Series: Heartbreak bay #5
Published by HarperCollins on 2018-01-23
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Romantic Comedy
Pages: 384
Format: eBook
Goodreads
When love drives you crazy . . .
When sexy Joe Malone never calls after their explosive kiss, Kylie shoves him out of her mind. Until she needs a favor, and it’s a doozy. Something precious to her has been stolen and there’s only one person with unique finder-and-fixer skills that can help—Joe. It means swallowing her pride and somehow trying to avoid the temptation to throttle him—or seduce him. the best thing to do . . .
No, Joe didn’t call after the kiss. He’s the fun time guy, not the forever guy. And Kylie, after all she’s been through, deserves a good man who will stay. But everything about Kylie makes it damned hard to focus, and though his brain knows what he has to do, his heart isn’t getting the memo. … is enjoy the ride.
As Kylie and Joe go on the scavenger hunt of their lives, they discover surprising things about each other. Now, the best way for them to get over “that kiss” might just be to replace it with a hundred more.
FTC : I bought this book
Hash-tags : #romance #series-book #kick-ass-heroine #smexy #friends #alpha-male
This is book 5 in this series and it’s rapidly becoming a favourite. You don’t need to read the other books to enjoy it but I liked them too.
In the run-up to this addition, we learned a lot about Joe and I’ll be honest, I didn’t see him falling easy. A love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy, there was no way he was going to fall for Kylie but I didn’t realise how hard she was going to fight it too. The first half of the book is them actively fighting their attraction (with occasional lapses) and it made for a book that took me a while to start to enjoy. Once they gave in, I started to route for their HEA and I couldn’t put the book down. Jill Shalvis writes fantastic, light romance and I enjoyed the hell out of this one.
Joe and Kylie share one spontaneous hot kiss and suddenly they find themselves drawn together like magnets. When Kylie needs Joe’s help on a case, they realise that, for two people who don’t want relationships, spending hours on late-night stake outs together is probably a rather stupid idea. They fight and they fight but, eventually, they realise it’s easier to just give in and hope that they don’t fall too deep. Of course that isn’t the way it goes…
Kylie is a wonderful heroine. Like most Shalvis heroines, she is a strong woman with a streak of vulnerability caused by her past. In this case, Kylie had a shitty upbringing which left her running scared of commitment. She doesn’t want to want Joe but she can’t shake her attraction at all and, after a while, she stops trying to. It doesn’t mean she puts up with his alpha-macho shit though; one of the best things about this book for me is the way she refuses point blank to allow him to trample all over her independence and choice.
Joe loves the ladies and the ladies love Joe. As soon as the sun comes up though, Joe is gone. That is, until Kylie draws his eye. He doesn’t want to want her but, I’ll be honest, I don’t think he fought it anywhere near as hard as Kylie. He is actually one of the sweetest heroes in the entire series and I adored him. He pretty much adored her throughout the book but, because he had to have a flaw, he couldn’t quite turn off his caveman alpha-male behaviour. It was reinforced through the book but it amused me until he started to rough-shod over Kylie’s choices because it didn’t quite fit with his need to protect her. Those were the only times I wanted to bitch-slap Joe but I wanted to bitch-slap him hard.
I enjoyed this story. I enjoyed the set up of the suspense and the romance in the second half. If I wished for anything, it was more tension in the first half because I just didn’t feel it as much as I expected to.
This series is full of warmth, love and friendship. With the humour I’ve come to expect from this series, this book has all the hallmarks of a comfort re-read.
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