Not So Nice Guy by R.S. Grey | Review

Title: Not So Nice Guy
Author: R.S. Grey
Pages:
Publisher: Self/CreateSpace
Goodreads Rating: 4.36 stars
Published: August 9th, 2018
Source: ebook/from author

Description:

"Oh my god. Who that?"
I get asked this question a lot.
"Oh him?" I reply. "That's just Ian."

Just Ian is the biggest understatement of the century.
Just the Mona Lisa. Just the Taj Mahal. Just Ian, with his boring ol' washboard abs and dime-a-dozen dimpled smile.

Just Ian is... just my best friend.

We're extremely close, stuck so deep inside a Jim-and-Pam-style friendzone everyone at works assumes we're a couple - that is until one day, word spreads through the teacher's lounge that he's single. Fair game. Suddenly, it's open season on Ian.

He should be reveling in all the newfound attention, but to our mutual surprise, the only attention he seems to want is mine.

He's turning our formerly innocent nightly chats into x-rated phone calls. Our playful banter sports a new, dangerous edge.

I want to assume he's playing a prank on me, just pushing my buttons like always - but when Ian lifts me onto the desk in my classroom and slides his hands up my skirt, he doesn't leave a lot of room for confusion.

I'm a little scared of things going south, of losing my best friend because I can't keep my hands to myself. So, I'm just going to back away and not return this earth-shattering kiss - oh who am I kidding?!

Goodbye Ian, ol' buddy, ol' pal!

Helloooo mister not so nice guy. 


My Thoughts:

While I love all of R.S. Grey's RomComs pretty equally, I think this one is my new favorite.  Adam & Madeline {The Foxe and The Hound} have been a steady favorite since I first discovered Rachel's books a year or so ago {has it really only bee that long??}, but I think Ian & Sam are my new favorites.  Sorry, Adam & Madeline - I will always love you guys too!

It takes a really fantastic writer to create two characters who are believably just friends, while both secretly wanting to be more.  Almost all the stories I've read of friends to lovers there is something that happens that makes one or both characters suddenly become attracted to each other.  Rachel gives us two amazing characters who are basically head over heels for each other within a few months, but remain very good friends for years.  All without the other having any clue about their mutual feelings.

And, in true Rachel fashion, she is the absolute QUEEN of Rom Coms.  I was cracking up within the first 10 pages, and found myself constantly laughing at Sam and Ian's antics and banter.  Oh, the banter was superb!  They are very clearly the best of friends, and it shows in the way the talk and their attitudes towards each other.  I think I might just live a little for the banter in each of her books {the rest of my living goes to my husband and kids}.

I am so sad to be done with this book - its been one of the highlights of my summer reading and I just really wanted it to go on forever {or maybe more than 24 hours}!  No matter what I have going on, if I find myself picking up one of R.S. Grey's books, I usually finish it within a couple days {and any of her books would have totally been one day reads back when I didn't have kids!}, then immediately regretting my binging because why didn't I make it last??  You would think I've learned my lesson by now, but nope.  I'm the fat kid, and Grey's books are my cake after crash dieting - I eat them up as soon as I get them!

*I received a copy of this ebook from the author in exchange for an honest review*

Taming Him by Kennedy Fox | Review

Title: Taming Him
Author: Kennedy Fox
Pages: 394
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Goodreads Rating: 4.39 stars
Published: January 30th, 2018
Source: eARC/from author

Description:

Alex Bishop is your typical cowboy.
Charming, sexy, and wears a panty-melting smirk. 

Working on the ranch helped build his solid eight-pack and smoking body. He's every girl's wet fantasy, and he knows it too. Alex doesn't follow the rules of your typical playboy bachelor. After wining and dining his dates and giving them the best night of their lives, he always sends flowers and calls the next day—even if it's to say, let's just be friends. His mama taught him manners after all, and his Southern blood knows how to be a gentleman. Still, that isn’t enough to tame the wildest of the Bishop brothers. 

River Lancaster has finally met the man of her dreams. Too bad after six months of romantic bliss, she finds out he's married. With a broken heart and blind rage, she books herself a ticket to Key West, Florida. Tired of cheaters and liars, she’s set on escaping to forget he ever existed. Who needs a man when there's an all-you-can-drink margarita bar, anyway? That's what she tells herself until she bumps into the right guy who can make all those bad memories disappear.

Even if it's only temporarily. 

Two weeks on the beach is what they both need. No strings attached, no expectations, no broken hearts. Too bad the universe has other plans—one that'll change the entire course of their lives in just nine short months.


My Thoughts:

I have mixed feelings for some of the Kennedy Fox books I've read, but that's not to say I don't enjoy them!  I love how they portray the lead women in the book as strong and not in desperate need of a man, but when finding one that completes them so well they know to hold on to that {or run and get him back!}.  

I love River.  I love that she's a nurse, and her reasons for being a PICU nurse.  I know a lot of nurses, so seeing her finally take some time to herself and go on vacation at the beginning made me do a little sigh for her.  She has such a big heart!  That being said, I"m a little surprised in her choice of best friend, because she seemed to just be wasted the entire trip and wanting River to just find a random hookup to bang her brains out {how is that what someone in their late-20s wants to do for their entire vacation?  I get the strong libido and wanting her to loosen up, but good lord!}.

