This is one of BFF K’s favorite reads so far in 2016!
On the surface, I have it all—a career I adore, a loving family, the Nixon metabolism but not the Nixon ears, and a salary that supports my lavish taste in designer shoes, fine wine, and lacy lingerie…but I have no one to share it with.
Until the day I run into him—my one night stand from college with the cocky smile, let’s-get-out-of-here eyes, and dirty, dirty mouth.
Levi Brooks is six feet four inches of hot bearded fantasy. A sexy single dad with broad shoulders, strong hands, and a fantastically big…heart. (I mean, it’s massive. And generous. And it pumps so hard… um. Sorry. Lost my place.)
But he lives for his son, and he’s keeping me at a distance because he thinks I deserve someone better—a man who can give me more time, more attention, more of himself. He doesn’t believe he could ever be enough.
But he’s wrong.
He’s everything.
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BFF K’s Review
Some Sort of Love is the continuation of this absolutely wonderful series by Melanie Harlow. And, one of my best reads for far in 2016. If you haven’t read the other books in the series, you’ll want to start now. Though each is a standalone, the characters are interconnected. I can’t imagine missing out on any of these great stories. The thought of missing these makes me feel sad. Seriously, not exaggerating, the thought of never having read these books makes me sad!
Some Sort of Love is the story of Jillian and Levi. A VERY brief college tryst is reignited when the two run into one another at a wedding. (I won’t say whose!) The attraction and chemistry is immediate and off-the-charts! But, life isn’t as simple as it was in undergrad. Both Jillian and Levi have demanding careers and Levi is the single father to a son with special needs. These are some rough waters to navigate and the couple must decide if their attraction and affections are a strong enough foundation to build a new life together.
Some Sort of Love brings back an incredible cast of characters – Jillian’s sisters, Skylar and Natalie and their men Sebastian and Miles. I love each of these books for so many reasons. I love each of these couples and their unique struggles and circumstances. I absolutely can’t pick a favorite!
And, let me just spend a minute worshiping all that is Melanie Harlow. I’m absolutely head over heels for her storytelling. Melanie Harlow creates characters that are a lovely combination of strong and vulnerable. There’s something so relate-able and insightful about her characters, it’s like you get a glimpse into yourself through the lens of her terrific players. The steamy scenes she dreams up are second to none. And, Harlow can describe a simple cocktail that makes my mouth water!
It was 2am when I finished Some Sort of Love and it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time! If you haven’t read the Happy, Crazy, Love series – start right now, PLEASE! This entire series is packed with wonderful, emotional, dreamy romance and the most incredibly human, deliciously flawed characters. I finished this book in less than a day and I will be recommending it for weeks!
An advance copy was received in exchange for an honest review.
Favorite Quotes
“Love isn’t a finite thing in the universe. It’s not like it gets used up by people who get there first.”
“Harry Potter fan, huh? So what are the chances I can Slytherin to your chamber of secrets tonight?”
“Ah, wine. Wine was my friend. Wine understood me. Wine knew it was entirely possible to be one hundred percent happy for your sisters and also ten percent jealous, because Wine does not care about mathematics. And Wine would never ask why I didn’t have a man by age thirty. Wine and I had spent enough alone time together that Wine knew it wasn’t that I didn’t want to find love-of course I did. But it was fucking hard.”
” ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m thinking about kissing you.’
‘Stop thinking.’ ”
“Over sea bass and grilled tuna we shared firsts and favorites,”
“I’d rather be someone’s shot of whiskey than everyone’s cup of tea.”
Excerpt
“So.” I glanced out the windows to the patio. “You want to go back out there?”
“Not really,” she said.
“You want to get out of here?”
She grinned. “Yeah. I do.”
I watched her rush up the stairs to get her things, and as soon as she was out of sight, I adjusted myself in my pants. My dick had jumped to life the second she said yeah, I do, as if the question had been you want to get naked and fuck? rather than something much less suggestive. Not that I didn’t want to get naked and fuck—hopefully I’d last a little longer than I had in the broom closet eleven years ago—but I didn’t want to make her feel like that’s what I expected. She wasn’t a horny nineteen-year-old college student anymore; she was a doctor, for fuck’s sake. She was beautiful and smart and mature and sophisticated, and a woman like her did not want some Neanderthal who probably needed a haircut and a new pair of shoes to throw her up against a wall for a five-minute fuck.
