The Kiss Countdown Review

By Etta Easton

Star rating: ★★★★★

Blurb

A struggling event planner and a sinfully hot astronaut must decide if their fake relationship is worth a shot at happily-ever-after, in this starry debut.

Risk-averse event planner Amerie Price is jobless, newly single, and about to lose her apartment. With no choice but to gamble on her shaky start-up, the last thing she needed was to run into her smug ex and his new, less complicated girlfriend at Amerie's favorite coffee shop. Panicked, she pretends to be dating the annoyingly sexy man she met by spilling Americano all over his abs. He plays along—for a price.

Half the single men in Houston claim to be astronauts, but Vincent Rogers turns out to be the real deal. What started as a one-off lie morphs into a for the three months leading up to his mission, Amerie will play Vincent's doting partner in front of his loving but overly invested family. In exchange, she gets a rent-free room in his house and can put every penny toward her struggling business.

What Amerie doesn't plan for is Vincent's gravitational pull. While her mind tells her a future with this astronaut is too unpredictable, her heart says he's exactly what she needs. As their time together counts down, Amerie must decide if she'll settle for the safe life—or shoot for the stars.

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Read if you Like:

🚀 Fake dating

🚀 Astronaut hero

🚀 Roommates

🚀 Family drama

🚀 Party planner heroine

My Thoughts:

The Kiss Countdown is a beautifully written romance that explores what we should do for our families and if someone with an intense career can also have a love story.

Amerie and Vincent were such a great couple! She gives his life balance and he gives her a home. I loved that they both had careers they were passionate about that were really interesting to read about. I also liked how their initial fake dating situation let them be really honest with each other and in some ways support each other better than they would have otherwise.

One thing that was incredible about this book is how space metaphors are used throughout the book so successfully. It felt like the book had a theme that even the writing recognized. It also never felt forced or unnatural. I particularly liked this for the first non-fake kiss scene. It was one of the most beautiful first kisses I have ever read.

I really enjoyed how this book explored the toll chronic illness and grief can take on a family. Etta Easton did a wonderful job showing how Amerie's mother's illness affected Amerie and her childhood. America has this idea that if you work hard you can have a wonderful life, but that doesn't factor in chronic illness, a broken healthcare system and biases in which disorders receive research funding. I love reading romances that discuss this kind of issue and I hope to see more of them in the future.

I recommend The Kiss Countdown to anyone who likes romance, particularly to fake dating and romances about stem career fans! I think you'll love this one to the moon and back (see I can do space metaphors too).

🌶️🌶️ - This book had several kissing and making-out scenes as well as some fade-to-black style steamy scenes. I wouldn't consider it a fully closed door but it was fairly low spice.

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Romance for providing me with an ARC of this story. All opinions are my own.