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The Cara Series #1
Romancing the Author
Cara Shoemaker, divorced romance novelist, just received a text from her daughter that she was getting married…in two weeks. The wedding would be in California and her ex-husband and hottie girlfriend would be in attendance. As if that wasn’t enough reason to crawl underneath her bed and remain there, the text ended by saying she wanted her mom’s boyfriend there for the occasion, too.
Dalton McCormick, male Adonis, and everything her lousy ex-husband was not. Cara made up his existence so her daughter wouldn’t worry about her. For the last year, they had done everything Cara wanted…traveled to Italy, antiqued in sleepy towns, and woke up late on Sunday mornings. He was the perfect guy, on paper.
Cara’s best friend, Janey, arranged for an actor friend to accompany Cara to the wedding and check all the boxes that solidified them as the couple she described them as being. The only problem was when Dominick Balteros showed up, nothing about him resembled the nice guy, Dalton. In fact, Cara wondered if she and Dominick would even survive the plane trip to California. He was outspoken, laid back, devilishly charming, and had the ability to undo years of Cara’s demure composure. It was going to be a weekend no one expected or would soon forget.
Dalton McCormick, male Adonis, and everything her lousy ex-husband was not. Cara made up his existence so her daughter wouldn’t worry about her. For the last year, they had done everything Cara wanted…traveled to Italy, antiqued in sleepy towns, and woke up late on Sunday mornings. He was the perfect guy, on paper.
Cara’s best friend, Janey, arranged for an actor friend to accompany Cara to the wedding and check all the boxes that solidified them as the couple she described them as being. The only problem was when Dominick Balteros showed up, nothing about him resembled the nice guy, Dalton. In fact, Cara wondered if she and Dominick would even survive the plane trip to California. He was outspoken, laid back, devilishly charming, and had the ability to undo years of Cara’s demure composure. It was going to be a weekend no one expected or would soon forget.
317 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 19, 2025
5 people are currently reading
1661 people want to read
About the author
Julieann Dove
19 books855 followersJulieann lives in Virginia, yet longs to live everywhere else. It doesn’t come as a surprise that along with her gypsy soul, comes an active imagination. That’s why she loves to write and invent worlds and people, so that she can formulate their happily ever after. Hobbies include cooking new recipes, sewing, and spending time with her cute boyfriend/husband and eight fabulous children. Vacations happen in Nantucket or the Carolina beaches—anywhere there is inspiration for her next book. One day she hopes to travel to Italy, drive one of those little cars around the countryside, and speak the language fluently!
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 21, 2025
3.5 stars! Pretty decent later-in-life romance, with the fake-dating trope.
Cara is a romance author. She spends her time writing the perfect fictional men, and even creates one for her own life.
Following her divorce with her husband, she fakes having a new boyfriend, Dalton.
Things get challenging when her daughter calls home to tell her that she is getting married, and invites her to the wedding. Now, she must figure out what to do about her boyfriend that doesn't actually exist.
Enter Dom- the man who shows up to play the role of Dalton. The problem? He is not at all Cara's type. But he will have to do.
While Cara must hide her big secret from everyone, Dom has his own secret that could ruin everything.
Great if you love:
- Fake dating
- Forced proximity
I liked the premise of this!
I mean, who doesn't love a fake dating story? Especially an opposites attract fake dating story.
I also liked the idea of having to keep up the act on a trip with everyone, including Cara's ex husband and his new girlfriend.
Risky. but I like that. and everything is more fun when women have a chance to make their ex jealous.
Something that I struggled with was connecting to the characters. I am sure that this is just a personal problem, but I just wasn't able to get too attached to any of them.
Brie was immature. Cara felt somewhat overly attached to Brie. Dom was just.. lying.
There was just a lot going on, and there was not any character that I felt super strongly for.
I would not let this deter you from reading though, because the story itself is interesting.
The writing here is quite good. It is a bit different from what I typically read.
It is not super simple and light-hearted like a lot of romance novels, but instead feels a lot more mature and put-together.
You can tell this author has writing experience, and puts a lot of effort into it. Which I can always appreciate!
Overall, a nice story and nice writing style. This is just book one, so more to come!
Thank you to BookSirens, Nerdy Bird Books and author Julieann Dove for providing me with the eARC of "Romancing the Author". I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Publication date: August 19th, 2025
Cara is a romance author. She spends her time writing the perfect fictional men, and even creates one for her own life.
Following her divorce with her husband, she fakes having a new boyfriend, Dalton.
