Dating is hard. Being dateless at your perfect sister’s wedding is harder.
Meet Kelly. A brilliant but socially awkward robotics engineer desperately seeking a wedding date…
Meet Ethan. Intelligent, gorgeous, brings out the confidence Kelly didn’t know she had and … not technically human. (But no one needs to know that.)
With her sister’s wedding looming and everyone in the world on her case about being perpetually single, Kelly decides to take her love life into her own hands – and use her genius skills to create Ethan.
But when she can’t resist keeping her new boy toy around even after the ‘I do’s’, Kelly knows she needs to hit the off switch on this romance, fast. Only, when you’ve found (well, made) your perfect man, how do you kiss him goodbye?
Title : How To Build A Boyfriend From Scratch
Author : Sarah Archer
Format : eARC
Page Count : 400
Genre : Contemporary Romance
Publisher : Harper Collins
Release Date : July 2, 2019
Reviewer : Micky
Rating : ★ ★ ★
2.5 – 3 stars
This title is called The Plus One in the US but here in the UK, we like to really spell it out and to be honest, I prefer the UK title and cover. HOW TO BUILD A BOYFRIEND FROM SCRATCH was such an up and down read for me. I struggled to get through the first 20%, then it became rather interesting and from there I had wavering interest that peaked and troughed.
This book is pretty much what it says on the tin, full of quirkiness in terms of the heroine, Kelly. Ethan, said boyfriend was really interesting but he just didn’t get enough word time. I longed to get more insight into Ethan, who or what he was, how he was evolving and more than anything the dynamic between Kelly and Ethan. I just felt deflated that the focus was more often than not on Kelly, her work and infuriating family relationships.
There was some fantastic dialogue and banter between the characters, especially Ethan and Kelly when we actually saw them together and those moments were gold. It told me that this author has such potential in terms of narrative but it was inconsistent.
“Is Confibot giving you grief again?
Want me to give him a talk, mandroid to mandroid?”
“So did you see how that was supposed to be funny” she asked him as they walked to the car afterward.
“I think so,” he said. “Breasts are funny, anuses are funny, penises are funny, and testicles are funny.”
I had an issue with one throw-away comment by the mother with regards to downs syndrome which I found offensive, as the author didn’t deal with it. Therefore, she should not have written this in her narrative.
So reading my review, which to me seems full of contradictions, you can probably see how conflicted I was reading this. I loved the idea of the book, I enjoyed some of the content, there were pacing issues and I didn’t enjoy other elements. I wasn’t overly satisfied in the end.
Thank you to Harper Collins UK and netgalley for the review copy.
A Take from Two Cities 