The first thing we learn about the main character in this novel is that she hates people. Sounds like an utterly delightful person!
What’s it About?
Roxy Capwell couldn’t be more miserable. She just had her heart stomped on by her cheating boyfriend, and the last thing she’s looking for is love. She hates men. Cole Brighton couldn’t be happier. He’s a player of the highest order, there’s not a girl at Whitney Briggs University that he can’t tag and bag. He loves the ladies. Roxy’s dream is to own and operate her own bakery one day, but with no oven in her dorm, and a lucrative baking competition on the horizon, she agrees to move in with her best friend’s brother, the obnoxious, womanizing, Cole Brighton. Between the heavenly scent of baked goods, and Roxy’s perfect body strutting around the apartment, Cole can’t think straight. So when Roxy’s ex starts sniffing around again, Cole volunteers to play the part of her new boy-toy and things get heated both in and out of the kitchen. Roxy discovers she might not hate every man on the planet, and Cole discovers nothing tastes better than Roxy and her late night SUGAR KISSES.
Roxy is a ball of stress and anger.
Cole is all ego and sex.
Their attraction is unstoppable.
And when their bodies collide—its combustible.
First Impressions
The novel definitely starts off strong, as our main characters have a delightful love/hate flirtation going on which is just bursting with fabulous sexual tension. Unfortunately, as the book progresses things head pretty steadily downhill. Almost from the get-go you can tell how the story is building up for everything to eventually go wrong. I don’t know about you, but personally I find this kind of set-up unbelievably frustrating. Just waiting around for the shoe to drop always makes the story drag on and on. Combine that with some rather unlikable lead characters, and this just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Don’t Blow It!
Roxy and Cole go to one of those ridiculously small college towns where it seems like everybody knows everybody. As someone who went to college in a big city with over 30,000 students, it was a feature of the novel I found a bit hard to relate to. The entire book is told from the dual alternating points of view of both Roxy and Cole. Again, it starts off well enough, but once we get to the half-way point I was about ready to pull my hair out. Each of Cole’s chapters ends with the same sentiment of, “oh she’s the love of my life”, while Roxy’s end with, “he’s so great, I love him so much, I hope nothing screws this up/I don’t ruin this/it ends”. It was a continual foreshadowing of dread, and the delay of the inevitable that I found particularly annoying.
Small Town Means Big Drama
On top of the continual foreshadowing of an eventual clusterf*ck, I also felt like the characters were rather unrealistic. It seemed like so many of them would say or do things with absolutely zero filter. From her mother who demands that Roxy decide between cooking cupcakes for a high-end benefit or her relationship with Cole, to a famous singer who loves to be in the spotlight in college and is used in all of their advertising materials, and finally to multiple catty/stalkerish females who go to unbelievably crazy lengths to snag Cole and mess with Roxy. Each drama individually I can kind of get, but having so many present in one short book was too over the top.
Series: 3:AM Kisses, book 3. Going into this I actually didn’t know I was dealing with the third book in the series. I think it could have been helpful to read the others beforehand, although at this point I can’t really say I have a desire to start from the beginning.
Should you read it? I will say I did crave cupcakes like a madwoman while reading this one. If you do attempt it, maybe have some mini ones on hand. That being said, we don’t have the most endearing or likable characters here. She hates everything and everyone except baking and, eventually, Cole. However, she also has a short fuse that causes her to have many an unnecessary tempter tantrum.
Smut Level: There is one particularly sexy scene involving a food fight with jam and powdered sugar that eventually needs to be washed off. Lather it up!
Get it on Amazon: Click Here. $4.99 Kindle Price. CreateSpace Independent Publishing. 304 Pages.
Advertisements Share this:
