Do you get excited feeling when you finally get your hands on a romance novel you've been dying to read? I had that excited feeling when I found out I was approved for a digital arc from Forver Publishing of The Boyfriend Project. I couldn't wait to read it and thought it would be the perfect summer novel. It DRAGGED! You know it's bad when you're a little less than 50% of the way through ready to be over. I should've been able to finish it in about 2 days but couldn't because I couldn't find anything worth getting lost into.
I feel cheated because I thought this would be a cute Black romance. The leading lady Samiah is Black but the leading man Daniel is biracial of an African-American and Korean mix. And he seemed to lean more towards his Korean side. Though to be honest him being biracial wasn't really explored too much. Mostly it was just a reason to gush over his mixed features. There was one brief conversation where Samiah was explaining to Daniel that she had to be twice as good as everyone else as a Black woman. And then she felt bad and apologized for being intensive and daring to think he as a biracial man wouldn't get it. And then he said some bs about how their experiences are different because as a half Asian people expect him to be a model minority. And then it switched back to Samiah explaining to him how Black women have to be better than everyone else. And instead of going further in depth the conversation switched from there. A deeper conversation could've been had as it relates to his biracial heritage and the privileges and disadvantages it affords him.
The book starts off with a bang with Samiah's sister reading some live tweets about a bad date that's been going viral. As the woman tweets more and more Samiah realizes that the woman is tweeting about her man! The same man she's currently getting dolled up for. And the restaurant he's currently at is in her neighborhood. She rushes down to the sushi spot to let him have it and there's a 3rd woman in the mix. He's been playing all of them. They grab their sushi on him and storm out to enjoy the rest of their night. Meanwhile the video goes viral and Samiah becomes the talk of the office.
My biggest problem is that the relationships were not properly developed. I wanted to like the friendship between the three women but it moved way too quickly and mostly happened off page so I couldn't get invested in it. And I wanted to because there's nothing like Black women friendships
Samiah and Daniel meet off screen and we hear from his inner thoughts that he's been making excuses to pop into the coffee shop to see her every day. From there the relationships seems rushed over an unclear timeline. It's developed as if weeks of working together has gone by but at other times it's mentioned Daniel has only been working at the company a couple.
The entire time Daniel is harboring a secret which I won't give any spoilers about but I will say he didn't do a good job keeping his double identity a secret or his lies straight.
I liked the representation of a Black woman in STEM who is trying to succeed at work and develop her own app on the side but I couldn't fall in love with this book.
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