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RedditI just finished reading Faking With Benefits by Lily Gold and I wanted to sit down right away to talk about it. So I’m giving you a Faking With Benefits book review sharing my thoughts on this book and who I think would enjoy it.
“Okay, babe. I don’t know how strong the human head is, and I don’t think it matters. There’s no weight capacity. Just sit on his face, and if he dies, he dies.”
Lily Gold, Faking With Benefits
First off this book is a reverse harem which means there is one woman with more than two male love interests. In this case there is one woman and three men. If you are not interested in this type of romance I would recommend you skip this review and book.
Trigger Warnings
Since we don’t always get trigger warnings on books I like to give trigger warnings in my reviews. This can help people avoid certain triggers that could hurt their mental well being.
Possible Triggers in this book are:
- Alcohol
- Anxiety
- Bullying (Past and some current)
- Divorce
- Misogyny (Not in the MC’s)
- Profanity
- Sexism (Not in the MC’s)
- Sexual Assault (Past)
- Sexual Harrassment (Past)
- Sexually Explicit Scenes
- Slut Shaming
For a list of the triggers I look for you can check out this link here. This may or may not be a complete list of triggers for this book, I do my best to make sure I mark anything that could be a potential trigger but I may accidentally miss triggers.
Faking With Benefits Synopsis
Layla Thompson is a successful lingerie designer who lives across the hall from her three overprotective best friends Josh, Zack, and Luke who run Three Single Guys podcast, which is a popular relationship advice podcast and they give dating advice to their listeners.
Layla has a dating problem. She’s been on 120 first dates and can’t seem to get a guy to ask her out on a second date and she hasn’t had a boyfriend since high school. So after another bad date and some liquid courage she asked her friends to help her with her dating skills. The four of them agree to turn it into a segment on the podcast in exchange for her to get advertising spots for her lingerie line. They will be her fake boyfriends and teach her all aspects of dating.
The guys weren’t expecting that they would soon become the students dealing with their own relationship hangups in the process of helping her.
Lily Gold is a reverse harem romance author who lives in London, England. This is my first book that I’m ready from Lily Gold, it will not be my last. I loved the humor, the character development, and the way she writes. It’s easy to read and you really fall for her characters.
Faking With Benefits Reading Experience
I read Faking With Benefits on my tablet. It is available on Kindle Unlimited and quite frankly I have been mostly reading from my KU subscription. It’s probably the best money I spend on a subscription service because I read like 15 to 20 books a month. It averages out to about $0.50 a book.
The book took me about eight hours to read which was one nightly read of a couple hours and a few more hours through the next day. It is 544 pages so it’s a good size book, the formatting though has spaces between the paragraphs which made it an easy read. I actually find that I prefer this formatting because as a mom I get interrupted while I’m reading, often. This type of formatting allows me to more easily find where I left off.
I would say that I did need a few tissues with this book, but I am emotional right now. I started reading this book on June 23rd and woke up the next morning to the overturning of Roe. So I finished the book today the 25th.
With that being said, with the emotional state I was in this book did still help me to escape at least for a little bit. Lily is fantastic about being able to suck you into a book and I’m grateful for it because I was not ok. Being able to escape helped me to get past the racing thoughts that took over.
Faking With Benefits is a sizzling fake dating romance, with a whole lot of heart, and an ultra-sweet HEA (Happily Ever After.)
Faking With Benefits Book Review
Layla Thompson is a boss and while our first introduction of her doesn’t really make that clear, you will quickly find out just how strong she is. She has a quick wit when she isn’t stuck in her head and I relate to that a lot. I have anxiety and social anxiety. It can cause us to freeze or come off as something different. It takes time for us to grow comfortable enough with people that we can really be ourselves. Lily did a fantastic job capturing that in Layla.
Now for the boys. Josh is the sweetheart boy-next-door who will probably make you love him at first meeting. Zach is the former huge rugby player with a cheeky grin who just wants to make everyone happy, which of course means he has some pretty big struggles himself. Luke is the serious silver-haired divorcee and an old professor of Layla’s who keeps everyone in line… in more ways than one.
The men come up with a lesson plan while being Layla’s practice boyfriends. Faking with benefits is packed with heat from the first butterfly-inducing touch to a molten kiss then finally a spicy group scene that will have you reading one handed.
I love the friendship to lovers story. The dynamic within this group of characters is fantastic. We get hilarious scenes, touching scenes, lots of sexy scenes, and even a few arguments. All of the characters are flawed and go through some sort of growth in this book. I like that and it works really well.
The book is based in London and I do wish we had gotten a bit more description from the setting. However, not having that extra description didn’t take away from the story for me. I just personally like having more descriptive settings.
Star Rating
Before I rate this book I want to give you a bit of background about what my rankings mean. I typically read books that I check out through the Libby app with my local library or through Kindle Unlimited.
I rarely buy ebooks unless they are cheaply priced or on sale. I also very rarely buy physical copies of books. I’m a bit of a minimalist so I have to absolutely adore a book to buy a physical copy that will be proudly displayed in my home.
So my ranking system is as follows:
- 5 Stars equals I am buying a physical copy of this book. I will read this book at least 10 more times, it is the best ever.
- 4 stars equals a great book. I might buy an ebook version when it’s on sale so that I can re-read it at least one more time.
- 3 stars equals a good book. I likely won’t read again but I appreciate the story.
- 2 stars equals “Meh.” I will not read this book again, it had a lot of problems and I did not care for it.
- 1 star equals a bad book. I barely finished this book and I will never recommend anyone waste valuable book reading time on this book.
- 0 stars is a did not finish book. I will never finish that book and it is banished.
Faking With Benefits gets 5 stars from me, with 4 peppers in spice, and a tissue because I was sniffling a bit and may have shed a tear or two. The story was sweet with plenty of spice while also making sense. I would say this is a good smut read, because it has a clear plot that you are actually interested in with a good amount of spice that never feels unnecessary.
Final Thoughts on Faking With Benefits
If you want a sweet contemporary romance reverse harem with a strong female main character and three flawed male characters this is it for you. If you are a fan of contemporary romance and reverse harems, absolutely read this book.
If you are new to reverse harems I really do believe that this book is a great place to start if you like contemporary romance. Soon I’ll be sharing a post on the reverse harems that I’ve read so far and my thoughts on them.
If you like Mafia Romance Forget-Me-Not Bombshell is a good reverse harem to start with, check out my Forget Me Not Bombshell book review here.
Have you read Faking With Benefits by Lily Gold? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest and TikTok for more like this and pin this to your favorite book boards.
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