I Think They Love You by Julian Winters

RomanceContemporary

Feb 24

Written By taylor shepeard

Title: I Think They Love You

Author: Julian Williams

Publication Date: January 28, 2025

Audience: Adult

Genre: Romance

Sub-Genre: Contemporary

POV: Single

Series: Standalone

Format: Audiobook

—Narrator(s): André Santana

3.5 ⭐ | 2🌶️

Pros:
✨Braylon
✨Distinct Characters

Cons:
✨Flashback Chapters Halt Plot Progress
✨Protagonist's Character Development
✨Connection to / Interest in Characters
✨ CEO Contest Contrived

Synopsis

When Denzel “Denz” Carter’s workaholic father and CEO of 24 Carter Gold unexpectedly announces his retirement, the competition is on for who will …

… become his successor. To convince his judgmental family members that Denz is capable of commitment he impulsively lies about being in a serious relationship. Problem is the last serious relationship he was in hung him high and dry after leaving the continent.
Now Denz needs to find a fake boyfriend to bring to family functions and seal the deal on the CEO position. To do so he enlists the help of his best friend and roommate, Jamie. Someone his family already accepts in their inner circle. But when his BFF is a no-show, Denz is forced to turn to the last person he wants to be in a pretend (or any) relationship with: Braylon, the man who broke his heart.
Braylon’s sudden reappearance in Denz’s life turns everything upside down. But apparently, he needs Denz’s connections to the mayor to win his own promotion and Denz is currently up a creek without a paddle. So, they strike a deal. It’s all business, but between the funny texts and the confusing kisses soon enough Denz is struggling to separate business from the affairs of his heart.
In Julian Winters's I think They Love You, sometimes fake dating your way to success can mean finding the second chance at love you've needed all along.

*Blurb taken from The StoryGraph

Review

This review may contain spoilers.

Set in both the past and the present, we follow rich party planner Denz as he competes against his sister to become the next CEO of their father’s company. To prove he has his head on his shoulders, he ends up fake dating an old flame--the one who broke his heart.

I wanted to love this. Between the synopsis and this gorgeous cover art, I was hooked from the moment this book crossed my radar. Unfortunately, so much of it had me scrunching my nose. The two main things that drew me out of the novel were the chapters from the past, and the present competition to become CEO.

Exploring the past relationship between Denz and Bray in long flashbacks halted plot progress. Nothing happened that couldn’t have been summed up in the present as BrayLON (new, improved, back from London with an ... accent?) and Denz worked to heal old wounds. In fact, because we spend so much time in the past, we get less time with our characters rekindling their feelings and working through the pitfalls of their younger selves. I would have loved to learn about the past relationship while IN the present, as Denz and Braylon faced the moments that tore them apart. Instead, these chapters steal the opportunity for character development without being additive.

Kami obviously deserved to be CEO. Denz was a mess, and the competition felt odd because I wasn’t rooting for our protagonist. In fact, I was going to be enraged if Denz did win. I think the experience of the competition was meant to force Denz to work through his character flaws, but the events happened so fast, and Denz continuously dropped the ball during them, so there didn’t seem to be much personal improvement. He felt the same at the end of the novel as he did at the beginning, despite having a new perspective on life. Which kind of made the contest feel pointless ....

Everything about this fell flat for me, and I never fully engaged with Denz. The writing was fine and the secondary characters were great, but I was relieved to be done with this one.