The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson – Review

Published: December 5, 2023

Publisher: Berkley

Series: N/A

Genre: Romance, Paranormal

Pages: 400 (Paperback)

My Rating: 4.25 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Two wolf shifters agree to be fake mates but unexpectedly find something real in this steamy paranormal romantic comedy by Lana Ferguson.

Mackenzie Carter has had some very bad dates lately. Model train experts, mansplainers, guys weirdly obsessed with her tail—she hasn’t had a successful date in months. Only a year out of residency, her grandmother’s obsession with Mackenzie finding the perfect mate to settle down with threatens to drive Mackenzie barking mad. Out of options, it feels like a small thing to tell her grandmother that she’s met someone. That is, until she blurts out the name of the first man she sees and the last man she would ever date: Noah Taylor, the big bad wolf of Denver General.

Noah Taylor, interventional cardiologist and all around grump, has spent his entire life hiding what he is. With outdated stigmas surrounding unmated alphas that have people wondering if they still howl at the moon, Noah has been careful to keep his designation under wraps. It’s worked for years, until an anonymous tip has everything coming to light. Noah is left with two options: come clean to the board and risk his career—or find himself a mate. The chatty, overly friendly ER doctor asking him to be her fake boyfriend on the same day he’s called to meet the board has to be kismet, right?

Mackenzie will keep her grandmother off her back, and Noah will get a chance to prove he can continue to work without a real mate—a mutually beneficial business transaction, they both rationalize. But when the fake-mate act turns into a very real friends-with-benefits arrangement, lines start to blur, and they quickly realize love is a whole different kind of animal.

This was the perfect sick day read – I got approved for it, was super bored so I picked it up, and then binge read it in six hours. It was so much fun! The Fake Mate is a contemporary paranormal romance and the two main characters are doctors who also happen to be werewolves! If you like the fake dating trope or shifter romance, this will be the book for you.

Mackenzie Carter is a kind young ER doctor establishing her career while also trying to avoid another bad date set up by her grandmother, and she accidentally puts her foot in her mouth when she panics and says she’s dating Noah Taylor. Noah is the head of the cardiology department and is known to be a grouchy, intimidating werewolf, but he’s in a situation where pretending to be mated to Mackenzie is good for his career so the pair come to an agreement. For the hospital board to be okay with his status as an alpha wolf, they pretend to be mates but for Mack’s grandmother, they are merely in the dating stage of things. It’s a complicated deceit, and one that ends up with them falling for each other as one might expect.

This book is an absolute riot of laughs and is surprisingly full of steamy scenes. Those cutesy cartoon covers are a LIE, but I admit I’d rather read that in public than something with like, shirtless chiseled Fabio on the front. I was super invested in the romance and both characters getting their happy ending. I was super pissed that they went through the whole third act breakup thing (spoiler) because I really hate that trope 95% of the time. I could see it coming from almost the very beginning of the book and the reasoning behind it was flimsy and entirely because the characters didn’t communicate like real adults. That being said, I loved the rest of the book and thought Mack’s bad jokes were fabulous and Noah was the perfect gentle grump.

Overall, I was delighted by this and it made for a perfect sick day binge read. I know I’m posting this review quite early, but I didn’t want to wait to hype it until December! It was incredibly entertaining and has definitely encouraged me to pick up more contemporary paranormal romance.