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    Faking It
    Faking It
    Faking It
    Audiobook7 hours

    Faking It

    Written by Cora Carmack

    Narrated by Emma Galvin and Dan Bittner

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Mackenzie "Max" Miller has a problem. Her parents have arrived in town for a surprise visit, and if they see her dyed hair, tattoos, and piercings, they just might disown her. Even worse, they’re expecting to meet a nice wholesome boyfriend, not a guy named Mace who has a neck tattoo and plays in a band. All her lies are about to come crashing down around her, but then she meets Cade.

    Cade moved to Philadelphia to act and to leave his problems behind in Texas. So far though, he’s kept the problems and had very little opportunity to take the stage. When Max approaches him in a coffee shop with a crazy request to pretend to be her boyfriend, he agrees to play the part. But when Cade plays the role a little too well, they’re forced to keep the ruse going. And the more they fake the relationship, the more real it begins to feel.

    The hot new, New Adult title from New York Times bestselling author of Losing It, Cora Carmack.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 4, 2013
    ISBN9780062288721
    Author

    Cora Carmack

    Cora Carmack is a twentysomething New York Times bestselling author who likes to write about twentysomething characters. Raised in a small Texas town, she now lives in New York City and spends her time writing, traveling, and marathoning various television shows on Netflix.

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    Reviews for Faking It

    4/5

    228 ratings18 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 1/5
      Truly Awful. You can predict the ending after one paragraph. Pedestrian writing, formulaic plotting. Ugh, do better with the "unlimited" selections, Scrbd!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The book cover its terrible, but the story is ??
    • 4/5
      Another great story by Cora Carmack. I would highly recommend. Her writing is wonderful and vivid ranging from moments that made me laugh out loud to times that left me wiping my eyes on my sleeve so I could see enough to continue.
    • 4/5
      I loved this one just as much as I loved the first book. On to book three!
    • 3/5
      Faking It by Cora Carmack"Losing It" series #2Mackenzie "Max" Miller is a college drop-out trying to make her way as a singer in a band in Philadelphia. She is tattooed, pierced, and dyes her hair in bright colors--everything her ultra-conservative parents would hate if they knew. She's currently dating Mace, the drummer in her band, but is starting to feel a little ambivalent about the relationship. She gets a call from her parents discovering they planned a spontaneous visit from Oklahoma and are already in town. Quick! She has to ditch the boyfriend they would hate and hide her body art within the next five minutes. She spies a preppy-looking guy seated by himself in the coffee shop where she is currently in panic mode. In desperation, she asks him if he will pretend to be her boyfriend for 24 hours while her parents are in town. He agrees. Now the fun starts. Cade Winston is the ultimate of perfect fake boyfriends and her parents love him. Max is drawn to him as well, but keeps pushing those feelings to the back burner since she already has a boyfriend. Cade, however, proves himself to be irresistible when one thing after another happens and he is always there in the nick of time to get her out of a jam, including when a man attacked her outside of her place of employment.They develop an easy friendship and have amazing chemistry, but they first have to work their way through some old baggage on both sides, and Max has to face the fear of showing her true self to her family.This is a nice story of a young couple finding their way. The H is pretty perfect, a great example for the type of boyfriend you should snap up if you are lucky enough to find (honest, sensitive, full of integrity, patient, etc.). The h is a sweetheart deep down but it takes a while to get through her layers. She has reasons for her hesitation, but she comes across as pretty self-centered throughout the book. Really, just a typical 20-something so it's nothing abnormal. We've all been there. I'm twice that age now so I have less patience for it. No time for it; I've got $h!+ to do. hehe
    • 5/5
      This was an amazing read. Cade is trying to move on from his heartbreak over Bliss but is having a hard time. He meets Max in the most unusual way but she is exactly what he needs. Unfortunately, she comes with a ton of baggage but Cade will never back down from the challenge. This is a good one and I definitely recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Another great read in this series. I loved Cade getting his own story and his own happy ending. It was wonderful to see both him and Max grow through the story.
    • 4/5
      I
      really liked this book and I'm so really glad that we got to see Cade
      ina whole new light that showed how that much more amazing he was
      without all the moping with Bliss. I really liked Max too and how strong
      minded she was. The ending was realy sweet,albeit a little bit
      predictable.
    • 5/5
      I was a little upset to learn I had read the series out of order, but I'm patiently waiting for my library to get a copy of "Losing It" so that I may finally understand Cade a little better. At the end of this book, I just felt acquainted with Cade. I loved Max! She has an amazing and confident personality I loved!
    • 2/5
      You know how sometimes you have no idea what drew you to a particular book? That was definitely the case for me with Cora Carmack's Faking It. I mean, I like a good romance as much as the next person, but a dyed, tattooed, and pierced heroine? Not generally my thing. Maybe it was the suggestion of steamy sex on the cover that inspired me to bring this one home. Or maybe it was the idea of two opposites masquerading as a couple. Or maybe I was just trying to find something different. And this was different, for sure.Mackenzie Miller, known as Max, thrives on being edgy. She's tattooed and pierced, working as a bartender and dancer and trying to make it as a singer. Her current boyfriend, Mace, is quite possibly 180 degrees from the sort of guy that her very conservative parents would have chosen for her, heavily tattooed, not terribly intelligent, with large gauges in his ears. When those same buttoned-up parents spring a surprise visit on Max, she has to think fast to keep them from meeting him at the coffee shop where they are sitting. She ditches Mace when her eyes light on Cade. She propositions him because she knows he is the epitome of everything her parents want her to choose. Cade, still hurting from the women he loved finding someone else, agrees. The fact that Cade completely charms Max's parents and lobbies Max for a real date turns the limited time acting job as Max's boyfriend into something more. And as they get to know each other, they find that not only are they explosively attracted to each other but they appreciate each other for the real, uncovered, unhidden, deep down person that they each are. Cade and Max are very much a good guy and bad girl couple. Cade is tired of being quite so good, looking to cut loose a little bit with Max. Max discovers that having a knight in shining armor, a guy who treats you well, respects you, and encourages you to live in the skin you're in doesn't have to be a bad thing. Max clearly has a lot of baggage with her parents, always feeling inferior and conscious that she is not the golden child. The novel is told in alternating first person perspectives so that the reader has the chance to see into both Max and Cade's heads. Unfortunately, inside Max's head is an immature, insecure, childishly annoying character. She's just not likable enough for Cade, who is drawn as lovely, perfect, and thoughtful. The end resolution with Max's family is too pat and easy, making a lie of her years of hiding who she was from them and solving the requisite estrangement between Cade and Max far too quickly. Over all, the pacing and narrative tension are off and the writing is unspectacular. There are frequent grammatical errors (and not just during the dialogue) and the too plentiful similes and metaphors were over written and often ridiculous. Perhaps I'd have been better served to take note of the things that didn't appeal to me right in the cover copy and leave this one for a reader who wasn't already on the fence who might have been able to overlook these issues.
    • 5/5
      This book is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 for me. I really enjoyed it.