Alex is a major player, but at least he knows he is and doesn't try to sugar-coat it for any of the woman he uses.  Of course, when him and River meet in Key West, they immediately click and start a bit of a shag-here-bucket-list. They don't spend the entire vacation in bed and do go and see some of the sights, but they do spend a good deal of time between the sheets {or in the water, on the beach, etc}.  I didn't have too much of a problem with that, really.  I mean, this is a sexy book, so I expected it to be, well, sexy.

After parting ways, the story follows Alex more than River, and the player went from shagging any pretty thing who'd let him to being so hung up over the woman he spent a week and a half with that everyone knows who she is and is getting fed up with Alex moping about her.  A few of his brothers straight up tell him that they don't believe she's even real.

The story takes a pleasant turn, when River confronts Alex about being pregnant.  Now, I have a little bit of a frustration with this point.  I understand people make mistakes, condoms aren't 100% effective, and stuff can interfere with birth control pills.  Seeing that River is an intelligent adult and a nurse, she should have known that being on an antibiotic would make her birth control pill ineffective.  She acknowledges that after she's talking to Alex about being pregnant, but I would think a nurse who doesn't want to get pregnant from a fling with a guy she has said she won't even contact after their week together would be hyper aware of how her birth control work and make sure a condom was used no mater what since that would also protect her from STDs.

Another thing that drove me bonkers was how every man in the Bishop family thought they would be responsible for any woman getting pregnant with multiples.  One of them is a flipping doctor, for goodness sake!  He should know the basic biology that a man just provides the sperm, it's all up to either the woman with how many times she ovulates or God and if he decides to split the fertilized egg.  {BTW, if you're wondering the twins in the Bishop family are identical, so it's totally just a random, God decided it would happen kind of thing.}

Overall, two big quirks aside, I did enjoy this book.  Would I recommend it to others?  I think that would really depend on their taste and if I know quirks like the ones in this book would bug them.  I know a lot of bookish friends who wouldn't care and would just enjoy it, and for the most part I really did too.  But between those two things and the overabundance of cussing, I just had a hard time with it.  I know cursing is something pretty common in a lot of these kinds of books, but it just rubs me the wrong way to be used so much and so flippantly.  If that doesn't bother you, you'd probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did!  I found myself mentally replacing some of the unneeded curse words with my "mommy versions" or even just something not so intense/harsh.

My Week with the Bad Boy by Brooke Cumberland and Lyla Parish | Review

Title: My Week with the Bad Boy
Author: Brooke Cumberland and Lyra Parish
Pages: 262
Publisher: CreateSpace Independ Publishing Platform
Goodreads Rating: 4.62 stars
Published: November 2nd, 2017
Source: eBook/From Authors

Description:

Never trust a man who answers the front door wearing nothing more than a pair of low-cut jeans and a panty-melting smirk.

That should’ve been my first sign.

I write about guys just like him for a living—sexy and charming, yet reluctant to get into a serious relationship. His body screams sex appeal, but his condescending personality makes him a classic f*ckboy. 

And I want nothing to do with that.

Writing romance novels comes with its perks—traveling, meeting new people, creating characters from the voices in my head—but Ethan Rochester enters my life and rearranges all my preconceived notions about writing what inspires you. 

One week is all it took. One week to realize that not everything is as it seems.

One week with the bad boy, and I wanted more. 


My Thoughts:

Gah.  I wanted to like this.  Like, a lot.  I really enjoyed most of the Checkmate series, although by the time I got through book 6 I found myself frustrated with all of the unnecessary foul language.  I get it, some people curse a lot.  My husband says I have the mouth of a sailor at times, but I definitely don't drop F bombs in everyday talk... or really any curse words.  Tiny ears in my house with tiny mouths that like to repeat what I saw and ask me what it means.

Vada is a writer in a slump, and Ethan is an artist trying to shake his sad past by keeping everyone {except his Mom and Aunt Millie} at arms length.  That includes only ever having one-night-stands with women he is attracted to.  Until Vada rents the cottage behind his house to cure her writer's block.  Ethan comes on to her strong, and when she discovers that he can help release her tension and make the words for her next novel flow, she's all for a purely physical relationship while she's there for the week.

Like most women, she starts to have feelings for the man she's sleeping with.  Ethan had built mental walls to shield from any emotional attachments, but he finds that Vada seems to fit in his life just perfectly.  Like, despite what happened in his past, she was there and made to be his other half right when he needed it.

I would like to say that, despite the language, I did enjoy the back story to Ethan a lot.  I mean, not how sad it was, but the depth it gave him as a character.  Vada has an interesting history, but Ethan definitely is the one I was drawn to more out of the two {which is funny, because his cocky attitude and cursing kind of rubbed me the wrong way}.  In real life I'm generally not a fan of the bad boys, because they aren't like fictional bad boys - no heart of gold.  Ethan, despite his crass language and rough edges, really does have a heart of gold.

Honestly, if it weren't for the language {and an unnecessary sex scene or two}, I probably would have rated this higher.  But those are just my personal preferences.  If you don't mind the language and lots a wild sex scenes are your thing, then you would probably really like this book!