Love Unmasked / Becky Dean / Book Review

LOVE UNMASKED

Traveling to Venice with her art and architecture class is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Evie Whitmore. She can't believe she's going to the city of gondolas and crumbling palazzos. She can't believe she's setting foot in the city that inspired her absolute favorite fantasy series of all time, Elven Realms. Not that anybody knows about that last bit. Nobody can know. It's not like being a fantasy nerd is cool or anything.

But Evie knows keeping her secret nerdiness under wraps will be hard. Because Venice didn't just inspire Elven Realms. It also hosts a secret speakeasy night club for fans. A club Evie is determined to locate, handmade costume for the elven masquerade included.

When she almost gets caught sneaking out the first night in Venice, Evie is saved by a dashing masked stranger... who is also looking for the Elven Realms club. And when they don't find it the first night, they agree to meet up again. Evie's never met anyone quite like this stranger, and she thinks she might be falling for him. But he's staying at her hotel. He might be one of her classmates. And she can't possibly imagine which one.


LOVE UNMASKED


THOUGHTS

It's cute. It's fun. It's not revolutionary.


PROS

Setting Boundaries I liked the main plot(s) happening in this book, but I really loved one of the smaller, character-development-type plots happening in the background. Evie is a girl with a lot of expectations placed upon her. She's an over-achiever and a perfectionist, and sometimes it all gets to be too much. And one of the things she learns in this book is that it's okay, sometimes, to say no. It's okay to take your time, to enjoy life's little moments. It's okay to say "not now." It's okay to disappoint people because it's your life at the end of the day. And that's an important lesson.

Pure Magic The speakeasy fandom night club this book makes is just a lot of fun. Though a lot of suspension of disbelief is required, because the concept is kind of silly, if you manage to just kind of, sort of believe something like this could exist, it's just... fun. So fun.

Pure Escapism Overall, this silly romance is just pure escapist reading. It's escaping to Venice. It's having a whirlwind romance while abroad. It's exploring an enchanting city and falling in love beneath the golden sunshine and by the light of the moon. It's not deep. It's not dire. It's just a chance to escape into something pure.


CONS

There's just something majorly.. icky about Evie consistently referring to her friends as the "popular" kids. I don't know. Maybe it's because the only kids at my own high school who thought they were the popular crowd were certifiably the worst, but this just rubbed me wrong every time she said it. That's just not how popularity work. Or at the very least, it's not something to brag about. It read as egotistical and gross, and I don't think that's what the author intended in the least. Which is so very unfortunate. Major Ick

Evie really struggles in this book to share with her popular friends the thing that really interests her: high fantasy. And specifically one high fantasy book series, with dashing romance and an active fandom. She thinks she's going to be judged for it, which feels very... 2000s. I don't know that "nerd" is as derogatory these days as this author seems to imply, and I definitely know that fantasy is on the upswing. So many BookTok girlies are into high fantasy that it's just baffling to believe contemporary high school kids would be anti-fantasy in any way. Maybe Evie might believe it... but only if she wasn't active in any online spaces at all. Which we know isn't true, since she's on all the forums and fandom sites. It seems unlikely for a girl who's growing up with social media not to know that fantasy is actually pretty in right now (and she's definitely not going to be judged for it). So the whole plotline feels a little... outdated. Not a la Mode

I don't know. I'm usually good as pushing away some of my plot questions so I can just enjoy the book, but boy was this one testing me! Why are these kids never supervised? Day and night, they're always left to their own devices, and on a school trip involving minors, that's just not flying. They don't have to sneak away for some quality alone time very often because they're more or less left to their own devices all the time. And it's not like the partners happening here, unsupervised, are same-sex pairings (which in itself feels odd; high schools love to group kids by their AGAB). But are you really letting a boy and a girl wander out into Venice, alone, just because they're "working on a project" together? This just didn't make sense. And when it comes to Evie's whole mysterious stranger romance, well, that didn't work for me either because it is obvious from the start who this "stranger" is, and not just because of plot conventions. The "investigation" only works because of contrived reasons to exclude him from consideration, which is just... not great storytelling, my friends.Disbelief


Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
6/10

Fans of Abigail Hing Wen's Loveboat, Taipei will love jet-setting to this new romance locale. Those who loved Trinity Nguyen's A Bánh Mì for Two will love testing out newfound independence abroad in this romance.

LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI A BANH MI FOR TWO

Details
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Date: July 15, 2025
Series: N/A
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Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

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