The Misadventures of Getting Lainey a Date

by Eija Jimenez

Lainey Vargas is living her best life in Toronto. She has a job that she loves, an apartment in the city, and her best friend just a few floors above her. The problem? Her family thinks her best friend, Max Walker, has been her boyfriend for half a decade. Unbeknownst to them, Lainey has been with women since her teenage years. With the pressure of her sister's wedding approaching, Max devises a plan to help Lainey come out to her family by getting her a date to the wedding. From strip clubs to blind dates, Lainey endures all of Max's plans in the hopes of finding The One and finally coming out to her conservative Filipino parents.

Genres: Romance, LGBT, Contemporary

186 pages, Paperback

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

Eija Jimenez has been a writer since her elementary days where cardboard rocketships could fly to the moon. Still to this day, Eija avidly writes LGBTQ+ fiction, hoping to add to this ever-growing community and give representation to queer minorities.

She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2014 where she studied English and Psychology. She received her Honours Bachelor of Arts and tries to put four intensive years of schooling to good use through writing.

When she’s not crafting stories in her head, Eija can be found hurling axes (at bulleyes!), out for a hike, or jamming out in a good car-eoke session.

She lives in Toronto, Canada with her wife and their two dogs, Honey and Dijon.

If she could give one piece of advice to anyone, she would quote Max Erhmann's Desiderata: "You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars." No matter how small or insignificant you feel, the whole universe would be different without you.

Reviews

[Elske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute story !

[Lyn Denison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lainey is a delightful character and so endearing. Charley is kind and a perfect match. I found myself wanting to step in and help Max in his determination to set Lainey up. It’s slow-burn, satisfying and Lainey and her friends are simply nice authentic young people. I’m sure this storyline will resonate with a lot of readers and I well remember wanting to take a girl to a wedding and openly dance with her.

[Siddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lainey is a disaster. She is too scared of her overbearing Filipina mother to come out, and so she has been using her best friend Max as her beard for the last five years. Her sister Avri is getting married, Max has found himself a real girlfriend, and so Lainey needs a plus one for the wedding, otherwise she is worried her mother will force a man on her. Charley works at the best local coffee bar, and for both her and Lainey there was an instant attraction, but neither had the bravery to say anything until Max forced Lainey’s hand.
We really loved this story. One of us having Filipino blood, we found it was so true to life; the attitude, the way Charmaine was the matriarch of the family and completely ruled over her husband and kids. In Filipino families it is usually the woman that is the strong bond, and back in the Philippines, often in poorer families the main earner. The Filipino culture is inconsistent; the Catholic Church pushes for straight marriage, and no divorce (the only major country in the world where divorce doesn’t exist), however in some parts of pre-Spanish Philippines, same sex partnerships, trans and other queer people were accepted, and in some cases encouraged.
This is essentially the story of Lainey finding Charley, and her struggles coming out to her family. We know very little of Charley, except for her Greek heritage, which is a shame. Overall a lovely story.

[Laura Middleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a fun, easy read with funny moments and more serious moments throughout, look no further. Lainey is a twenty-something woman struggling with self-identity and family acceptance. The story follows her journey as she becomes more comfortable in her own skin and learns to truly be happy being who she is. I enjoyed reading! I only wish there had been more development or backstory on some of the supporting characters, or maybe more detail in some areas that felt like they jumped. But overall a good read!

[Sherley's Reading Corner · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Misadventures of Getting Lainey a Date, we meet 27-year-old Alaina Vargas (AKA Lainey) who is unlucky in love and struggling with how to come out to her family for fear that they will not accept her if she does.

For the last five years, Lainey has been telling her family that her best friend since they were 10 years old, Max, is her boyfriend. Although she did this so her parents could stop butting into her love life, her not coming out to them still affects her relationships in ways that Lainey just doesn’t like; whenever things got too serious in her past relationships, she would end up single because the person she was with was tired of being her “dirty little secret” and never being able to meet Lainey’s family.

