I needed a fluffy audiobook, and Sweet Filthy Boy fit the bill. If you read melanir’s review of book two in the series, Dirty Rowdy Thing, you know what I mean.
I had downloaded this one when it was on sale over at Audible, which was great because almost two weeks ago I had some pretty nasty oral surgery and was hopped up on pain meds for over a week. I had four days immediately following the procedure to recuperate and do nothing. My favorite way to do nothing is to read, so I planned on reading/listening to all sorts of things while consigned to the couch. The pain meds made it so I couldn’t concentrate on the written word (so many books went unread. I had a whole library pile), and I didn’t do so well with audio either. After some wise words from narfna I abandoned Brideshead Revisited, and went for light and fluffy instead. It worked.
In the first Wild Seasons book writing duo Christina Lauren (Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) set themselves up to tell at least three stories about three couples (I know there’s a fourth book, which incorporates ancillary characters). Friends Mia, Harlow, and Lola are off to spend a weekend in Las Vegas to celebrate their college graduation (oh yes, this counts as New Adult) and run into three friends in Las Vegas to cap off a reunion. We have Ansel the French lawyer, Finn the Canadian something, and Oliver the Australian surfer and to be comic book shop owner. If you know romance, you know those sets of characters are going to pair off in the orders I’ve listed them.
Sweet Filthy Boy is Mia and Ansel’s story. They get drunk married in the first act of the book, decide to stay married, and give this relationship a chance. Maybe. Mia goes with Ansel to Paris for the summer, partly because she’s running away from a life that doesn’t fit, and partly because she’s running towards someone she does fit with. Ansel had promised Mia that they would stay married (not that she remembers that the next morning) and even though his life is busy and complicated, he wants a chance to spend more time with Mia and explore their feelings.
There was plenty which worked great in this book. The uncertainty of being 22, what being alone in a foreign city would be like, the evolution of a relationship that grows beyond hot, steamy sex and of course the sex itself. The authors are quite adept at writing smexy times. I just… never really connected to the story even though I felt like I understood the character of Mia very, very well. Christina Lauren also get points for creating a crisis point in the relationship I didn’t see coming and handling Mia’s response to it and how it effects the burgeoning permanence of Mia and Ansel’s relationship quite well. I’m rating this 3.5 stars but refusing to round up based on the other books in the genre I’ve given the 4 stars to already this year. Comparisons can be tough.
I’ll probably eventually read the rest of the series, but it isn’t high priority. I have unread Quinns, Milans, Chases, Dares, and Baloghs to get to first.
Liar viable best of the bunch if you want to skip forward. It’s their best book full stop.
I have yet to finish this one, so you’re response makes me feel positive in my setting it down for now. As you said there’s so many others to read first!
I found that I just couldn’t connect enough with Mia and Ansel, and got a bit tired of their complete inability to apparently just TALK to each other, instead of just smexing it up in new and exciting ways. I get that they’re young and hot for one another, but they also got married after one night together in Vegas. If you want to build a lasting relationship with someone, you need to get to know that person, not just try to break some sort of new record for bedroom acrobatics. In the rest of the books in the series, the balance between relationship building and smexy times worked so much more for me.
Brainless mind candy is just exactly what the doctor ordered sometimes, and I thought that the second book fit that perfectly. Sounds like this one did as well.