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Made to Last by Melissa Tagg Review

Hello Everyone :)


I hope you're all having an amazing summer.


Mine's been so crazy busy that I feel like I haven't taken as much time to enjoy it so far as I was planning on. I am going to be going away for a few days with my husband and some of my family pretty soon though, and I'm very much looking forward to that.


In the meantime though, I'm excited to share with all of you a review for an amazing read that I finished recently, from an author I'd been wanting to read for quite some time.


I'd only read a novella by Melissa Tagg before picking this one up, and now I'm happy to say she's definitely a new favorite author, and I'm already working my way through some of her other books.


However, I'm getting ahead of myself, and let's go ahead and chat about the first book I finished by her.


Made to Last by Melissa Tagg:



Source: Library

Publisher: Bethany House

Publication Date: September 15th, 2013

Genre: Christian Fiction/Contemporary Romance


Synopsis:

Spunky Contemporary Romance from a Sparkling New Talent

Miranda Woodruff, star of the homebuilding show "From the Ground Up," will do anything to keep the job she loves. Due to a painful broken engagement and a faith she's mostly forgotten, she's let her entire identity become wrapped up in the Miranda everyone sees onscreen. So when she receives news that the network might cancel her program, she must do the very thing she fears most: let the spotlight shine on her closely guarded personal life. The only problem? She's been living a lie—letting viewers believe she's married—and now she's called upon to play wife to a sweet, if a bit goofy, pretend husband to boost ratings.

Desperate to help his family and prove he's not a total failure, reporter Matthew Knox is looking for a breakout story. When he's offered the opportunity to do an online serial feature on Miranda Woodruff, he jumps at the chance, even if celebrity reporting isn't really his thing. But as soon as he meets Miranda, he knows she's keeping secrets.

When Miranda's former fiance suddenly appears on the scene again, she doubts her life could get more complicated. Juggling three guys, an on-the-rocks television show, and the potential exposure of her deception is way more than she bargained for. Can the woman who makes things look so good onscreen admit it's time to tell the truth about who she is? And if she does, will the life Miranda's built come crashing down just as she's finally found a love to last?
 



*****synopsis from goodreads****


My Review:

Made To Last was a highly anticipated read for me, as I'd heard such great things about it from other book bloggers I follow, and I'm happy to say that it lived up to all of the hype surrounding it. It's been awhile since I've loved a book so much right from the opening lines, and this one definitely reeled me in hook, line and sinker right from the first page.

Miranda Woodruff is the star of a popular home repair show entitled "From The Ground Up" and she loves what she gets the opportunity to do. She's always been more at home in her comfy flannel with a hammer in her hand then in a fancy dress and heels with her hair and makeup all done, and she enjoys getting to teach others what she's so passionate about. However, she made a colossal mistake during her audition for the show-she told the bigwigs behind the show that she was already married, and that her husband taught her everything she knew. When her fiance walks out of the picture before the show takes off, Miranda is in a massive jam, and she ends up pretending to the show that her husband is still happily in the picture, he's just camera shy. When the network threatens to cancel her show due to lower ratings, Miranda's manager comes up with a scheme. They'll hire someone to play her husband in an effort to increase her popularity, and market her as the happily married woman she's always been playing on. However, things get extremely complicated when she ends up finding a true friend in the man they've hired to play her husband (Blaze) , and starts feeling guilty about what she's asking him to do. And it only gets more complicated when a reporter (Matthew)  is hired to shadow her life in order to blog about it, and Miranda soon starts feeling a spark between the two of them that she can't ever act on since she's supposed to be married. Just when things couldn't possibly get any weirder, Miranda's former fiance shows up, and suddenly she has no idea which direction her life is headed, and she'll have to trust her faith to get her where she needs to be.

Made To Last is exactly the type of book I'm looking for when I pick up a contemporary romance. It was clean, it was hysterically funny, it was swoon worthy, and it was filled with moments that highlight the importance of a close, personal relationship with Jesus. Miranda was a character I really found myself enjoying reading about, as she was such a caring person who'd been dealt some pretty hard life circumstances, and yet she was determined to always put others first. When she hears rumors about the show being cancelled, she's more concerned with her cast and crew being out of work than she is her own job. On her days off from filming, she spends her time doing charity projects for those less fortunate, and she was just really an amazing character. Likewise, I really enjoyed both Blaze and Matthew as characters as well. Blaze was hilarious, and had such a big heart. It was so endearing to hear about his true reasons for accepting the acting gig as Miranda's husband, and most of his moments had me laughing out loud. I was so excited to find out that the second book in the series is his story, and I can't wait to read that one soon. Matthew on the other hand was a character so different from Blaze, but amazing in his own right. While his journalistic integrity is often questioned throughout the story, the reader is shown the way that past hurts caused his judgement to be clouded, and he's not the way he first appears to be.

I feel like I could literally gush on and on about just how amazing this book was, but this review is already way longer than I intended it to be. If you haven't yet read Melissa Tagg than you're definitely missing out, and I highly suggest picking up one of her books as soon as you possibly can.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


I literally could not have enjoyed this more!


Thanks so much for reading guys! I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you all again soon.


This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners. 

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