Things get challenging when her daughter calls home to tell her that she is getting married, and invites her to the wedding. Now, she must figure out what to do about her boyfriend that doesn't actually exist.
Enter Dom- the man who shows up to play the role of Dalton. The problem? He is not at all Cara's type. But he will have to do.
While Cara must hide her big secret from everyone, Dom has his own secret that could ruin everything.
Great if you love:
- Fake dating
- Forced proximity
I liked the premise of this!
I mean, who doesn't love a fake dating story? Especially an opposites attract fake dating story.
I also liked the idea of having to keep up the act on a trip with everyone, including Cara's ex husband and his new girlfriend.
Risky. but I like that. and everything is more fun when women have a chance to make their ex jealous.
Something that I struggled with was connecting to the characters. I am sure that this is just a personal problem, but I just wasn't able to get too attached to any of them.
Brie was immature. Cara felt somewhat overly attached to Brie. Dom was just.. lying.
There was just a lot going on, and there was not any character that I felt super strongly for.
I would not let this deter you from reading though, because the story itself is interesting.
The writing here is quite good. It is a bit different from what I typically read.
It is not super simple and light-hearted like a lot of romance novels, but instead feels a lot more mature and put-together.
You can tell this author has writing experience, and puts a lot of effort into it. Which I can always appreciate!
Overall, a nice story and nice writing style. This is just book one, so more to come!
Thank you to BookSirens, Nerdy Bird Books and author Julieann Dove for providing me with the eARC of "Romancing the Author". I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Publication date: August 19th, 2025
September 24, 2025
A Charming Read
A romance author finds love with the man who unexpectedly waltzes right into her life. Cara might be the expert on writing romance novels, but it’s Dominic who’s going to challenge her theory on love and force Cara to experience it all for herself.
This is a charming read and is well written. It seems there will be a continuation with this story as a series, so I’m looking forward to the next installment.
A romance author finds love with the man who unexpectedly waltzes right into her life. Cara might be the expert on writing romance novels, but it’s Dominic who’s going to challenge her theory on love and force Cara to experience it all for herself.
This is a charming read and is well written. It seems there will be a continuation with this story as a series, so I’m looking forward to the next installment.
September 7, 2025
Romancing The Author by Julieann Dove is about this lady named Cara Shoemaker who is divorced and writing those lovey dovey books, but her own love life is about as empty as a church pew on Super Bowl Sunday. One day her daughter texts her saying, Mama, I’m getting married in two weeks out in California. Two weeks. Like girl, it takes me longer than that just to clean out my truck.
Anyhow, her ex hubby is going to be there strutting around with his new young girlfriend, and Cara is about ready to dig her own hole and hide in it. Then her daughter goes and says, Mama, you better bring your boyfriend too. Now the funny thing is Cara doesn’t have a boyfriend. She made him up like a dang fairy tale. Dalton McCormick. Mister Perfect. Mister Travel the World. Mister Sleep Late on Sundays. He sounds real fine on paper, but the problem is paper men don’t show up at weddings.
So Cara’s best friend Janey gets this actor fella named Dominick Balteros to play the part. Only he isn’t any Dalton. This man is loud, opinionated, slick talking, and he’s got that devil grin that makes you mad but also kinda giggly mad if you know what I mean. Cara wonders if she’s even going to survive the plane ride with him without throwing him out the window.
But once they get going, things heat up, and all those walls Cara’s been building come tumbling down quicker than a dollar store lawn chair. It turns into one of those weekends nobody is going to forget, not even the preacher.
This book had me laughing, shaking my head, and rooting for Cara the whole way. I say give it a read if you like your romance with a side of chaos and crazy.
I give it 4 outta 5 Catfish!
Anyhow, her ex hubby is going to be there strutting around with his new young girlfriend, and Cara is about ready to dig her own hole and hide in it. Then her daughter goes and says, Mama, you better bring your boyfriend too. Now the funny thing is Cara doesn’t have a boyfriend. She made him up like a dang fairy tale. Dalton McCormick. Mister Perfect. Mister Travel the World. Mister Sleep Late on Sundays. He sounds real fine on paper, but the problem is paper men don’t show up at weddings.
So Cara’s best friend Janey gets this actor fella named Dominick Balteros to play the part. Only he isn’t any Dalton. This man is loud, opinionated, slick talking, and he’s got that devil grin that makes you mad but also kinda giggly mad if you know what I mean. Cara wonders if she’s even going to survive the plane ride with him without throwing him out the window.
But once they get going, things heat up, and all those walls Cara’s been building come tumbling down quicker than a dollar store lawn chair. It turns into one of those weekends nobody is going to forget, not even the preacher.
