Charlotte Stein has been writing for several years, starting in the erotic romance field and has recently turned her hand to contemporary romance. Her popular 2024 release When Grumpy Met Sunshine introduced readers to Mabel and Alfie, and Mabel’s best friend Connie is the star of this new release, My Big Fat Fake Marriage.

Connie is a marketing copy editor and an aspiring writer. She lives down the hall from Henry Samuel Beckett, or Beck as he’s usually known, Mabel’s book editor. In fact, it was Mabel who found the apartment for Beck to live in. Beck is a large man; friendly, cheerful, polite and a bit shy. A gentle giant, if you will, who likes to bake and likes to leave goodies outside Connie’s door. He seems a bit too good to be true to Connie, who has a very cynical view of men having been disappointed by them many times in her life, but then she inadvertently discovers that in defending himself from a bullying colleague, Beck has invented for himself a fake wife. Beck spends a lot of his time coming up with details about this non-existant spouse in case someone asks about her, but lying makes him feel stressed out and sick. While Connie has trouble sticking up for herself, she has no problem when it comes to defending others and is outraged on his behalf.

Beck has organized a writing retreat that Connie has been planning to attend anyway, encouraged by Mabel. Attending a book launch party for Mabel before the retreat though, Connie encounters the bully (Doug) from Beck’s office who is harassing Beck about speaking to a woman (her) and without thinking about it, Connie blurts out “Of course he’s talking to me. I’m his wife.”

So Beck’s fake imaginary wife has now become his fake real person wife. Which would be fine and easy to cope with if she weren’t going to be seeing Doug again, but he’s also going to the writing retreat and he’s sharing a two bedroom cabin with Beck. So now, instead of going as herself, she’s going to have to go as Beck’s fake wife. They say that opposites attract and Connie and Beck appear to be opposites – but are they really? And what if it turns out that they’re each other’s perfect partner?

Ms. Stein has a writing style that some people really like, and others don’t. It’s very introspective, with a lot of internal woolgathering and thinking and daydreaming and lusting and not everyone is comfortable getting so deep into someone else’s head. I happen to like her style but I know it’s not for everyone. This book is written entirely from Connie’s point of view but you don’t feel like you’re missing Beck’s perspective because of the amount of detail that comes from Connie.

Because of Connie’s upbringing – her parents were very critical – and her general life experiences, she’s often hidden parts of herself, including the fact that her real name is actually Hazel and she’d chosen Connie because it sounded like a cooler name. When Beck finds that out, he insists on calling her Hazel and says that he likes the name Hazel a lot, so Connie becomes Hazel in the story from that point on. This is a slow burn romance with the first 60% of the book being a lot of lusting on Hazel’s side, and the last 40% is where she discovers that the lust is mutual and the pair engage in some intimate relations of the distinctly horny kind. The author doesn’t mince words, and there are pages and pages of sexual longing and then sexual experience which is what bumps this up from a ‘warm’ rating to a ‘hot’ one.

Sex aside though, Hazel discovering that Beck is as good a man as he appears to be is very sweet and satisfying. They have a lot of things in common, nerdy things like eighties TV shows and science fiction books and writing silly texts to each other, and Beck’s idea of a perfect weekend morning with a partner – drinking coffee in bed and splitting sections of the newspaper to read side-by-side – sounds pretty ideal to Hazel, too. It just comes down to getting Hazel to believe that she can be that partner for Beck.

If you’re in the mood for a slow burn, steamy, forced proximity (there’s only one bed!), funny, and charming (if a little long-winded sometimes) romance, My Big Fat Fake Marriage is definitely a book for you.