3.5 stars
Sara Dillon, Chloe Mills’ best friend, dumps her cheating fiancee and relocates to New York when her BFF and her Beautiful Bastard of a boyfriend open a new set of offices there. Out celebrating Chloe’s engagement, Sara meets a tall, sexy stranger in a nightclub and ends up hooking up with him, without even exchanging names. Turns out her sexy f*ck buddy is an old friend of Bennet’s, Max Stella, and he can’t get the alluring lady from the nightclub out of his mind. While Sara is actively avoiding a new relationship, she can’t deny her strong attraction to Max and with every new meeting, she discovers new things about herself and what she gets off on (hint – it’s mainly mild forms of exhibitionism, the thrill of nearly getting caught).
While Max has a past as a playboy of note, he’s tantalised by Sara, especially her initial plan that they see each other just once a week, and then only for sex. He wants to take their relationship to the next level much quicker than her, but once he realises why she’s so wary about long-term commitment, he’s content to wait for her to return his feelings.
In this second book in the Beautiful series, you can already see Christina Lauren getting more skilled at writing, and including more to the story than just people yelling at each other or tearing each other’s clothes off. Full review here.
To readers wanting to pick up really good contemporary romance (with quite a lot of *bow chicka wow wow* thrown in), I’d recommend their Wild Seasons series.
I liked Max and Stella better than the IHATEYOU sex people, but Will and Hanna better still.