I 
am a sucker for free or inexpensive ebooks, and lately, I have been collecting contemporary romances – apparently a lot of them involving food. In this case, uptight perfectionist baker and up and coming TV style maker meets troublemaking athlete and his immature siblings. The whole reason I picked this up was that it opens with a highly publicized wedding going horribly awry on live TV, which is pretty much pure catnip for me, because I am not a nice person.
The epic wedding fail puts Belinda West’s job in jeopardy, because her boss (think Martha Stewart, but meaner) demands absolute perfection. As punishment, she’s tasked with reforming the neighboring rake… er, “bad boy” James Blake – because reasons. Actually, the reasons involve sharing an agent, which ends up being plot-relevant, not least because the agent is one of the most decent people in the entire book.
Naturally, the hero and heroine clash at first but eventually figure out that they’re hot for each other, which is super inconvenient, since they both have major baggage regarding relationships that (surprise!) actually make a whole lot of sense considering their back stories. Once they relaxed a little, I liked both characters. The hero’s redemption arc was done well. The heroine had her own path to travel to figure out who she needed to be, and she managed to do that without defining herself through him, so yay for that.
The sub-plots (and there were many) ranged from sweet and unexpected to obviously setting up sequels for the not entirely likeable brothers. Jury is out on whether I will pick those up, but for a fast read with a good voice, remarkable depth of real emotion and situations, and the satisfying wrapping up of at least one story line, Susan Sey seems a solid choice.
“I am a sucker for free or inexpensive ebooks, and lately, I have been collecting contemporary romances”
I’ve got this goin’ as well thanks to BookBub. So many contemporary romances I am unlikely to ever read. They just keep moving farther down my TBR pile. I’ve learned to avoid anything with billionaires and to recognize the code words they use for BDSM and miss out on those, too.
Great review! Was it funny? I require funny.
This was not particularly funny, although there were a few humorous moments. Definitely no billionaires, though relatively rich folks abounded. I, too, avoid billionaire books, not least because there are just over 2,000 of them in the world, and fewer than 50 are under the age of 40, so where do all these heroes come from? *Sigh* The problems with having a working knowledge of the world of finance with none of the resultant cash benefits.