      After Bliss and Garrick's story, Cade is left somewhat broken hearted, and pretty much the minute he decides to take a break from seeing Bliss, until he's positive he's over her, not to mention Garrick's little reveal to him that he will propose to Bliss very soon, in storms Max.
      Mackenzie (Max) has suffered a very traumatic event in her early teens and is still not quite dealing with the aftermath. She lives a double life and is very much tormented by it.

      When Cade agrees to be her fake boyfriend to appease her parents, her request the minute they meet, he slowly starts breaking down her walls and shows her her true self is beautiful.

      There's some sad in this book, and a fare share of angst, drama and surprisingly enough, some laughs. One of my favorites is:
      "I got my first kiss from my babysitter's son when I was five and he was seven. He kissed me and then pulled my hair."
      He chuckled, and dabbed at a scrape just above the waistline of my skirt.
      "We have different definitions of dirty."
      I smirked and added, "To this day nothing turns me on more than when a guy pulls my hair."
      There was silence above me, and his hand stilled against my back. I would have killed to see his expression.
      Me too, Max. Me too!!!

      Families are hard. Traumatized by tragedy familier are so much harder. When Cade enters Max's life (or vice versa) he shares her burden in a beautiful way, and Cora Carmack writes it beautifully.
    • 4/5
      I was a little disappointed in the end. I kind if wish there had been further resolution with her family. Or maybe a smackdown with her sister-in-law.

      Aside from that, this was a stellar read. I was more invested in the characters than I expected to be. Max was everything I love in a heroine; strong, outspoken and in tune with herself yet also vulnerable and scared.

      I wasn't sure what to expect of Cade after seeing him in the last book. He ended up being the perfect mix of Golden Boy and Bad Boy. He was the perfect match for Max, though it didn't seem like it at first glance.

