Spanish love farce
Spanish love farce —The Spanish Love Deception, in English— is a romantic comedy written by the Madrid engineer and author Elena Armas, as well as one of the most popular titles to be reviewed on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Tiktok. The work was first published in the United States, where it was recognized by the New York Times.
After achieving his greatest commercial success in English and becoming a viral book on social media, this literary debut by Elena Armnas was translated and distributed in Spanish by the VeRa publishing house in 2022. Since then, all the blogs dedicated to summarizing romantic works have talked about Lina's story and her great dilemma: how to find the perfect partner to attend her sister's wedding.
Synopsis of Spanish love farce
A crisis that needs to be results
Catalina is a young woman who has it all: the job of her dreams, the perfect life in New York., good friends, financial dependency and more. However, since he receives the news that her ex has just gotten engaged, her family begins to reproach him for the fact that she does not have a new partner. The invariable upsets worsen when her sister announces that she is marrying the love of her life, which throws Lina off guard.
Despite everything you already own, Catalina feels that she cannot attend that wedding without a partner. That is the trigger for the woman to decide to lie to her family and find a partner who pretends to be her love partner. She only has four weeks to carry out her plan.
While the protagonist tells her intricate plan to her best friend, an unexpected accomplice appears: Aaron Blackford, his nemesis, the man who has always treated her with cold hostility ever since they began working together.
From United States to Spain
Lina moved to the United States to finish the last years of his professional training. Later, she stayed in New York to pursue his brilliant career. However, his work has always had Aaron Blackford as a drawback. For some reason that Catalina doesn't understand, he doesn't tolerate her, and she, in turn, tolerates him less and less. But when Aaron offers to be her fictional boyfriend, the protagonist is forced to accept.
Spanish love farce It is narrated from Lina's point of view.Therefore, Aaron Blackford's motivations to help her are unknown to her and to the reader —this, of course, is a resource that facilitates the progress of the story.
At first, it is usual to find many fights between these two characters. However, once they cross the Atlantic, Catalina begins to notice Aaron's blue eyes, which remind her of the "depths of the sea."
A feminist denunciation of gender inequality?
It is assumed that one of the featured subplots de Spanish love farce is the complaint made by the protagonist against the inequality that lives in her work and daily life due to the fact of being a woman. However, this is narrated in a very superficial way..
At the beginning of the novel, Lina is described as an independent woman who lives on what she loves.. However, at the same time, it's too insecure enough to assume to her family that she is single.
The book Elena Armnas poses her protagonist's bachelorhood as a true existential debacle, a plummeting fall from which he can only rise from the hand of an adonis. This can be helpful in creating Lina's development, her evolution, one where she understands that being alone doesn't have to be traumatic, and that the assertions of others regarding her status are worthless. However, the resolution of the conflict does not take that path.
About the spicy scenes: could this be another fanfic of 50 shades of gray?
On most shopping platforms, Spanish love farce is advertised as a romantic comedy suitable for women of all ages. this is troublesome, because, despite the childish attitudes of the protagonist, and the way in which she tries to be funny by saying things like "yep" and "nope", the novel has many scenes of explicit sex. In fact, that's one of the reasons why this story is so popular.
In addition to all of the above, the title of Elena Armnas constantly resorts to common places, such as the physical attractiveness of the male protagonist, his blue eyes, his exaggeratedly prominent muscles... Although it is a comedy, the caricature and sexualization of the main characters, rather than being hilarious, feel forced.
The Wattpad Phenomenon
The proliferation of youth literary titles or new adult with a high sexual content is not new. For some years, books like After, by Anna Todd, or Heist, by Ariana Godoy, are the trend in the reading and writing social network Wattpad.
While it is true that there is much more than infantilization and macho protagonists within the orange app, it is also true that more and more books are inspired by this content to tell their stories.
About the author, Elena Armas
Elena Armas
Elena Armas was born in 1990, in Madrid, Spain. The author studied chemical engineering, but her penchant for writing played a much larger role in her life. Her first novel The Spanish Love Deception, led her to be a celebrity in the literary scene.
The work was very well received., especially by the younger female audience. In addition, it obtained the first places of the best-selling books of the newspapers USA Today y The New York Times.
After receiving the hug from the adolescents, Armas published other titles which also got good reviews from their target audience. In them, the writer handles the same formula that he used in his debut: Romantic comedies with a simple plot, shallow characters, and needlessly complicated situations that are meant to be funny.
Other books by Elena Armas
- The American Roommate Experiment (2022);
- The Long Game (2023)