A review by effy
False Confidence by Sophie Snow

5.0

 
Jasmine Cannon hasn’t had an orgasm in 10 years but she is doing fine, she still enjoys sex as much as the next person and none of her partners have seemed to notice that she has been faking it. Liam Michaelson is the step-son of Jasmine’s best friend (don’t worry, he’s 7 years her senior) and has had a crush of Jasmine since he first met her. He is also a pleasure dom. When Liam finds-out that Jasmine hasn’t had an orgasm in a decade, he makes it her mission to get her there.

False Confidence is Snow’s third book and I have been desperately anticipating its release after being disappointed to have not been one of the lucky ones to get my hands on an ARC. Snow is easily one of my favourite authors so there was no world in which I wasn’t going to read this book.

This book was the perfect little palette cleanser for me after having a busy couple of weeks as well as having read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi recently so it was nice to read some contemporary romances. I really love the way that all of Snow’s characters in her books are queer and it is very much normalised; that is not to say that the characters don’t face homophobia, however it is refreshing to read books where queer people just ✨exist✨. Something else that is a hallmark of Snow’s books is that the characters will be kinda going through it but it will be a journey that has been written with sympathy and compassion so it never feels manufactured.

A book where the romance initially revolves around our MMC trying to make our FMC reach orgasm could have easily come across as contrived or awkward. That is not the case here. Snow manages to write a dynamic between these characters that doesn’t feel unbalanced at any point. I think part of why the narrative works so well is because it is very clear that the relationship between Jasmine and Liam goes beyond just a sexual agreement even if they don’t necessary say it out loud to one another. 

It is always a pleasure when a book doesn’t contain a third-act breakup (although if anyone can pull it off, it’s Snow) and this is one of those seemingly rare breeds of contemporary romance books where we don’t get the dreaded breakup and it actually kinda goes in the opposite direction…

The epilogue of this book goes in pretty much the direction you expect the epilogue of a romance book to go but also manages to feel fresh and unique. I don’t think I was particularly aware of the timeline of this story so it wasn’t until the characters themselves mentioned it in the epilogue that I even stopped to think about it. But it worked. The way things played-out was so chaotic and just felt so authentic for the characters. I do think some readers may struggle to get behind it but those readers would be wrong.