Review: Size Matters (A Perfect Fit #1)

Size Matters (A Perfect Fit #1)

by Alison Bliss 

Blurb:

 The rules of (fake) engagement . . .

Leah Martin has spent her life trying to avoid temptation. But she's sick of low-fat snacks, counting calories, and her hyper-critical mom. Fortunately, her popular new bakery keeps her good and distracted. But there aren't enough éclairs in the world to distract Leah from the hotness that is Sam Cooper - or the fact that he just told her mother that they're engaged . . . which is a big, fat lie.

Sam sometime speaks before he thinks. So what started out as defending Leah's date-ability to her judgmental mother soon turned into having a fiancée! Now the plan is to keep up the fake engagement, stay "just friends," and make Leah's family loathe him enough to just call the whole thing off . But Sam has an insatiable sweet tooth, not only for Leah's decadent desserts but her decadent curves. Her full lips. Her bright green eyes. Yep, things aren't going quite according to plan. Now Sam has to convince Leah that he's for real . . . before their little lie turns into one big, sweet disaster.

Themes:  Contemporary

Rating: 3.25  stars

Heat Rating: 

Review:

 Ok let’s be honest here, every single reader out there has their own personal hang-ups that they bring with them subconsciously when they start picking reading material, and one of mine is “fuller-figured women need love too”.  I haven’t found very many novels that do it well enough for me to say I’m a true fan, but this story was cute and sweet and I can see that I will probably give any future novels by this author a chance as well.  Leah is a woman that I can fully understand, a woman that all her life has fought with her weight and the traditional views of what makes a woman beautiful, and deals with a mother that constantly picks at her about her weight, blaming her nastiness on her desire to help.   Leah has worked her ass off to make her bakery business a success and even though it doesn’t make her acceptable to her mother, and won’t let anyone get in the way of keeping that success.  When Sam comes into her life, he confuses the hell out of her with his hot and cold behavior.  Once minute he is charming and sweet, offering her sweet kisses and passionate embraces, and then the next moment he pushes her away with harshness and cold distance.  Sam has just ended a relationship with a slightly crazy woman and he has no desire to be roped into another, but he cannot resist Leah.  He makes mistakes with her again and again, and when he tries to help her he ends up putting them both into the crosshairs of her mother.  Leah has no idea how to deal with Sam but the more time she spends with him, the harder it is for her to remember that their relationship is pure fiction.  The emotions he pulls out of her are in no way fictional and as he pulls her in then pushes her away, she knows that he will break her heart far too easily.  I liked both of these characters, but the continuous push-pull of their actions and the wishy-washiness of their relationship was too much to me, taking it from being natural to being a farce.  Had the characters come to terms with the fact that sometimes a person doesn’t really know what they need, the story would have been far shorter and I wouldn’t have lost interest the few times I did.  Mostly that repetitiveness dragged the plot down in places where I would have loved to see more of them proving their love for one another instead of them becoming a true couple in the very end of the story. I can’t say that the story kept my interest at every minute, but it was enjoyable and hits on many serious relationship and personal issues that are common for big girls.  I am looking forward to future novels and hoping that Leah’s BFF finds her own HEA.  I’ll be keeping an eye on Ms. Bliss as her career continues and hope to read even more enjoyable novels with her touch.

*ebook provided by publisher (via netgalley) for the purpose of an honest and unbiased review.  No compensation was provided.