[ARC Review] Sheikh's False Fiancée by Leslie North

Release date: 10/4/21

Format: eARC

eARC provided by: Relay Publishing/Victory Editing via Netgalley

--------------------

In Sheikh’s False Fiancée, Leslie North brings us action, adventure, and spice while perfectly blending the best friend’s sibling and fake dating tropes. 

Nadia’s passion for traveling has given her some great footage for her travel blog. But being in the wrong place at the wrong time turned a palace tour into a kidnapping with intent to marry. Luckily, it’s Nadia’s best friend’s brother - Amare, the Sheikh of Kirisil - to the rescue. But Amare knows only one way to save Nadia from an unwanted marriage - pretend to be engaged to her himself. Now Nadia and Amare are stuck playing happy couple until the excitement over their fake engagement dies down. Problem is, the more time Nadia spends around Amare and his young son, the more everyone can see Nadia becoming a permanent part of the sheikh’s life. As love blooms, the lines between sheikh and false fiancée start to blur. 

I know I can always count on Leslie North for a quick read that packs a lot of punch. I immediately was hooked on the best friend’s sibling trope blending flawlessly into the fake dating trope. The whole affair was only about 150 pages, but North packed a lot of action, plot development, and character arc into the shorter book. North also managed to work character introductions for the rest of the series into Sheikh’s False Fiancée. For this length of a book, North included just the right amount of conflict; we get the external conflict early on that lands Nadia in the sheikh’s palace in Kirisil, but there’s also see a bit of internal conflict in both Amare and Nadia as they deny and fight their growing feelings for each other. 

While this isn’t my first Leslie North book, this is my first North book from the expansive Sheikh series. I will say, some of the customs and terminology used regarding Amare’s culture don’t necessarily match up with what I personally know of emirate governorship, but North may have taken some liberties just to make the story flow better and to make Amare and Nadia’s relationship line up more with what western readers are used to in their royalty romances. But despite these potential cultural inconsistencies, I did still very much enjoy watching Nadia and Amare’s relationship grow from something fake to something more.