      An excellent read.
    • 4/5
      This book is so sweet. I can't even... OK. First things first. I did not love Losing It. I didn't love it for a lot of reasons, not least of which was the title, which made me uncomfortable (I'm a married grown up; I don't know what's wrong with me). And it's about actors at theater school. I act for a living, so I find stuff about acting and actors to be kind of embarrassing to read. I also read it maybe a little to soon after the abysmal Slammed, which covers a similar relationship (although Slammed handles it in a way that is yucky, unethical, and short on charm), so I never really gave it a shot. Slammed is a terrible book, and if you haven't read it, don't. Please don't read it. Please.

      But this week, something magical happened. Faking It went down to $2.99 in the Kindle store, and I was stuck in bed with a cold, an injured back, cramps, and three flavors of pudding. And guess what? It is the most charming book in the whole wide world. Holy moly. During an early scene, I caught myself giggling aloud. Giggling. Me. I don't giggle--my laugh is a humiliating guffaw of Julia Roberts proportions.

      The meet-cute is more of a meet-adorable. It's...you guys, I can't write this. I just started giggling again thinking about it. Man. OK. Be serious, Katie.

      OK. Max, our awesome rockabilly female love interest (we bounce back and forth between her and Cade's first-person accounts of what has happened, and that narration style, while generally annoying, works fine here), is at a coffee shop with her terrible boyfriend when her parents call to say they're in town from Oklahoma and they'll be at the coffee shop in five minutes to meet the boyfriend. So obviously he bails, leaving Max kinda hung out to dry, and she convinces Cade, who's having coffee alone following an awkward meeting with his former best friend, to play her boyfriend for the weekend. You guys, I know it sounds dumb. I know. But it's so, so good.

      Oh! So Max is in a band with her best dude friend and the useless boyfriend we met earlier. When her best friend says she has "balls of steel," she calls him out on how crappy that is, and guys, it made me really happy. Because she points out that women can be strong and that complimenting a woman by saying she's masculine is actually insulting to our gender. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, and this book stole my heart by having a character take a stand on it.

      I also really like that a big deal is not made of the fact that Max occasionally smokes. YA and NA literature tends to treat smoking as either really disgusting or really cool, and this book is just like, "Hey, some people smoke sometimes because it forces them to take big breaths and that calms them down," and that's it.

      It also talks about the thing where you're not religious and when you go back home for the holidays you have to hold hands with everyone and say Grace before you can eat any food. Because sitting through the prayers of a different religion from what you personally believe is really awkward. And you have to hold someone's sweaty hand while enduring it.

      Things that bothered me, and I'm really grasping at straws here:

      "Drink" is, very early in the book, used as used as both a noun and a verb in the same sentence. Just specify what's she's sipping on and you won't have to say things like "She took a drink of her drink." In fact, we already know it's coffee. So say that and it won't be weird.

      This author also makes some unfortunate pronoun choice mistakes. She tends to say "you and I" when "you and me" would actually be grammatically correct.

      I also have a major pet peeve that's kind of dumb, but this book touched on it several times: Original song lyrics in books make me extremely uncomfortable. Where She Went is the only book I've ever read with song lyrics that were actually good and did not make me squirm, and as much as I loved this book, it is no Where She Went. So if you have thsi same issue, prepare to cringe a lot.

      Also, there's a big emotional reveal at the end, and it's kind of a dud. Like, I kind of felt like, "Oh, that's sad. Ten years it's taken you to get over it, huh?"

      So as far as New Adult lit goes, Cora Carmack is not as good a writer as, say, a Gayle Forman or a Tammara Webber, but who cares? This is a fun, sweet series. And if you have a kindle, Losing It is currently $1.99 and Faking It is $2.99. That's pretty awesome. AND the next book is going to follow a new main character while she backpacks around Europe. What's not to love?

