Is this grumpy/sunshine romance or old coot/youth? Do vegans wear leather skirts? How much does an average hockey player weigh? Why does she keep cooking them dinner? How is this a rational custody arrangement? Keep reading to find out.
From Amazon: Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She’s also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while living in a super fancy neighborhood and being around Lissa, his cool but introverted tween.
I made EIGHTY-NINE notes while reading. Herewith a sample:
- Locked instantly into service/domesticity.
- “She made the chicken again!” Isn’t she vegan?
- No one acts naturally. Am I just grumpy?
- With that sexy leather skirt on. Leather skirt the vegan is wearing? Also? The leather skirt (plus thigh highs) the marine biologist recently returned from Antarctica has handy?
- Straight up harassment.
- HE LEFT HIS 12 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER HOME ALONE, ASLEEP AT 2 AM TO COME PICK UP A WOMAN WHO COULD TAKE AN UBER.
- Suddenly she’s got two hundred and eighty pounds of defenseman of the year looking back at her over a bowl of Cheerios. 280? Football or hockey? Biggest defense player in the league is 240. (I checked because I get that he’s supposed to be strong like bull and smart like streetcar, but hockey players are spry.)
- Him: “I thought you weren’t going to cook anymore.” Her: “I’m not it’s the last time.” FFS is this a romance novel for him or for her? Is she even a main character if it’s all about what he wants or how she fits into his life.
- She massages his sore back because, apparently, a star NHL player has no physio therapy or 47 people to check on his health onsite.
- Oh, they do have it onsite health, he’s just unprofessional and hasn’t told anyone he is injured.
- She slid her flat palms up his back and went to work on his shoulders… Cooking, massage, what’s next? Laundry? Full trad wife?
- “The only woman I’m calling is you.” No relationship build, it’s just there.
- Was it locked? He wondered, but he wouldn’t test the knob. She’d have to let him in. What a saint.
- No matter what happened, though, Burgess would be there. In a gross and possessive way.
- “You need to run home to your Neanderthal.” And this is flirting.
- Her smooth skin smelled like oranges. So you keep telling us.
- “Honestly, it’s hard to remember anything that happened in my life before you moved in.” Like your 12 year old CHILD? And why does she seem to live with you almost full time?
- “You shouldn’t have come,” he snapped, turning hard, glittering eyes on her. Unrecognizable eyes. “There’s nothing you can do. Go back to Boston.” Asshole-mode activated!
- “Wasn’t it just a few days ago you walked away because a twelve-year-old was mad at you?” Wow. Done.
- This wasn’t the Burgess she’d fallen in love with. He was unrecognizable. A different man altogether. Leave.
- And in walked Lissa. Yes, your child. You giant fuckhead. She shouldn’t be a supporting character in her dad’s life.
- He’s acting the same as her scary ex-boyfriend.
- She wouldn’t lie to herself and pretend the spell they’d woven had dissipated completely, but she’d spend the last forty-odd days learning to suppress it and would continue to do so.” GOOD PLAN. END BOOK HERE.
- He’s lost her by acting like an asshole. He definitely wouldn’t win her back that way. Apparently, he will.
- but I fucked up the best part of my life. Again, not his daughter.
- Every time they touched now, her fight or flight response was triggered. That’s not good.
- She hadn’t moved on at all, as she’d thought. Try harder.
- “Protecting you is a habit.” It was three weeks.
- that she realised how selfishly she’d behaved Oh yes, of course, it’s all her fault.
- When two people love each other, they create a love snowflake, and it can never be recreated by anyone. Barf.
- “You broke up with a man you love? Why?”. Because he was an emotionally abusive man-child?
- She was in love with a man who’d had a bad day and said something regrettable, but that moment (see #18) didn’t define him. SOMETIMES IT DOES!