This book had me laughing, shaking my head, and rooting for Cara the whole way. I say give it a read if you like your romance with a side of chaos and crazy.
I give it 4 outta 5 Catfish!
August 13, 2025
3.5
This book started off really interesting; the two main characters needed something and lied to be able to achieve their goals. You know it was going to be a messy ending with all the lies they were spinning. This keeps the reader interested in how the story develops... however it does becomes a bit too much, a bit repetitive and sort of confusing at times.
The daughter's storyline was interesting, but she felt so immature and blaming Cara for basically everything on her life and at least it got tiring for me; but at the same time realistic.
I thought this was a standalone, and by 80% I was confused as to how everything was going to be solve by the end... turns out there will be another book to finish the story (which I'm glad because there are many unresolved plot lines and I prefer another book than a fast resolution). I wished the chapters were a bit shorter, other than that this was a good book to read with complex character arcs & good storylines.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This book started off really interesting; the two main characters needed something and lied to be able to achieve their goals. You know it was going to be a messy ending with all the lies they were spinning. This keeps the reader interested in how the story develops... however it does becomes a bit too much, a bit repetitive and sort of confusing at times.
The daughter's storyline was interesting, but she felt so immature and blaming Cara for basically everything on her life and at least it got tiring for me; but at the same time realistic.
I thought this was a standalone, and by 80% I was confused as to how everything was going to be solve by the end... turns out there will be another book to finish the story (which I'm glad because there are many unresolved plot lines and I prefer another book than a fast resolution). I wished the chapters were a bit shorter, other than that this was a good book to read with complex character arcs & good storylines.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
December 18, 2025
This was a fun read and right up my alley! A slightly older FMC, a bad boy MMC (well, Dom/Dalton is sort of a bad boy, and definitely not like anyone the FMC, Cara, has ever known), forced proximity, enemies to lovers, fake dating, and swoony MMC.
Cara is the talented but uptight author of adult romance novels who can write fulfilling and dreamy stories of love and passion but can't seem to find love in her own life. She's stuck in the past on a failed marriage and can't seem to move on. Not that she's still in love with her ex- but she just doesn't understand what happened and why he would choose to literally run away from her. She feels like everyone else is moving on and she doesn't want to seem like a lonely, lost cause to her daughter so she makes up a love interest, Dalton, who is basically a swoony character straight out of one of her romance novels. Her daughter Brie announces that she is getting married and Cara realizes she can't go to the wedding without Dalton or her cover will be blown. And so begins our story....
Let me say that I really enjoyed reading this book and will definitely read book #2 when it comes out (and I wish it were out right now because I hate not being able to read what comes next so I usually don't read a series until it's complete). I loved Cara and Dom and watching them both very tentatively come out of their shells was really fun.
Now for the "but." I felt like the development of Cara and Dom's relationship went on for too long and was too slow of a slow burn, and then the point of combustion was like BAM! It came on so fast I had to read it again to make sure I didn't miss something. Another thing I didn't love was that there were SO many lies being spun that it felt a little icky, like how could the characters ever really trust each other when so much of what they presented about themselves was false. And this applies to not just the MMC and FMC, but most of the other side relationships as well.
The other thing I found frustrating was that the sentence structure was confusing and just off in some places. For example, this is a sentence I stumbled over and had to read again to be sure I understood what was being said: "You're getting a satisfied daughter that your life isn't the shambles she clearly thought it was...that it is? And I'm, well, I'm getting experience." After rereading it a time or two I understood what was being said, but it threw me off and interrupted the flow of the reading experience. And that happened in multiple places so it got to be frustrating because I found myself having to stop and reread things and that took me out of the story, which is not where I want to be when I'm reading a good book. I wanted to reach out to the author and say, "Hey, if you can give me a day to do some editing I could make this book a lot more fun to read."
Because there is still some polishing to be done to take this from a good book to a great book,* I would rate this as 3.5 stars rather than 4. But I wanted to stay up late to keep reading to find out what was going to happen so that is definitely a check in the "this is a great book" column, so the potential is definitely here. I have so much respect for authors who are willing to put a piece of themselves out into the world with their books and be brave by letting other people judge those pieces as good, bad, or otherwise. In this case, I judge this as GOOD! I can't wait to read part 2 of Cara and Dom's story! I hope it comes soon!
