Book Review: Just for the Cameras

Just for the Cameras is Meghan Quinn’s latest romcom and the first book in her new Bay Area Players series. There are some overlaps with her other beloved series. The novel follows Maple Baker and Graydon St. John. Maple is a zookeeper specializing in flamingos. She made appearances in the Bridesmaid for Hire series, which is connected to the Cane Brothers series. Graydon is a pro football player who, along with a pro hockey player and pro baseball player, have been tasked with volunteering and teaming up with the zoo to bring awareness to the zoo and to bring good publicity to their respective teams. The hockey player is OC from the Vancouver Agitators series and Bennett is the baseball player from the Almond Bay series! So much overlap, I love it!

The three guys are all paired up with a zookeeper for this partnership and obviously Graydon gets paired up with Maple and the flamingos. Things are tense at first because Graydon does not want to have to do this at all. He is one of the grumpiest mmc’s ever and Maple is definitely sunshine and a people pleaser. The two may not want to work together, but they have no choice. Maple will do whatever it takes, even try to accommodate the grumpy football player, in order to get more funding for her beloved flamingos. And Graydon has no choice but to comply since the PR company organizing this partnership has been hired by his football team.

To make Graydon more willing to learn about the flamingos, Maple offers to learn about football and thus begins their social media partnership in the form of an account called “Flock and Tackle”. Almost instantly, the public thinks they are dating and they, along with their publicist, decide to lean into it because it’s bringing attention to the zoo and selling more football tickets and jerseys. But the fake dating doesn’t go on for very long before the two start sharing their attraction to one another. Will the grumpy sunshine/football player/zookeeper work out or should they keep it fake?

I liked this book, but it definitely wasn’t my favorite Meghan Quinn novel. It had some of her signature humor in the book, but I felt like it was less lol funny than usually and a little more cringey funny. I really liked the storyline and characters, but I didn’t love Graydon as much as I usually love her mmcs. He was grumpy and possessive to the point that instead of it being interesting, funny, and/or hot it got to be a little annoying. I did love Maple though! I loved OC in the Vancouver Agitators series, but I found him cringey and annoying in this book so I’m hoping his character is redeemed in his book in this series.

Overall, I did like the book but it wasn’t a favorite of mine. I think I’m really going to like the next book, Bennett’s story, this summer though!

Read this if you want a spicy romcom with the grumpy sunshine, fake dating tropes.

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