      Review also posted at Finding Bliss in Books
    • 4/5
      I’m loving this series.This book didn't have the humor that the first book had but still was a great read. I wanted to read Cade's story to see his HEA after how things went for him in Losing It. So it was nice to see him fall for a girl who was so different on the outside though has the same core on the inside. I loved that he discovered love and grew and helped Max find and let her be herself. Max is like most girls they hide themselves or mold themselves into the person everyone wants them to be. She is still pretending to be this way for her parents so when they show up for a surprise visit. She picks Cade who would be the perfect guy to play her fake boyfriend. So it took her by surprise when she was attracted to a guy who she wouldn't have picked otherwise. I liked watching them both learn to trust and letting someone in that could end up destroying them. I will say I hated Max's parents (and sister-in-law) and how they dealt with the loss of one daughter and never really saw Max. It pissed me off towards the end on what they said and reacted. Despite my feelings for her parents I really enjoyed Cade and Max’s story and can't wait for the next book.
    • 4/5
      Max is not your typical girl next door. She's wild and brilliant and edgy to the core. With her dyed bright maroon hair, body tattoos and burlesque dancing job shes nothing like Bliss, who we met in book one of Carmack's Losing It. Well she's the wild girl until her parents come into town, when they're around she is the straight laced, girl next door who studies hard and never lets her parents down. She plays a good game and has been for a few years, but a double life always winds up crumbling and Max is about to meet her match with a capital C.Cade still reeling with the loss of Bliss has had it with being depressed. Loneliness and sadness have made him a tad awkward and blowing off his friends to wallow in his self pity. His friends are sick of it, he's sick of it, but cant seem to pull himself out of it...that is until he meets Max in a local coffee shop and has to pretend to be her boyfriend to fake out her parents. Within a few hours the self pity is almost forgotten and when Max asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend for a few weeks he quickly agrees.In a turn of events unexpected to either of them, Max and Cade begin falling in love and not the all consuming passionate love but the all consuming this is it love. But this is fake and they are just playing pretend, Max cant fall for the good guy, and Cade well he's had it with getting his heart broke, he doesn't want to get hurt again...he will not fight for another girl...even though what he feels is ten times stronger than what he felt for Bliss. As the relationship builds each of them will have to get honest and look the relationship in the cold dead face, deal with the past, deal with the parents and face the present and the future together.L-oo-vvv-ed. I started this and couldn't put it down. I think my favorite aspect reading this book was getting to know Cade, in Losing It he made me really mad because I knew Bliss belonged with Garrick, he unfortunately came off as the whinny guy pining for his unattainable girl. In Faking It though his character development really shinned and the chemistry between him and Max blew off the pages.Great story and a great ending. Im looking forward to book three in this series.
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars

      Cade may have been sweet in Losing It but I totally fell for him in this one. To see him try and be happy for Bliss when he loves her; you feel sorry for him and then Max enters his life and, well…I don’t want to spoil it but they are perfect for each other. Max is completely different to every other New Adult female character I’ve read about (and I’ve read a fair few) she’s tattooed, pierced, has dyed red hair and is in a band. She is completely alternative and a tough nut but you find yourself relating to her in one way or another and I found myself quickly liking her.

      They’re story is very up and down and I found myself willing them on from early on. Sure I guess when stood together they look a little odd but who cares about what others think when you love someone? (I am such a romantic!) They are perfect for each other.

      Cora has this way of writing that is both fun and emotional and it is so easy to fall under the spell she weaves. I am so going to read everything else she writes. I am most definitely a fan!

      If you’re looking for a fun, sexy read then I recommend this book. You don’t necessarily have to read Losing It first but it would help you get the gist of where Cade’s head is at the beginning.

