The Dating Dare

„The Dating Dare“ is the second book in Jayci Lee‘s „A Sweet Mess“ series, but can also easily be read as a stand-alone. Tara and Seth don’t do relationships. But when they meet at a wedding and acknowledge their mutual attraction, they do agree to give in to it – on one condition. They are only supposed to go on four dates over the course of a month, after which they will part ways without having fallen in love with each other. Right? Right. I do like the premise of „The Dating Dare“, but am not entirely happy with its execution. Right from the start, I found the dynamic and dialogue between the two main characters to be very cringy. That feeling subsided somewhat over the course of the story, but never went away. Especially at the beginning they objectify each other a lot and until the very end, I don’t think there’s a single conversation between the two of them without sexual innuendo. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against flirty or a even steamy scenes, but if that’s all there is to a story, it’s just not something I enjoy reading. Something I will say, though, is that nothing in this book happens without consent, so I really appreciated that. Also, I did like Tara’s friend and Seth’s brother and I wish they had been more present, since I wasn’t really able to connect with Tara or Seth very well. Overall, „The Dating Dare“ is not a bad book by any means, but ultimately wasn’t quite the right read for me. If you enjoy novels with lots of sexual tension that focus mainly on the romance, you might enjoy this book a lot more than I did, though.