C+
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Kari. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.
The summary:
The last man on earth she should hook up with!
Poppy Spencer has discovered that there’s one thing worse than Christmas alone in her flat, and that’s spending it with Isaac Blair—her sworn-enemy-turned-reluctant-flatmate! And that’s not just because he knows all her secrets…but because his sexy-as-sin smile and taut physique are making her all hot and flustered—despite the icy cold outside!
Unless a casual hookup is just the thing she needs…? It’ll certainly break the simmering tension between them. The trouble is, with their history, this is going to be anything but casual!
Here is Kari's review:
For this year’s RITA® Reader Challenge I read Enemies with Benefits by Louisa George. It is the fourth book in the A Flat in Notting Hill series, all of which are by different authors.
I finished reading Enemies with Benefits with a smile on my face — definitely a good thing. But it took some time getting there. Maybe I was expecting too much seeing as it is a short romance, and the ones I have been reading lately are longer ones, with a bit more time to create the setting.
First off, I found the title a bit misleading, as the hero and heroine are not so much enemies as they have some sort of implied past. But this might just be because I’m not all that in on slang terms, so I won’t be holding that against it. After a bit of google-ing I realized “enemies with benefits” is an actual term – yay me. And the author worked the title into the book, which is something I really like, so yay that.
At the beginning of the book our heroine, Poppy, finds herself alone and just a tiny bit drunk in her the flat that she shares with two friends, her brother, and said enemy from the title (but he’s almost never there, so it’s fine). It is almost Christmas and everybody is happily coupled up and doing couple-y things in exciting places. Except Poppy, who is all alone in her PJs drinking too much, and her devilishly handsome, commitment phobic, flat mate Isaac. Who pops up all unexpectedly looking all devilishly handsome, while Poppy is not at her best. Which made me think about all the times I’ve read a scene where the dashing hero suddenly surprises the heroine looking less than ideal, and wonder if I had ever read the reverse (the answer to that question is no).
And all of a sudden there is sexual tension all over the place. I mean out of nowhere. At least that was how it felt to me as a reader. All I knew about these people was that didn’t particularly like each other, they had common friends, they shared a flat, and they tried to avoid each other. Those last two were going really well together. Oh, and that he was the only person in the world who knew her big dark secret.
Isaac is the commitment-phobic hero type who has family issues and is very successful in business. In fact he owns and runs several clubs in London, Paris and a few other cities. Which is why I couldn’t help but find it hard to believe that he would rent a room in an apartment with a woman he doesn’t like, even though her brother is his best friend, seeing as he most definitely has the means to rent somewhere else, should he so choose.
Poppy is a successful doctor and the mother figure in their group of friends. She owns the flat where they all are (or have been) living. And she never dates. She hasn’t had sex in the last eight years or so, so she is practically a virgin, or an almost-virgin.
After about a third of the book, I started to get over myself, and the characters started to grow on me. Ignoring the part where the man of the world is to learn the almost-virgin how sex actually can be good, I started to really like the book and the people in it. And as I got to know the characters a bit more, a lot of the things that annoyed me in the beginning actually made some sense. Maybe not all, and maybe not that much sense, but just enough. Plus I really liked the dynamic with their friends.
All in all I found it to be a good fluffy read, and I give it a C+.
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Great review! I also reviewed this book and agreed with you on several points (including the out-of-nowhere sexual tension that I forgot to mention). I also really like how you summed up the plot.
Thanks, Mandi! Just read your review, and it made me laugh, it was just so spot-on on some of the most annoying/confusing parts of the book. Good job!