Rating: ★★★★☆
Links: Goodreads • Amazon
Publication Date: May 16, 2017
Source: ARC via Netgalley
A former Navy SEAL and current bad boy bar owner learns to trust a free spirit in this steamy novel of unexpected romance from the bestselling author of Body Shot and the Heller Brothers series.
Marco Solis knows that if he gets too close to people they disappear. His parents were deported back to Mexico when he was fourteen, his fiancée married someone else while he was in the military, and now his business partner’s spending more time with his girl than with Marco. For better or worse, that’s how Marco meets Carrie Garner. She’s legitimately model-hot. She’s also a nut—a wild, artsy, unapproachable nut. So why is Marco so interested in cracking her shell?
Although Carrie Garner is a natural in front of the camera, her dream is to make it as a photographer. Soon she’ll be heading to Spain for design school, and she’ll miss her best friend, Hayden, like crazy. She’ll even miss Hayden’s boyfriend, Beck—but she won’t miss Beck’s partner, Marco. Bossy, brooding, and annoyingly sexy, Marco really pushes her buttons, though he obviously wouldn’t mind pushing her buttons in an up-against-the-wall, hard-and-fast kind of way. The craziest part is, if Carrie lets him do that, well . . . she may never want to leave.
After their best friends fall in love, Marco and Carrie both mistake their own sexual tension for intense dislike. Although an undeniable undercurrent of attraction runs through all of their interactions, neither one is willing to admit to anything less than hatred toward the other. When they’re forced together to plan a party for their mutual friends, sparks begin to fly.
Overall, I really liked this book, a lot more than I liked the first book in the series. I felt like we ended up knowing much more about Marco than we did about Carrie, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Marco’s past and insecurities were much better developed than Carrie’s, and although I can sort of see where Carrie’s issues stem from, I wouldn’t have minded learning more about her.
I loved the attraction between Marco and Carrie, and the fact that they only went for it because they thought it had a time limit. Carrie has a trip to Spain scheduled a few weeks after they get together, which provides an easy out, a quick timeline, and protection from any broken hearts. (Or so they think. This is a romance, there are always going to be hurt feelings!)
I don’t have a ton of things to say about this book except that I thought that everybody was really unfair to Carrie. I don’t want to spoil anything, but we find out right away that Carrie has a trip to Spain scheduled, and everybody has an opinion about it. It’s her life, and if she wants to travel and make something of herself, she should be allowed to do that without worrying about what her newlywed best friend, her emotionally distant family, and her brand new lover think. As someone who has let other peoples’ opinions dictate much of my life decisions, I am very passionate about this, and it probably did affect my opinion of the book. (Although four stars is a very good rating for me.)
I really love the group of characters in this series, and I wish their tequila bar was a place I could actually go. I’m excited to see if Cade will get his own book since I would love to see him settle down and be happy.
Thanks to Netgalley and Loveswept for the ARC!
The Bibliophagist 