At a family dinner where her older sister Avri announces her engagement, her parents begin to pressure Lainey and Max and wonder when they are going to marry. It is then that Lainey decides that this is getting to be too much, and she tells her family that she and Max are no longer together, and she has been dating someone else. Well, she thought that would shut her family up but no…they tell her to bring this new person to the wedding and thus begins Operation Get Lainey a Date (GLAD).

From there, we see Max try to do just that, get Lainey a date to the wedding. After several hilarious dating adventures, Lainey discovers that the right person for her has been under her nose this entire time. Will she get the courage to come out to her parents once she meets that person? And how receptive will her family be to the news that Lainey is a lesbian?

This story was very funny and enjoyable, but it did discuss some serious topics such as coming out to your family (especially ones who are very old-school, strict, and conservative). It also discussed how it feels to be the black sheep of one’s family and how to learn to just accept yourself for who you are and to create your own happiness, regardless of others and how they feel about you. And it also shows that sometimes, the ones we love may end up surprising us in good, and maybe not so good ways.

I really enjoyed the different dating scenarios presented in the story. I thought it was funny just how clumsy and out of sorts Lainey gets when she is around a woman that she finds attractive or is into. The whole situation with Kate had me saying “this girl has to be the unluckiest person in the world.” I also appreciated the telling of Lainey’s relationship with her family. It was really sad to see how her mother Charmaine really put her sister Avri on a pedestal while treating Lainey like the black sheep who could never do anything right and meet Charmaine’s high expectations…it was really sad and though I did not like how (SPOILER ALERT) her mom was not really accepting of her daughter at the end of the story, it made it all the more real. In real life, everyone will not accept us for who we are and like Lainey alluded to at the end, sometimes we have to create our own happiness and our own sense of “home,” while giving others the time they need to grow and to digest who we really are…maybe they will end up come around after all.

Though I loved this story, I did feel that it was a little too surface level for me. We went through so many scenes with Laine and her trying to find a date and finding her person and when she does…I feel like it was a little rushed. I wanted to know more about their relationship. Outside of the spiciness (which there really wasn’t much, and I did not mind that there wasn’t any), there was not much to show me the true connection between Lainey and her ultimate love interest in the story. I was left feeling like I missed something. I needed more details about their relationship (more dept).

Overall, this was a great read and I look forward to reading more from this author.

[Sophia Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this is a great, fun read!

Some things I liked:
-the FMC Lainey: likeable, kind, funny—the awkwardness hits very close to home
-the setting and overall story line: easy to read and fun!
-a non-creepy guy best friend (very specific to me)
-the found family and overall family love


Some thins I would’ve preferred to not happen that way and explanations:
-I wanted Lainey to go on more awkward dates on the hashtag “Get Lainey a Date (GLAD),” though that Kelly bit was hilarious. I think this could’ve been played up as she struggled to find a date and more for her sister’s wedding. Come on, it’s hard out here!
-The four month time gap where Charley and Lainey decide to like each other and then fast forward. I think this was a missed chance for us to really get to know Charley. This story was very one-sided on Lainey—which is a good story on its own—but I feel that it’s lacking the romance of us falling in love with Charley as Lainey is. I think Charley could’ve been switched out with any sapphic character to for info the mold of this story with Lainey. I wanted to know why Charley. However, the story is definitely about Lainey coming out-out to her family.
-So nitpicky so I’m sorry… but the grammatical errors in this book kinda got to me. Some of them were just confusing to know who was talking, what was considered a thought, beginning of new sentences, etc.


I was given a free ARC copy from the author for an honest review.

[Jamie (TheRebelliousReader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars. Lainey is such an awkward gay disaster and I loved her because same. She’s super likable in all of her awkward charm and her situation with her family was relatable.

