The Blind Date - Lauren Landish
This story follows Riley and Noah. Riley is a social media influencer whose focus is bringing some sunshine into the world. Noah is a driven app developer who, along with his best friend (Riley's brother), created a dating app with no pictures. The app algorithm matches people based on their answers to a series of questions and the goal is for the two people to talk and get to know each other without any physical influence. Riley and Noah both decide to make profiles under fake names and they end up being the app's highest percentage match. They spend weeks getting to know each other but when they finally meet in person, they have to decide if they want to follow the app (and their hearts) and continue seeing each other. I thought this book was really cute and I really liked Riley and Noah together. I was expecting this to be a little more grumpy vs sunshine but it seemed liked Noah's grumpiness started to wear off almost immediately once he matched with Riley on the app. The main conflict set up in the beginning of the book was that Noah is best friend's with Riley's older brother and Riley is best friends with Noah's little sister so they did decide to keep their relationship a secret. However, I was really pleased that conflict got taken care of pretty quickly and there wasn't a whole lot of turmoil around it. I really loved the side characters and hope they get a book or two of their own. The social media stuff felt a little heavy handed, especially because it was the center of the third act fight. I was also a little thrown off because social media had such a big part to play in the story that I was expecting maybe some little cracks to show in the relationship earlier. Like maybe Riley's posting is a source of some tension and then in the third act, it all boils over. But Noah seemed fine with everything through most of the story so it felt like the main conflict in the third act was a bit forced and was added in for a moral lesson of sorts.
Playing for Keeps - Kendall Ryan
This is the first book in the Hot Jocks series and follows pro hockey player Justin and sister of his teammate, Elise. Justin is best friends with Elise's older brother and the three pretty much grew up together. After some time apart with the boys playing pro hockey and Elise going to college, they reconnect and both Elise and Justin have feelings for the other. However, they don't want to complicate their relationship with Elise's brother especially since he and Justin play for the same hockey team. But one drunken hookup might just be the push that Elise and Justin need to finally give into their feelings and be together. I liked this book, but I do think the background and some of the characterization needed some work for me to love it. We are told about Elise and Justin's history growing up together, but that's about it (no flashbacks or dual timelines here). Also, we are told that Justin sleeps around a lot just like the rest of the team (there's even a slight pregnancy scare that lasts all of 5 pages before being resolved basically off page) but he hasn't been interested in random hookups for a little while at the beginning of the book. His sexual activities are constantly being mentioned and are a source of some jealousy and anxiety for Elise but she hangs around with the team so much that she must have noticed a change of some sort when he started not sleeping around as much. So I just sort of ended up ignoring those aspects of the story and treated it just like a normal 'sister of my teammate is off limits' sort of story. I really liked Elise and Justin together but I did find that Justin's relationship insecurities really only came up at the end as a convenient third act fight/break up issue and I wish it had come up sooner, even if just in smaller areas of the relationship. I am excited to continue in the series and the second book sounds like it has a similar premise as Elle Kennedy's The Deal which I really enjoyed.
Tie Me Down - Melanie Harlow
This is the fourth and final book in the Bellamy Creek series and follows long time friends Beckett and Maddie. They were neighbors and friends growing up but after high school, they both went their separate ways. Beckett always had feelings for Maddie but was respectful of her relationships. Well, now Maddie is recently divorced and back in town with her 6 year old son to sell her mother's house that sits across the street from Beckett's farm. The old house is in no condition for anyone to stay so Maddie and her son stay with Beckett and his aging father. Old flames are rekindled and in no time the two are sneaking around like teenagers. However, decades of baggage and old wounds need to be dealt with before the two can finally have the chance they always wanted. I loved this book, absolutely head over heels loved it. The Bellamy Creek series centers around 4 best friends and while Beckett was probably the least active in any of the previous books, we get a good amount of guy-time with the other 3 friends coming together for Beckett. I love the friends to lovers trope but normally the two characters are friends until one of them almost wakes up one day and can't believe they didn't see this amazing person right in front of them. In this case, Beckett has been pining after Maddie for years but he's always been a perfect gentleman and friend to her until she lets him know how she feels about him and then all bets are off and the two get down and dirty. Beckett and Maddie are perfect for each other and it really shows when they fall pretty quickly into a rhythm for the 2 weeks Maddie is there. They have breakfast as a family, work on the farm, and have family outings - pretty much as close to an inta-family as it gets. Top it all off with a big love declaration from the guy who keeps everything bottled up and this was just the best. Melanie Harlow was already an insta-buy author for me but this solidified her as one of, if not my favorite, romance author.
