Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan Review — The Fake Dating Rom-Com That Will Make You Believe in Summer Love
- Joao Nsita
- 5 days ago
- 10 min read
Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan Review — The Fake Dating Rom-Com That Will Make You Believe in Summer Love
There is a very specific kind of book that Annabel Monaghan writes. It is the kind of book that makes you feel like you are sitting on a wide porch in a seaside town at the tail end of a warm afternoon, lemonade in hand, the light going gold and soft, and the world — just for a little while — feeling entirely manageable. That feeling is not accidental. It is a craft. And in Dolly All the Time, her newest novel, Monaghan has refined that craft to something close to perfection.
I am a reader who tends to approach the fake-dating trope with my eyebrows slightly raised. I have been burned by stories that lean too heavily on the mechanic and forget to build the actual relationship underneath it. Dolly All the Time is not that book. It is the book that reminds you why you fell in love with the trope in the first place — because at its best, it is not really about the pretending at all. It is about two people who have very good reasons for keeping their guards up, slowly realising that the performance has cracked something open in both of them.
Dolly Brick is one of the most fully realised protagonists I have encountered in contemporary romance this year. She is not a concept. She is not a vehicle. She is a complete, complicated, tenderhearted woman who has been carrying an enormous amount for a very long time — and doing it with a kind of cheerful practicality that will make you both admire her and want to wrap her in a very large blanket. From the first page, she is real. From the first page, you are on her side.
And then Stewart Whitfield walks in, and everything gets more interesting.
What This Book Is About
Dolly Brick has spent her entire adult life being the person who holds things together. When her mother left at age twelve, Dolly held the family together. When she became a single parent, she held that together too. And now, at thirty-nine, she has returned to Whitfield, Rhode Island — yes, named after the family — for the summer, with the goal of helping her father and brother avoid losing the family home. Dolly is a problem-solver. Dolly is capable. What Dolly is not, at the start of this novel, is taken care of. And watching that change is one of the quiet, profound pleasures of reading this book.
Into Dolly's carefully managed life walks Stewart Whitfield, the wealthy and apparently unfeeling scion of the town's founding family. Publicly humiliated in a very visible breakup, Stewart needs a new girlfriend — specifically, one who is clearly not in his world, someone who can demonstrate to his family that he has shed the superficiality they associate with his previous relationship. Dolly, in her sensible jeans and her genuine warmth and her complete inability to pretend she is impressed by money, is perfect for the role. In exchange for playing his girlfriend for the summer, Stewart offers Dolly the financial security she so desperately needs.
What neither of them anticipates is Stewart. Because the man who shows up when the cameras aren't rolling — or in this case, when the social performance is done for the day — is nothing like the man Dolly expected. Stewart is thoughtful. He listens. He notices things about Dolly that she has never noticed about herself. He has a kindness that has been buried under years of expectation and performance, and Dolly, because she is exactly who she is, draws it out of him simply by being in the room. The pretend relationship starts doing the work that pretend relationships always do in the best fake-dating stories: it gives two people permission to be honest with each other in ways they never would have allowed themselves otherwise.
There is a moment, roughly two-thirds of the way through Dolly All the Time, where the book shifts register. Where the comedy softens and something more vulnerable and more true rises to the surface. It is one of the best-written emotional pivots I have read this year, and it is the moment where you understand fully what Monaghan has been building. This is a love story, yes. But it is also a story about a woman learning to accept that she deserves to be loved without conditions — and that accepting that is its own kind of courage.
Author's Style and Craft
Monaghan's prose is distinctly her own — warm, quick, and bright without ever being breezy to the point of shallowness. She is a writer who trusts the small moment. A look across a dinner table. A gesture repeated. A sentence that a character almost finishes and then doesn't. She understands that romance lives in the details, and she is extraordinarily attentive to them.
Her dialogue is a particular joy. Dolly and Stewart's conversations are lively and funny and always carry a second layer of meaning. When they are pretending to be in love, their exchanges are playful. When the pretending starts to crack, the exchanges become more careful, more tentative, more charged. Monaghan modulates this transition beautifully, with a precision that makes the whole thing feel true rather than engineered. She has always been a writer worth reading; in Dolly All the Time, she has written her best book yet.
Themes and Deeper Meaning
At its heart, Dolly All the Time is a novel about worthiness. Not in an abstract, motivational-poster kind of way — but in the specific, messy, kitchen-table way that real people actually grapple with it. Dolly does not believe, at the start of this story, that she is the kind of woman who gets the grand romantic gesture. She is the woman who makes the gesture for everyone else. She is the helper, the solver, the steady one. And the romantic journey Monaghan constructs for her is one about learning that receiving love is not weakness. It is the other half of what giving it means.
Stewart's arc mirrors this from the opposite direction. He has been so long performing a version of himself for his family and his world that he has nearly lost access to who he actually is. Dolly, who has no patience for performance and no particular awe of his wealth, cracks him open simply by treating him like a person. It is one of the loveliest things about this book: the way these two people heal each other not through grand declarations but through daily, ordinary attention.
This theme connects beautifully with what we explored in our review of Sunlight by Devney Perry — that the most powerful romance novels are the ones where the love is inseparable from the growth. Where becoming a couple and becoming a truer version of yourself happen at the same time, through the same process. Dolly All the Time is absolutely that kind of book. And it sits perfectly alongside the warm, character-driven romances we love most on our What to Read page.
