What’s your guilty pleasure? Reality TV? Murder mysteries? Screwball comedies? Enemies-to-lovers romances? If any of those gives you an endorphin rush, then grab Kara Loo and Jennifer Young’s Alice Chen’s Reality Check and prep yourself for a full-on endorphin tidal wave.
Alice Chen is at the “turn the couch upside down and shake it until change falls out” level of financial desperation. She loves her job as a middle school math teacher, but her salary’s no match for her mom’s mounting hospital bills. And while her sweet, goofy fiancé, Chase, is great at cheering her up, he’s no help . . . until he offers a ridiculous suggestion that just might work. His buddy is working on a new reality show, based extremely loosely on Dante’s Inferno, that puts the strength of couples’ love to the test. The prize is a cool million. Alice has been winning contests since grade school—all she has to do is win this one, and her problems will be over.
Of course, once she and Chase arrive at the tropical “paradise” filming site, she learns her problems are just beginning. One of her competitors is none other than her high school rival—her nemesis—Daniel Cho. He has the nerve to be just as smart, just as capable and just as charming as he was back then, while being even hotter, to boot. And what’s worse, Daniel turns out to be the only one Alice can rely on when the competition goes from absurd to disgusting to dangerous.
If you’re looking for nonstop tension, this might not be the book for you, though the mystery thread is definitely alive and kicking (and threatening, and blackmailing, and poisoning and more). The romance thread is more dominant, replete with all the classic tropes: not just enemies to lovers, but forced proximity, fake relationship and second-chance romance. Daniel’s a classic hero who proves himself by constantly having Alice’s back on their journey through hell. And Alice Chen—like another literary Alice—is a funny, clever and determined guide through this upside-down world of chaos, ambition, trust and love.