She and her bestfriend, Max, have been fake dating for years so that she won’t have to come out to her family. Her sister is getting married and Lainey blurts out that she and Max broke up so now she has to find someone to bring to the wedding as a date. Max is all in on setting her up with someone and it was hilarious. So many shenanigans but the strip club incident had me literally laughing out loud which I hardly ever do while reading. Charley works at the coffee shop that Lainey visits often and she has a crush on her and I thought they were so stinkin’ cute together. There’s a bit of angst in this towards the end but it was completely understandable. Lainey messed up and had to work to make amends. Great coming out scene with Lainey and her mother and the ending was just lovely. I really liked this book. Great balance of humor and emotional moments.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of this book is exactly as the title suggests. Lainey is dating or trying to date several different girls and it's not going well. Then she finaly meets someone nice to date and after just one date the next chapter unexpectedly forwards us to a few months later. I missed the part in between were they are getting really into each other and the steamy scenes that usually come with that. The rest of the book is mostly about Lainey, a 28 year old girl, who has trouble coming out to her family. I liked the second part better than the first, but the first part was okay. There were a few things that irritated me a bit though: the fuss about wearing glasses or contacts over and over again; all the beer and drunken moments; the awkward moments I think were meant to be funny but didn't make me laugh. 3+⭐️

[Ange Elson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t get enough of this author

I was absolutely hooked on Dear Taylor and found the follow up book was out of print.

Then I got a newsletter and book two was in there and SO WAS THIS ABSOLUTE GEM.

So of course I smashed them both. Immediately.

And all I can say is where have you been all my life? I love your writing. We need more representation for our whole community. Legit. Brilliant. Nuanced. Definitely NOT white (and I am white).

This was a slight change of pace from the letters duo. And I absolutely adored the comedic ensemble and the whole Vargas family.

There are lessons in this for all of us who are on our journey to being our true selves.

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fully poised to write a throwaway review about how this is a lighthearted comedy about a disaster lesbian's dating mishaps. And it is that. But the further I read, the more emotional I became about why Lainey is the way she is. The heart of this book is a really difficult coming out journey. It's easy enough to understand that Lainey's parents don't want her to have a difficult life. But it's really sad that she has to tell them her life isn't hard because she's gay, it's hard because of people like them who would have her stifle herself. For such a short and mostly fun read, this totally hit me harder than I expected!

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is overall ok and I like the MC Lainey that struggle to come out to her family and thus has issues keep any love interest coming her way. Her best friend Max and fake boyfriend for many years starts a whole campaign Get Lainey A Date = GLAD.
The romance between Lainey and Charley nice but no no in depth details and absolutely no hotter scenes described beyond kisses which is a bit disappointing. If that had been added and more details about their romance had been added to the story the book would have been so much better.

[Lotte]

A light and quick read, that while a bit predictable was nice read.
I like reading books about disastrous dates and this one delivered, although it would have been nice to read a few more dates Lainey went on.
For me it was clear from the beginning of the book how it would probably end, but still it was funny to read how she actually got there.
I wouldn't mind reading another book like this or a book from this author.

[Kymbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being true to yourself

Lainey has spent most of her life hiding her sexuality from her family. She falls for Charlie and believes she is ready to come out to her parents but old habits lead to her denying their relationship. Lainey has to finally decide if living up to familial and cultural expectations is worth her happiness. The book has an interesting storyline and realatable characters that keep the readers attention.

[Lyn Denison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice and authentic

Lainey is a delightful character and so endearing. Charley is kind and a perfect match. I found myself wanting to step in and help Max in his determination to set Lainey up. It’s slow-burn, satisfying and Lainey and her friends are simply nice authentic young people. I’m sure this storyline will resonate with a lot of readers and I well remember wanting to take a girl to a wedding and openly dancing with her.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lainey has been pretending for the past 5 years that she was dating her best friend Max. Now that her older sister is getting married in a year, they have set that as a date to find someone to go with her and to come out to her family. Lainey is hopelessly awkward around any woman that she finds attractive. This makes the interactions funny. 


I liked this book. It was so funny. It has the feeling of a rom-com mixed with a coming-out story. I have been out for so long that sometimes I forget how scary that time in my life was. This author was able to capture that and add humor to it.

I received an arc

[En · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lainey is awkward and clumsy. And so relatable. I’ve found myself rooting for #GLAD.
And, am also glad she has Max.

Coming out is a tough process. The author has skillfully added humor without downplaying the fear and stress of Lainey’s journey of coming out.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 rounded up to 4.

[Courts · Rating 4 out of 5]

coffee shop lesbians 🩷🩷