      It is amazing!
    • 5/5
      I loved Losing It and couldn't wait to start reading Faking It. I was really interested to read Cade's story, and to meet Max. I liked Cade in Losing It, but he didn't blow me away or have that magnetic pull like some characters do, but in Faking It, I absolutely loved him. Oh, there is so much more to Cade than meets the eye and I loved digging past those layers while reading his story and learning more and more about him. Cade is going to school and living in Philadelphia, which is also where Bliss and Garrick live, and unfortunately, Cade is still hung up on Bliss, which makes a bad situation even worse. Try as he may to avoid them, he can't totally, and he really tries to hide just how broken and hurt he is about things when he is around them, not to mention the fact that he actually likes Garrick, which makes things even harder. Cade is not your typical bad boy. In fact, he is a really great guy.....a really hot really great guy with a great sense of humor, loyalty, and has sex appeal I wasn't even aware the boy possessed, with is hot preppy self. While Cade is in the coffee shop one day, Mackenzie "Max" Miller walks in with her boyfriend. Max is the total opposite of Bliss in every way. She has the whole badass, bad girl, thing going on, with tattoos, piercings, and dyed red hair, with an attitude and snarky sense of humor to match. (All the qualities of the guys I typically go for in books). There was just one little problem. Max's mom and dad were in town and on their way to see her, and they had no idea about this aspect of her life. Max had been trying to live her dream of being a musician, while keeping her real appearance, tats, piercings, and all hidden when she would see her parents. Unfortunately, she still needed their help financially to make ends meet. As fate would have it, she convinces Cade to play the part of her boyfriend when her parents come in the coffee shop to meet her, but Cade does his job so well that the parents want him to come to Thanksgiving dinner. Thus, the beginning of what is Cade and Max's story, and boy is it a good one. I think I liked Faking It even better than Losing It. What starts out as an "agreement" soon turns into something more, despite Max's desperate attempts to keep it from happening. Max is a very hurt, broken, and emotionally wounded person as a result of tragedy in her life that she has never recovered from. She tries to cover it up as best she can, but somehow Cade can see past the facade and into the heart of who she really is. The truth be told, Max doesn't think she is good enough or good for Cade. What she doesn't know is that Cade is just as broken and wounded as she is, and that she is the first light that has come into his life in quite some time. I loved watching their relationship progress. Max refers to Cade as Golden Boy, and he in turn refers to her as Angry Girl. They hurt each other, they help each other, they can't keep their hands off each other, and Max tries her best to run away from the thing that she needs the most, Cade. Cade's whole life he has been used to having to let things go, so when Max runs away from him, he has to make a choice, a choice as to whether he is going to go after what he wants or let it slip away. They did have a little help in the form of Cade's friend and neighbor Milo, who I just loved. I actually hope he gets a book to. While Faking It still had the element of humor that you find in Losing It, it is much more sober, intense, and heart consuming, as you journey with Cade and Max while they work through their issues. I found it amazing at how good Cade was with and for Max. Faking It is a great story that is romantic, sometimes funny, definitely intense, heartbreaking, heart warming, and even has its steamy moments. I thoroughly enjoyed it and most definitely recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Alright, it's official. I love Cora Carmack's novels. They're such cute, fun, sexy reads, with just enough real life issues to keep them from being entirely fluffy. With Losing It, Carmack tackled virginity and deciding what to do in the real world. In Faking It, Carmack continues to focus on real life issues suffered by "new adults" everywhere: embracing yourself and deciding between money and passion.The obvious interpretation of the title is that Max and Cade are faking a relationship in a classic romantic comedy gambit. Obviously, their feelings turn out to be something real beneath the ruse and all of that. That's not the crux of the book, and not the essence of what the title's referring to, though. In fact, both Max and Cade are faking so much more, and, no, I'm not talking about orgasms here.Both leads are pretending to be okay with their lives as they are. Cade's pretending that he's over Bliss, and that he's not upset by her relationship with Garrick. He's pretending that he's happy in grad school, and not drowning in debt. If he pretends hard enough, his life really will be perfect, right? Max, on the other hand, fakes fearlessness to mask her emotions. She also fakes her personality around her family, pretending to be the perfect daughter, the one that died.Honestly, no one can mess someone up like their parents, am I right? Max's parents put a lot of pressure on her, and express their disappointment at her died hair and dreams of being a musician. They help her pay her bills and loans (left over from her two years of college before she dropped out), but they hold that aid over her head. Could they ever really accept Max's tattoos and piercings or her bad boy boyfriends? Though she's a badass elsewhere, in front of her parents, she reverts back to the scared little girl, unable to talk back or step out of line.Cade and Max are a case of opposites attracting in a lot of respects. He's all prep and she's a rock girl. Though there relationship does proceed on a much faster timeline than I prefer, they do have chemistry and it sizzles. Actually, as a couple, I like them much better than I did Bliss and Garrick. Their bond just comes off as more real, with more confronting of the other person's baggage and acceptance thereof. They're really making one another better and stronger. Also, Carmack reverses the traditional romance tropes, with Cade being the sweeter, more emotional one in the relationship, the one most desirous of a lasting connection. I wish Carmack didn't go quite as heavily for the happily ever after again at the end, but, still, Faking It was an awesome read for me.The interesting change from Losing It is in the narrative style. Losing It was written entirely in Bliss' first person perspective, but Faking It alternates between Cade and Max. Though initially skeptical of this decision, Carmack does a nice job with it. I never had any difficulty discerning which POV I was reading at any given time. Plus, this really highlights how much edgier Max is compared to Cade, which I like. She's got emotions, but he's definitely the more emotional of the two, which is great to see this way.Carmack's sophomore novel proves that she's not a one hit wonder. If you enjoyed Losing It, Faking It is a must read, even if you were on the fence about whether you wanted Cade's story. Now to wait impatiently for book three about Bliss' college roommate, Kelsey.