Cara is the talented but uptight author of adult romance novels who can write fulfilling and dreamy stories of love and passion but can't seem to find love in her own life. She's stuck in the past on a failed marriage and can't seem to move on. Not that she's still in love with her ex- but she just doesn't understand what happened and why he would choose to literally run away from her. She feels like everyone else is moving on and she doesn't want to seem like a lonely, lost cause to her daughter so she makes up a love interest, Dalton, who is basically a swoony character straight out of one of her romance novels. Her daughter Brie announces that she is getting married and Cara realizes she can't go to the wedding without Dalton or her cover will be blown. And so begins our story....
Let me say that I really enjoyed reading this book and will definitely read book #2 when it comes out (and I wish it were out right now because I hate not being able to read what comes next so I usually don't read a series until it's complete). I loved Cara and Dom and watching them both very tentatively come out of their shells was really fun.
Now for the "but." I felt like the development of Cara and Dom's relationship went on for too long and was too slow of a slow burn, and then the point of combustion was like BAM! It came on so fast I had to read it again to make sure I didn't miss something. Another thing I didn't love was that there were SO many lies being spun that it felt a little icky, like how could the characters ever really trust each other when so much of what they presented about themselves was false. And this applies to not just the MMC and FMC, but most of the other side relationships as well.
The other thing I found frustrating was that the sentence structure was confusing and just off in some places. For example, this is a sentence I stumbled over and had to read again to be sure I understood what was being said: "You're getting a satisfied daughter that your life isn't the shambles she clearly thought it was...that it is? And I'm, well, I'm getting experience." After rereading it a time or two I understood what was being said, but it threw me off and interrupted the flow of the reading experience. And that happened in multiple places so it got to be frustrating because I found myself having to stop and reread things and that took me out of the story, which is not where I want to be when I'm reading a good book. I wanted to reach out to the author and say, "Hey, if you can give me a day to do some editing I could make this book a lot more fun to read."
Because there is still some polishing to be done to take this from a good book to a great book,* I would rate this as 3.5 stars rather than 4. But I wanted to stay up late to keep reading to find out what was going to happen so that is definitely a check in the "this is a great book" column, so the potential is definitely here. I have so much respect for authors who are willing to put a piece of themselves out into the world with their books and be brave by letting other people judge those pieces as good, bad, or otherwise. In this case, I judge this as GOOD! I can't wait to read part 2 of Cara and Dom's story! I hope it comes soon!
September 19, 2025
Romance
The Goodreads platform provided an enlightening literary experience that delves deep into the complex landscape of human relationships. Through its nuanced characters, the narrative explores the intricate and unpredictable paths of life and love, revealing how personal journeys are rarely straightforward. The story masterfully illustrates that emotional connections and personal growth often involve unexpected twists, challenges, and transformative moments that shape our understanding of relationships and personal development.
The Goodreads platform provided an enlightening literary experience that delves deep into the complex landscape of human relationships. Through its nuanced characters, the narrative explores the intricate and unpredictable paths of life and love, revealing how personal journeys are rarely straightforward. The story masterfully illustrates that emotional connections and personal growth often involve unexpected twists, challenges, and transformative moments that shape our understanding of relationships and personal development.
August 18, 2025
This was an entertaining and messy romantic read with a cliff-hanger-like ending! I read this in a day. Even though I do love the fake dating trope, I get a little nervous when the lies really pile up, and pile up they do in this story. I read quickly because I wanted to see how they were going to straighten things out. I enjoyed the journey with lots of little twists and am curious to see what resolution comes in book two. Easy to read and fun!
September 23, 2025
I won this book thru Goodreads Giveaway. I found the description interesting and would enjoy the book. I had trouble relating to the characters and story. Plus the story is to continue with next book in series. Perhaps it was not the right time for me to read this book and I will give it another chance down the road. Perhaps when the next book is released. Thank you to Goodreads for providing me with this copy.
October 19, 2025
Okay so overall I did enjoy the book and would highly recommend it to anyone for a quick, nice read. However, it was frustrating how the lies kept building up throughout the book and I truly hate these kinda tropes, especially between the main leads. Miscommunications in this form really irks me, so that was my least favorite part of the story. But I really liked the characters and the refreshing plot, it was done well.
July 26, 2025
An entertaining romance. Do take note that this is Book 1. Yes, a lot happens in this story, but it does leave you wanting more. Not a fan. So many lies. I did become invested in the characters and was curious as to how all the untruths would affect everyone. Thanks to BookSirens for providing a copy. My review is voluntary.
August 26, 2025
I was excited to win this book through a Goodreads giveaway. It promised fake dating and forced proximity, two of my favorite tropes. Unfortunately, I just could not connect with the characters or the story.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews