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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Love Con is a nerdy interracial contemporary romance by Seressia Glass. The paperback version is 309 pages. We follow two main characters with third-person points-of-view.
Kenya just made it into the finals of the reality show Cosplay or No Way. She’s so close to her dream of turning her creative hobby into an actual career, as the winner of the competition will be asked to work in the costuming department for a major motion picture. Then the judges announce the challenge for the final round: iconic pairs, and the contestants need to work with a teammate from their life.
Kenya’s competitor chooses his husband, so she decides to announce her long-time best friend (whom she lives with) as her partner on live television. This is news to Cameron, the aforementioned best friend, as he watches the episode live. However, he’s down to be her fake boyfriend for the show because he’s secretly been in love with her for years. He hopes that roleplaying a couple in love will make them actually fall in love for real.
This was a really fun read! I love cosplay and have been in that community for a long time, and I really appreciated the book’s focus on the technical side of the hobby. A lot of work goes into cosplay, and perhaps someone unfamiliar with costuming will learn just how much through reading this novel.
The book delves into microaggressions, as one of the judges on the reality competition show is trying to paint Kenya as the “angry black woman” and some folks on the production team also join in on that quest. There are also some scenes with Cameron’s ex-girlfriend with this as well. Separate from the microaggressions, I disliked Kenya’s parents because of how they speak to her and try to dictate her life.
Tropes in this book include: friends to lovers, fake dating, interracial romance, nerds in love, reality tv competition, fat heroine
CW: microaggressions, fatphobia, ultimatums, lying to friends & family
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