What This Book Gets Absolutely Right
Dolly is an extraordinary protagonist. She is competent and funny and emotionally intelligent, but she also carries real wounds. Monaghan lets us see all of it — the capability and the vulnerability — without ever reducing Dolly to one or the other. She is whole, and she is wonderful.
The fake-dating mechanic is used with real intentionality. Every scene in which Dolly and Stewart are performing their relationship does double duty — it advances the plot but it also advances their actual emotional connection. Nothing is wasted.
The setting is alive. Whitfield, Rhode Island is a place you can smell and hear and feel. Monaghan has always been gifted at conjuring her settings, and here the town becomes almost a character — nostalgic and lovely and slightly suffocating in all the ways that home towns tend to be.
The heat is earned. The romantic tension between Dolly and Stewart builds gradually and purposefully, and when it finally releases, it feels inevitable rather than manufactured. The emotional and physical timelines are in sync, which is rarer than it should be.
The supporting characters are superb. Dolly's family — her father, her brother — are drawn with real love and specificity. They are not plot furniture. They are people whose presence you feel and whose happiness you care about.
Where the Book Could Have Gone Further
Stewart's backstory is somewhat underexplored. We understand what he is running from — the performance, the expectation — but the specifics of what made him that way remain slightly opaque. A little more depth there would have made his transformation even more satisfying.
The conflict in the third act, while effective, is familiar. The misunderstanding that keeps them apart in the final stretch is recognisable from many other fake-dating stories. It resolves cleanly, but readers who love a really fresh twist on the trope may find it a little expected.
Some of the secondary storylines feel slightly rushed at the end. The family's financial situation, which is a significant driver of the plot, wraps up in a way that feels a touch too tidy given how much weight it carries for most of the novel.
Books to Read If You Loved This One
Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan — The author's breakout novel and a perfect companion read. If Dolly All the Time is your first Monaghan, go immediately to Nora. You will not regret it.
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren — A crackling fake-relationship rom-com with a heroine you will root for entirely and a love story that sneaks up on you in the best way.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry — Two people, a complicated history, and the slow revelation of what they actually are to each other. Warm, funny, and quietly devastating in the best possible way.
Who Should Read This Book
Dolly All the Time is for anyone who has ever taken care of everyone except themselves. For readers who love a fake-dating romance that actually earns its happily-ever-after. For fans of Annabel Monaghan's previous work who have been waiting for her next book and for new readers discovering her warmth and wit for the first time. It is a book for summer — for beach bags and back porches and long train commutes and rainy Sunday afternoons.
For more books in this vein — warm, witty, emotionally satisfying contemporary romance — visit our Romance Book Recommendations page and let us point you in the right direction.
Content warnings: mild sexual content, themes of financial hardship, references to an absent parent, some mild language.
How This Book Made Me Feel
There is a specific emotional quality to the best Annabel Monaghan novels. It is something like relief. Like the world being slightly more manageable than you thought it was. Like the reminder that kindness is still real and that love, the ordinary daily kind, is still possible for people who have been carrying too much for too long.
Reading Dolly All the Time, I felt that relief. I felt it especially in the scenes between Dolly and Stewart where neither of them is performing anything — where they are just two people sitting in the same room and being honest. There is something Monaghan does in those scenes that I find almost impossible to describe. She makes gentleness feel dramatic. She makes quiet moments feel significant. And she makes you genuinely believe that these two people are falling in love not because the plot requires it but because they actually suit each other, deeply and particularly, in ways that only become visible over time.
By the last page, I felt held. That is the word. I know it sounds soft, but it is the truest thing I can say about this book. It held me. And I did not want to put it down.
Final Verdict
⭐⭐⭐⭐½ — 4.5 out of 5 stars
Dolly All the Time is Annabel Monaghan at her very best — warm, sharp, emotionally precise, and deeply satisfying. It is the fake-dating romance for people who love the trope and the fake-dating romance for people who are sceptical of it. Dolly Brick is a protagonist for the ages, and her story is one you will be recommending to every reader in your life by the time summer is over.
About the Author
Annabel Monaghan is the New York Times bestselling author of Nora Goes Off Script, Sandman, and Same Time Next Summer. She writes warm, funny, emotionally intelligent contemporary romance that has won her devoted readers worldwide. Dolly All the Time is her newest novel and a confirmation of her place among the very best writers in the genre. Learn more at annabelmonaghan.com.
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FAQs
1. Is Dolly All the Time a standalone novel? Yes, Dolly All the Time is a standalone contemporary romance. It is set in the same world as some of Monaghan's other books but requires no prior reading to enjoy fully.
2. How does Dolly All the Time compare to Nora Goes Off Script? Both books share Monaghan's signature warmth and wit and are driven by a strong female protagonist navigating unexpected love. Many readers feel Dolly is Monaghan's strongest work yet — richer, more emotionally complex, and with a central romance that hits even harder than Nora's.
3. Is the fake-dating trope executed in a fresh way? Yes and no — the mechanic follows familiar beats, but Monaghan's character work is exceptional, and the emotional truth of the relationship feels genuinely original and earned. Fans of the trope will find everything they love here; sceptics may be converted.
4. What is the steam level in this book? Warm-to-moderate. The romance is emotionally rich and there are romantic scenes, but this is not an explicit novel. The focus is on emotional intimacy at least as much as physical chemistry.
5. Is this a good book for a book club? Absolutely. Dolly All the Time has a lot to discuss — themes of worthiness, caregiving, family obligation, and what it means to let yourself be loved. It is also just enormously enjoyable to read, which makes it a wonderful book club pick.
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