Office Grump - Nicole Snow
This is an enemies to lovers story that follows CEO Magnus and his spitfire assistant Brina. After a chance meeting in the park after Brina lost her job where the two exchange some pretty brutal verbal spars, Magnus decides she's just the right type of person to be his new Executive Assistant. Brina is never one to fail at a challenge and steps up into her new role despite not having any previous EA experience. As they work together and Magnus sees how Brina handles herself and the extreme workload he gives her, the two start to grow closer but Magnus's past history has made him wary of office romances. Nicole Snow is my go-to author for romantic suspense novels and this one is a pretty standard office romance so I was initially hesitant to pick it up. However, this book hit just about all my favorite tropes and came together perfectly for me. The enemies to lovers aspect was pretty light on the enemies part but just enough to have some spicy banter between the two. The romance was slow burn (considering this book is over 400 pages) and I felt that the relationship really developed based on their personalities meshing well and not just physical chemistry. Hero was grumpy, heroine was strong and sure of herself even in unknown situations. There was a fantastic cast of side characters and side plot that really enriched the story and showed how our hero and heroine really work well together in multiple situations. From reading some lower rating reviews, a lot of people seem to not enjoy the ending but I really liked how the hero struggled to make is big love declaration. He tried multiple avenues but none were quite right and the heroine kept rejecting him. But, of course, it all works out in the end and he figures out the way to finally explain to her how he feels and they live happily ever after. This book helped me realize that Snow is fantastic at the slower burn romantic buildup that I really enjoy reading and that her non-suspense books are just as well crafted as her suspense ones.
Sugar Daddies - Jade West
This book was more different from my normal romance picks than I was expecting. It leans more toward the erotica side of the romance genre but still has a really solid romance plot. The book follows Katie, Carl, and Rick. Carl and Rick are bisexual men in a committed relationship and they find Katie on a sugar daddy/sugar baby website. The initial agreement is for just sex (a lot of sex, very explicit MMF sex) but we see Carl and Rick searching for a potential longer, more serious partner. Later in the book, they specifically state they are polyamorous and always wanted a woman to join them as a long-term partner. Katie initially agrees because the arrangement will fulfill a fantasy of hers as well as pay for her to realize her dream of owning her own horse stable and riding school. I really liked the general progression this book took from starting out as just super fun and sexy times between three consenting adults and then the slowly deepening and developing feelings came in and started to change up the relationship dynamic a bit. I loved how established and solid Carl and Rick are as a couple and the scenes with just them being domestic or having serious discussions felt so incredibly authentic. I thought Katie's family problems were a bit boring and I didn't completely buy the personality change that happened when she was around certain family members. I do wish we would have gotten some other perspectives on Katie's life like a best friend or someone (at one point a friend from school is mentioned, but we never see her). I really liked the bisexual and poly rep in the book as overall very positive and I liked how it wasn't the main conflict in the book. The book alternates chapters from Katie's and Carl's POV and I would have liked to get some Rick chapters as well.
Always Enough - Kelly Elliott
TW: suicide, drug addiction
This is the second book in the Meet Me in Montana series and follows eldest brother, Ty, as he falls for the new girl in town, Kaylee. We see the two meet and interact a bit in the first book in the series, but this book does a good job at catching the reader up in the beginning so reading the first book isn't necessary. Kaylee came to Montana with her friend Lincoln (heroine in the first book) 3 years after the death of her husband. Ty was a professional bull rider until a car accident shattered his leg and he was forced into retirement. Both of them have their own tragic backstories but there's been enough time and they both went to therapy to work through their traumas. I really appreciated how they were both coping so well with their life experiences that they could make very honest decisions about what they wanted and I didn't feel like either of them was using the relationship to distract from their own internal demons. I really liked how they went from faux enemies - bickering and teasing each other - to lovers in this book. I love a good stubborn hero who has his walls crumbled just by being around the heroine. I do wish we got more character development with Ty. We get his backstory in pretty good detail but then I wasn't really sure what was going on with him in the current day. I know he works on the ranch with his parents, but we don't get too much internal dialogue from him and I wanted to know more about what he's thinking about his life in general, not just about Kaylee. I also wanted more build up and tension between the two of them. There were multiple points in the book where something would happen (a kiss, an almost kiss, etc) and then the reader is told they went weeks without speaking and completely avoided each other. I would have liked it more if they were forced to interact and both were trying to just pretend nothing happened. The two ended up being so disconnected for me that when they finally did get together (with suddenly lots of talks about their feelings) it didn't feel as big of a conclusion as it should have.
Only You - Melanie Harlow
This is the first book in the One and Only series and follows wedding planner, Emme, and divorce attorney, Nate. The two are neighbors in their apartment building and have built a friendship while living next to each other. One night, a baby is left at Nate's door with a note saying it is his daughter. Nate and Emme team up to help adjust to the sudden change in Nate's life and end up falling in love along the way. This was a pretty cute opposites attract / instant family romance. I really liked the premise of a wedding planner and divorce attorney getting together. I'm not really a big fan of surprise babies in romance books and I was expecting the baby to come in close toward the end as sort of this big change up to the status quo. However, the baby came into the story pretty much right at the beginning so there was a lot of bonding over baby stuff which I couldn't really connect with but that is 100% a personal thing. I really liked Emme and Nate together and I liked how we got to see them as friends before they became romantically entangled. I also enjoyed Emme's relationships with her sisters and her business partner but I wish Nate had a friend or someone outside of the situation that we could have seen him with. This book also was a little on the side of love fixes everything, which I don't really love. Nate has some really deep emotional blocks and trauma from his childhood that I felt caused realistic issues in the relationship but then he seemingly moves on really quickly and gets over his fear of commitment as soon as he decides he doesn't want to lose Emme. Overall, not my favorite Melanie Harlow, but if you're someone who likes babies and an instant family trope I think this one is super cute.
Neanderthal Seeks Human - Penny Reid
This is the first book in the Knitting in the City series and follows Janie and Quinn. Janie loses her boyfriend, apartment, and job all in one day - the same day she finally gets to meet the gorgeous security guard as he escorts her out of the building. The two end up working for the same company and spend more and more time together as their feelings grow. Janie is entirely caught up in her own head and is constantly sharing facts about anything when she gets unnerved. Quinn is the strong and silent type who seems to enjoy unnerving Janie. I really liked them together and appreciated how slow the relationship got going. Janie, despite being a genius with a photographic memory, is entirely oblivious to more interpersonal relations so it took her a while to finally understand what Quinn wanted. This story is told from Janie's POV (except for the epilogue) and I needed more from Quinn. I usually prefer my romances to be dual POV, but especially so when the hero is like Quinn where we only get little hints of what he's thinking from what the heroine catches. And since we know Janie isn't good at picking up on social cues, I really wanted to be in Quinn's head. I also felt that some of the side plot lines were dropped a bit too quickly for my liking or without any real impact on the main plot. I liked the idea of the knitting group, but there were too many people in it and I couldn't remember who was who. I don't think it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, but it did bother me when I was reading that I couldn't separate the different women in my head, they all just blurred together. Overall, I enjoyed the tone and lighthearted humor in the story and I enjoyed Janie and Quinn's romance of two sort of outcasts. There are 7 main books in the series as well as other novellas or short stories that take place between the main books. I don't know if I'll read all the books in the series, but there were a few that sounded interesting that I'll be picking up.
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