Review Post – Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen (3.5 Stars)

Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen
Series: Brooklyn Bruisers #4
Published by Rennie Road Books on 2018-02-12
Genres: Romance
Pages: 300
Format: eBook
Goodreads

A sexy new standalone from USA Today bestseller Sarina Bowen.

You’d think a billion dollars, a professional hockey team and a six-bedroom mansion on the Promenade would satisfy a guy. You’d be wrong.

For seven years Rebecca has brightened my office with her wit and her smile. She manages both my hockey team and my sanity. I don’t know when I started waking in the night, craving her. All I know is that one whiff of her perfume ruins my concentration. And her laugh makes me hard.

When Rebecca gets hurt, I step in to help. It’s what friends do. But what friends don’t do is rip off each others’ clothes for a single, wild night together.

Now she’s avoiding me. She says we’re too different, and it can never happen again. So why can’t we keep our hands off each other?

FTC : I bought this book

I haven’t read the previous books in the series. I was told that doesn’t matter and, I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it did. I will hasten to add that I bought this book due to rave reviews however there were parts that did not work for me.

Nate and Becca have clearly been a romance in the making for some-time. Nate is the big boss man, a geek that made it big and became a rich, rich man. Becca is the assistant that has been with him since the start, through each bad day and good day, and has earned his respect and, later, his affection. He pushed her away into a new role within the organization, a less distracting one that meant that she wouldn’t be the highlight of his day. However, it all goes wrong when she gets hurt at work and he has to drop everything to look after. Soon, she’s in his home and his space daily and the affection changes to something deeper. It isn’t the game plan for either of them but can they really resist the pull?

There were many themes in this book that I liked. I liked the characters for a start. Nate is pretty much the perfect billionaire hero; lovely, rich and completely devoted. There isn’t an alpha bone in the man’s body and I loved that he was so devoted to the heroine. Becca is a career driven and “feisty” heroine (heroes words not mine). She worked her way up to the top and she knows what she wants. It is this ambition that is the main conflict within this romance; she doesn’t want to be the girl who slept with the boss. Their romance is a slow burner but it really is sweet. I loved watching the feelings build over time, making the payoff that much sweeter for me and probably the rest of the readers. I actually think, and I never say this, the time hopping the author employs to give us a sense of just how long the feelings have been growing really worked. The romance was never the issue for me.

I adored that the author attempted to address a lot of problematic themes within the book but my issue came with how she tried to do it. There was a lot to do. The author seemed to want to sort out the intrinsic misogyny that occurs in romance (we make the heroine look awesome by making the others look sucky) and also the imbalance of power within some boss/employee relationship. To me, it all seemed to be addressed by telling me, the reader, how the issues weren’t an issue for the characters without showing it. The hero often lamented how “awesome” his female friends were as they were feisty and called him on his shit. There was some random curveball thrown in at the end to start some ridiculous conflict and show that the female characters could be civil to each other and not tear each other down. Then we have pages with the heroine explaining to the hero about how what issues it could case for her if she slept with him and him seeing the light quite easily without really challenging the view. I felt it took away from the quality of the romance and I just wish there had been less issues addressed in more depth.

Would I reread this book? Yes I would, purely on the romance. Will I read more from the author? Yes I will. I think that is the best recommendation I could make!

A strong romance with fantastic characters… I really did enjoy!