My Christmas Fiancé

I saw a few friends add this to their TBR and since I've been wanting to read more Christmas books this year, I figured I might as well try it. Well, I'm wishing I hadn't.

I hated Stratton. Okay, that's not fair. He has some redeeming qualities and there was quite a lot that he did was good. He and Meg have good open communication and he tried not to overstep his boundaries with Oscar. He's an overall great guy, but the chapters in his POV were hard to read. For starters, he has a few horrible ideas or thoughts on things such as men shouldn't talk about their feelings with their friends, his greatest gifts to Meg (or all he can think to give her) his jewelry literally not even calling on any of her other interests, telling Natalie she wouldn't be single for long because she's so beautiful, and a few other things. Let's also not forget how often he thought about Natalie or compared her to Meg, which is SUPER NOT HEALTHY. I kept wanting to scream at him to just get over it. Yes, I understand they had a 5 year relationship, but they've been over for 7 months and he's the one who broke up with her!

Meg... Meg was actually a bit bland. She had so many avenues to show more personality, but... yeah. I don't understand why we don't see them game together, that would have been super sweet...

As for the fake engagement trope– this is one I usually love. Here it felt more like an excuse and not really played with as much as it could have been. The reasoning was sound, but execution– especially for Meg's benefit could have been better.
The middle of the book feels a bit confusing, like Meg and Stratton kept getting confused about if they were going to have sex or if they were trying to maintain boundaries or even about reasons why being in a relationship would be complicated. For a couple with as much open communication as them, you'd think there would have been less confusion.

So, I'm not a fan of this one. I'm not sure if I'll read the sequel, but some people have said it is better than this first one, soooo maybe?