thojught the covers felt much flimsier than when i was buying paper books. I guess mass market aren’t being sold much anymore. I saw some in the Mysteries section, and on a shelf marked Westerns, but that was all I saw in the fiction section.
I’ll just say Barnes and Noble buys for its local audience. I’m betting there are whole swaths of the US where the queer representation sucks.
That’s undoubtedly true. Given the way books are being banned at libraries I doubt retailers are going to risk public uproar about “inappropriate” books, even in the adult sections.
We are so busy sorting ourselves into worlds that reflect our views. It’s not great.
I’m seeing a lot of discussion about younger readers being more “puritannical” about cover images, hence the scramble to get the crayons out to re-cover older books, too. And that’s upsetting readers who liked the original covers, especially when the e-books update automatically.
Publishers and authors can’t win whatever they do, but surely its not great for one book to be practically indistinguishable from the next.
I never thought anything could make me nostalgic for the clinch covers, but at least those looked like they were aimed at adults.
I remember doing the Coming Soon posts and how they morphed in the space of about a year into rows of bright, blocky covers that all looked the same.
Thank you, that is interesting – since I live in a place outside the English speaking world, I rarely get to a bookshop to see the current offerings.
Bookshops in the UK rarely have large romance sections in my experience, so it’s not just you.
At least this cartoon cover has faces with features. I don’t like the trend of covers with faces that are blank (no eyes, nose or mouth). I agree with you that Fantasy books have some beautiful covers.