Book Review: The Best Friend Bargain By Crystal Kaswell

The Best Friend Bargain
(Inked Love #1)
By Crystal Kaswell

Narrators: Kai Kennicott & Wen Ross
Length: 9 hours and 35 minutes

I'm faking a relationship with my best friend. What could possibly go wrong?

Skye is my best friend. I trust her with my life.

So when she asks me to play her boyfriend?

I say hell no. Love screws everything up. And I'm not about to lose the only person who gets me.

But Skye is determined. She's bringing a fake boyfriend to her cousin’s wedding, with or without me.

No way am I letting some other guy hold her, touch her, kiss her.

It has to be me.

It's strange, smiling like I'm madly in love.

But it's easy, wrapping my arms around her curvy body.

It's easy, dragging my lips over her soft neck.

And when she kisses me?

It’s easy, realizing she's the only thing I need.

I have five weeks of faking it. Five weeks to convince my best friend our fake love is real.

The Best Friend Bargain is a standalone friends to lovers/pretend girlfriend romance featuring a brooding tattoo artist hero and the curvy heroine who brings him to his knees.

Available At:

| Amazon | Audible |

My Review:

The first half of this book was fantastic and deserves 5 stars. The second half was meh, unfortunately. I could have sworn I had found the best contemporary book of the year in that first half. It was that good. The story was engaging, the characters complex and multidimensional. The writing and pacing were also very good. Then along the halfway point something went wrong.

Let's start off with my dislikes of this novel first. I'm hoping it's in the book and not just a stylistic choice on the female narrator's part but she would say the word "ahem" in weird points in the conversation. Was it supposed to be a quirk? Maybe the main character has a throat problem that was never mentioned? I don't know what it was but it took its toll in the second half of the novel. My other problem was the prominent use of the C-word over and over and over again by the male lead. Maybe it's just me but the repeated use of that word started making me resent finishing this book. It got to be that bad for me. I can understand and brush off the use of that word once or twice but not the number of times it was spoken during this novel.

Skye was such an amazing character! She was sassy with witty comebacks galore. I loved the banter and chemistry between her and Forrest! This is the kind of witty banter I look for in all the books I read. I liked how she was represented as a bigger girl and how that didn't correlate to her being a recluse with no friends and having never dated because of her size. We need to leave that thinking in the past where it belongs.

Forrest was a sweet and heartbroken man. His trust issues were his biggest battle throughout this novel and it will probably continue to be for the rest of his days. I liked how protective of Skye he was. I loved how he eventually stood up to no-good-Mac. The b with an itch had that and SO much more coming.

The ending was disappointing. I wanted Mac to get what was coming to her for bad mouthing Skye for all these years because of her size. The snide comments took a toll on me as well. I would rather have no relationship with my extended family if this is what I'd be putting myself through every holiday/party/get together. Skye and Forrest get a happy for now ending with a bright future ahead of them and for that, I am somewhat happy. I am rather curious about Holden's story though. I would love to pick it up in the future!

The Audio Book:

I LOVED that this was dual narrated! It made for a fantastic and dynamic reading. Both narrators did fantastic jobs, though the male narrator (as nice a voice as he has) doesn't have much distinction in alternative male voices. Let's just say I got lost in quite a bit a dialogue when it was 3+ guys talking right after the other.

My Rating: