My hopeless romantic personality, love for the enemies-to-lovers trope, passion for the Spanish language, and an upcoming trip to Spain aligned perfectly with the glistening book title: The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas. From the moment I saw the cover, I felt destined to read and love this book, even with the hallmark quality plotline that I anticipated within every modern romance.

The plot revolves around Catalina Martín and her desperate need to find someone to act as her boyfriend at her sister’s wedding. With the knowledge that her ex-boyfriend will not only be the best man but is also now engaged, she feels pressure to prove to her family that she is happy and has moved on from her prior relationship. 

Then enters Aaron Blackford—a dark, reserved, and egotistical man who happens to be alluring and sexy. Or, at least, that’s what I thought the main love interest would turn out to be based on the book’s synopsis. Instead, the reader is met with a man who is incapable of expressing his feelings but is blatantly head over heels for the woman he works with. 

Obviously, Blackford will be Martín’s date to the wedding, but for some reason, it takes half the book for him to convince her that he’s her only option. 

Once the predicament is established, the reader must suffer through the next 400 pages inside the mind of Martín—a rather irritating place to be. Instead of creating a main character that’s clumsy and cute, Martín was annoying and oblivious. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a piece of Martín’s personality that I could relate to. 

Pages upon pages were filled with nothing but fluff. Martín’s thoughts repeated themselves to the point of insanity, and there was barely a page without some detailed description of the love interest’s physical appearance. The narrative became so oversaturated with physical descriptions that Blackford lost all visual appeal. 

Furthermore, the author crammed in too many characters that served virtually no purpose. From the beginning, I felt that the “best friend” character, Rosie, never looked out for Martín like a best friend should. Then, random characters continue to be introduced only to say one line and then leave. Although there are many people that play a role in someone’s life realistically, many of the characters were unnecessary to the story’s development. 

Occasionally, the author would attempt to send a message about an important topic such as past trauma or sexism, but just as the characters were about to dive deeper, the narrative would skip to a new scene and pretend like there was never an issue. 

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The one highlight of this book was the incorporation of Spanish. The scenes where Martín taught Blackford tidbits of her native language or she would mumble to herself in Spanish, were some of my favorites. I definitely loved this aspect, and I wish that I read more books with injections of Spanish. 

At one point in the novel, they give each other pretend Spanish nicknames such as “bollito.” This was a cute touch that should have continued throughout the rest of the story. Instead, they started calling each other “baby,” which was a pet name that threw off their dynamic and didn’t fit in the slightest.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, one particular moment made me want to throw the book across the room in disgust. 

Even with my experience reading hundreds of romance scenes, nothing could have prepared me for the overly descriptive and disturbing language that the author suddenly dropped into their climax scene together. The dialogue choices took the book in an uncalled-for and uncomfortable direction, turning a mediocre book into a disaster. 

Overall, the book should have been cut down to half or ¾ of the length. The characters and plot created a strong base, but the rest of the story did not build up to its potential from there. 

Though it sounds harsh, the writing quality honestly reminded me of my seventh-grade Wattpad novel. If you’re intrigued by the plotline, watching The Proposal would be a much better alternative than wasting your time reading The Spanish Love Deception.