Run Posy Run - Cate C Wells
This dark romance follows Posy and Dario. Despite growing up in the mafia world, Posy isn't your typical mafia heroine where she is locked away in a tower. Her family was disgraced and she has been making ends meet on her own, dating through a couple different mafia men. Dario is the money laundering guy making big dollars in the stock market. He was intrigued by Posy and took her as his own. Or he did, until scandal hits and he kicks her own. She has to fend for herself and avoid the bullet with her name on it until Dario comes knocking on her door again and takes her back to his home. There were a lot of things I liked about this book, but the pieces didn't really fit as well together as a whole as I hoped. It is listed at only 250 pages and I think we really needed that extra 50 pages to add some more depth and context to the story. This is a standalone but it read much more like the second book in a duology. The first chapter introduces us to Posy already months into their relationship and then has Dario kicking her out of his house. While on her own, Posy learns that Dario is a psychopath and while she loved him, he didn't love her back. This could have been a really great reveal if we had seen them interact together happily at the beginning at all but we didn't. Because of this, the overall emotional turmoil Posy goes thought over the course of the book really doesn't hit as hard as it could. Both Posy and Dario would make references to how it was 'before' but I wanted to be able to see the before for myself. Give a chapter or two at the beginning showing how happy but disconnected they were and then the character development down the line means so much more. I really liked the dynamic between Posy and Dario especially with their chess battles. It was also interesting to have the psychopath mafia guy be the money guy and not the hitman like we see a lot. Also, the psychopathy shown I thought was really well done. A lot of these mafia romances fall into the 'I hate everyone except you' side but Dario straight up admits that he's a psychopath and as such probably will never lover Posy the way she wants but the two still end up finding a sort of middle ground where they are both honest with what they're able to give and show, in their own way, how much they care about the other person. The dynamic reminded me of the Scarlet Scars series and it was interesting to have a romance book not have some of the typical romance elements (like big love declarations).
Charmed by the Bartender - Piper Rayne
This is the first book in the Modern Love series and follows Whitney and Cole. Whitney moves back in with her grandparents after being let go from her job and meets Cole while drowning her sorrows one night at a bar. She wakes up the next morning at his apartment to a note that he had an appointment but wants her to leave her phone number - she leaves without leaving it, determined to move on with her life. Too bad he's the brother of her best friend's fiance. She's the maid of honor, he's the best man, and the two end up spending a lot of time together taking care of wedding errands for the happy couple. This was a really fun enemies to lovers romance. I've determined I really love the maid of honor/best man enemies trope because not only is it forced proximity but the setting of an upcoming wedding really ups the romantic tension - love it. I thought Whitney and Cole had amazing chemistry and seemed to be a really good pair right from the beginning. Whitney doesn't like Cole due to a situation 10 years prior that Cole doesn't know about and I thought that would be the main conflict in the story but she tells him about it pretty early on which was really nice to see the characters acting like actual adults and not hiding secrets. I really liked how both Whitney and Cole had their own baggage thanks to their different upbringings but they naturally work together and worked through those feelings. Whitney's friends were also great and I'm looking forward to continuing the series and reading about them. The one thing about this book I didn't like was that it was only from Whitney's POV - I very much prefer my romances to be dual POV. In this case, I really wanted Cole's POV because he would drop little lines about how Whitney deserved to be treated or how special she is and since we didn't get to see any of his POV those comments really seemed to be coming out of left field. I think if we had gotten more of his POV then those comments would make more sense.
Scandalous - Sybil Bartel
TW/CW: drugging, sexual abuse of a child
This is the first book in the Alpha Bodyguard series and follows bodyguard Tank and actress Audrina. Audrina gets slipped a drug at a club and ends up running around the beach naked. Tank is tasked with keeping her out of the paparazzi cameras until she comes back down to Earth. However, he never expected that instead of a spoiled actress, Audrina is a spitfire woman who has her own agenda and will end up changing both their lives. Tank lives up to the series name and is a capital A alpha / alpha-hole. There are times where he veers a little into a BDSM type of Dom but it isn't explicitly stated. Audrina has walls up between her and everyone, and for good reason. The two of them press each other's buttons in just the right way that the first 40% of the book was really great. There's tons of back and forth snippy comments with a huge amount of underlying sexual tension. They are the kind of couple that almost use shouting as foreplay which I was all for in the beginning but it got old fast. As their relationship progressed, they never seemed to get past that stage and even in the epilogue they're yelling because Tank is trying to get Audrina to sign a prenup and she doesn't want to. There were some tender moments between the two of them but it seemed like Tank only had 2 moods - broody and silent or yelling - and Audrina matched him blow for blow. So while I can pick out moments of character development, it never seemed to me that the relationship got much past the initial chemistry phase. I was initially fine with this because the main plot takes place over only 2 weeks but the fact that nothing seemed to change in the months leading to the epilogue and I just couldn't help but feel that the amount of yelling they were still doing wasn't how I want my romances to end.
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