seriously romantic: no romance required by cari quinn

so it's well-established that i love a good fake relationship story. in no romance required cory santangelo starts out the novel getting some crazy pressure at a charity event from his family to take a step back from work and look for some romance. when he goes outside for some fresh air he runs into victoria townsend, the designer he is currently working with and his nemesis since childhood. And for some reason, sparks fly. they share an intimate moment, which is photographed without their knowledge.

to cover for the photographs, cory proposes that he and victoria pretend that they have something serious, at least until his parents' retirement and goodbye party. this will get his parents off his back about his sex life and will cover for their momentary indiscretion.

cory and victoria go back and forth on whether or not they can actually commit to being in a fake relationship. and there's a lot of back-and-forth on whether or not victoria can handle the kind of sexual intimacy that cory demands from his lovers. they spend more time in this will-they-won't-they than they do on the relationship. but eventually the chemistry is too great to deny. and they give into it.

and obviously from the get-go it is clear that there is more between them than something fake. they have strong feelings for each other, feelings that go back to the middle school, even though they never actually have a real conversation about this.

one of my frustrations with the story was the fact that there was a lot going on, a lot of past history to cover that the shorter format of a category romance doesn't allow. i also didn't love the fact that cory's parents take credit for manipulating the situation. i really hate it when the characters develop a relationship and then other secondary characters claim to have all the credit for it. these two were going to have a relationship no matter what, why does it have to be on someone else's timetable? that just makes no sense to me.

but whatever, in the end this is a quick, sexy read. this was also book 3 of the love required series, and it wasn't necessary to have read the other books in the series to enjoy this one.

**no romance required published on august 12, 2013. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing (brazen) in exchange for my honest review.