Hopeless

Beau Eaton is the town prince, a handsome military hero with a tortured past. I'm the outcast bartender, a shy girl from the wrong side of the tracks. He's thirty-five and all man, I'm twenty-two and all . . . virgin. He's also my fiancé. Correction: my fake fiancé. We start out as a bet. He doesn't believe that anyone holds my last name against me. So he offers me his to prove a point. It's a win-win. He gets a break from his concerned family's prying, and I get a chance to shed my family's reputation while I save up to ditch this small town. He says all I have to do is wear his ring, follow his lead, and pretend I can't keep my hands off of him in public. But it's what happens between us in private that blurs all those carefully drawn lines . . . It's what transpires behind closed doors that doesn't feel like pretending at all . . . This engagement was supposed to be for show. This agreement? It has an end date. He once told me he'd never fall in love. And yet here I am, head over heels for my fake fiancé.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.