C-

Only You

Only You had the potential to be a sexy romantic comedy in the same vein as Jill Shalvis but I had a huge issue with one of the characters.

Holly Greenwood is a wedding planner with a lot of talent and a boss-from-hell, Nicole. She’s also dealing with putting the grandma who raised her in a nursing home due to dementia. So when a sexy new neighbor moves in across the street, she doesn’t think she has the bandwith for romance. Kevin Vandemeer just let his sister talk him into buying a run down house that he can then flip and sell for an investment. At first he’s regretting his decision (or rather the amount of work it’ll take to fix the house) until he meets Holly. Kevin has sworn off relationships (a plot device that makes me go “meh”) but he’s intrigued by her and they genuinely enjoy spending time together.

Then Holly finds out that Kevin is her boss’s son, and since Nicole is already shitty and disapproving of Holly, it adds a level of complication to everything. Holly is an event planner and one of their upscale clients wants her, not Nicole, to plan the wedding (which is going to be featured in a big wedding magazine) and Nicole is already butt-hurt about that. Nicole was the huge issue I had with the book, mostly because I couldn’t understand why any of the characters put up with her. She’s a bad boss. She’s a bad mom who doesn’t respect her adult children’s boundaries. She asks Kevin to meet her for dinner only to ambush him with a date. She doesn’t respect her daughter’s wishes to keep her baby’s gender a secret rather than do a big reveal at the shower. Basically she swans around being irritated that everything isn’t about her or getting her way. Her kids adopt a “well, you know mom,” kind of attitude, but I couldn’t figure out why they would put up with her unreasonable behavior. BOUNDARIES PEOPLE.

That said, there’s a lot of reasons why readers will like this book. The romance is hot and funny, there’s a ton of home renovation/ HGTV pr0n, and Kevin adopts a tiny kitten he finds. Plus the relationship between Holly and her grandma, and the subject of dealing with dementia, was genuine and well-done.

If Nicole hadn’t been in this book I would have given it a B+, as it was, whenever she was on the page I wanted to punch her.

– Elyse

Never say never . . .

Romance isn’t an option for Holly Greenwood. With her wedding planner career on the line she needs to stay focused, and that means pleasing her demanding boss, not getting distracted by her mind-alteringly hot neighbor . . .

Ex-Marine Kevin Vandemeer craves normalcy. Instead, he has a broken-down old house in need of a match and some gasoline, a meddling family, and the uncanny ability to attract the world’s craziest women. At least that last one he can fix: he and his buddies have made a pact to swear off women, and this includes his sweetly sexy new neighbor.

After one hot night that looks a whole lot like a disaster in the light of day, Kevin and Holly are about to learn that true love doesn’t play by the rules . . .