A woman like that deserved attention all night long. She deserved someone who would undress her slowly and delight in each new inch of her skin as it was revealed. Someone who would run his hands all over her body and find out where she liked to be touched, how she liked to be touched, what she wanted to hear whispered to her in the dark. Someone who would wrap those gloriously long legs around his neck and use his tongue until she begged for his cock, then use his cock until she begged for mercy.
Fuck. I could be that guy.
Except I couldn’t be. Not tonight. Because I wasn’t a horny college student anymore either—I was just a horny single dad who didn’t have the luxury of taking a woman home and lavishing all my time and attention on her the way I wanted to.
As soon as I had the thought, I felt guilty. Scotty was the love of my life and always would be, and whenever I felt the slightest bit resentful about something I couldn’t do because of him, that resentment was immediately crushed by shame. He didn’t ask to be born wired differently, into a terrible relationship, to a mother who would decide she couldn’t handle being a parent, to a father who wasn’t prepared for any of it. He was completely innocent, and he needed me to be a better man.
Running a hand through my hair, I exhaled and wondered if I should ask Jillian for a raincheck on a night when Scotty’s usual sitter could be there. If he woke up again and I wasn’t home yet, he might never get back to sleep. We’d be up all night, tomorrow would be miserable, and the whole start to the week would be off.
But she was so beautiful. And I hadn’t been this attracted to someone in so long.
“Fuck,” I muttered, checking my watch. What was the right thing to do? If she were a different sort of woman, if her brother-in-law weren’t my friend and client, if we lived three states apart…if any number of circumstances were changed, I’d grab her hand, drag her out to my car, and spend the next thirty minutes fucking her brains out in the back seat. It would feel so good to take control that way, to lose control that way, to release some of this fucking tension. But was that fair to her?
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Hello?”
“He’s up again.” Monica’s voice was strained, and in the background I heard the familiar keening of a nighttime meltdown. My chest hurt, the way it always did when Scotty was upset.
“Shit. OK, I’m on my way. Twenty minutes, OK? Thirty at the most.”
“OK.”
“Tell him he can play on his iPad.”
“That’ll just rile him up more. He’s tired. He needs to go to sleep.”
I clenched my fist. “Just do it, OK? It will help calm him until I get there.”
As I ended the call, I heard footsteps above, and then Jillian appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a small suitcase. I watched her descend, the tightness in my chest growing. Also the tightness in my pants. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, her face concerned as she reached the ground and saw my expression. She set down the suitcase. “What’s up?”
Sighing, I put my phone back in my pocket. “I have to get home. Scotty woke up and he’s upset.”
“Oh.” She tried to hide it, but I saw the disappointment in her eyes.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“That’s OK. I understand.”
“Can I call you?”
“Of course.” She smiled, and her lips looked so soft and inviting, I took a step closer.
If you kiss her, it will be that much harder to leave.
I knew it was the truth, but I couldn’t help myself. One kiss. Just one. And then I’ll go. I moved even closer and took her head in my hands.
The curve of her smile deepened. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking about kissing you.”
“Stop thinking.”
I lowered my lips to hers and let them rest there, fully intending the kiss to be short and sweet, just a goodnight.
But I couldn’t break it off. I wanted more—I wanted to taste her. Slanting my head, I changed the angle of the kiss, teasing her mouth open with mine, slipping my tongue between her lips. A little sigh escaped her, and my dick jumped to life again.
You have to go, you have to go, you have to go.
But her hands were moving up my chest and my fingers were sliding into her soft brown hair and I could smell something sweet and citrusy on her skin and it mingled with the taste of whiskey on my tongue and oh God, I wanted my tongue everywhere on her body. I wanted make her come with it just so I could hear that little sigh again and again and again. And I wanted to feel my hands in her hair just like this while she got on her knees and took my cock between her lips, looking up at me with those big blue eyes…
Groaning, I forced myself to take my lips off her before I completely lost my senses. “God, I wish I could stay,” I said, resting my forehead against hers. “I wish a lot of things.”
“I know.” She played with my tie again. “I wish I was taking this tie off you, not straightening it.”
“What a coincidence, that’s one of my wishes too.”
She laughed and kissed me quickly. “Another time, maybe. You better go.”
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About the Author
Rachel Van Dyken is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling author of regency and contemporary romances. When she’s not writing you can find her drinking coffee at Starbucks and plotting her next book while watching The Bachelor.
Brilliant designer Miko Jin is a hopeless romantic. She’s spent most of her life falling in love over and over again…with the men she finds in the pages of her favorite novels.
I am Rachel Hollis. A wife, a mother, a Southern Girl, an LA Woman, and for all intents and purposes Party Planner Extraordinaire! I LOVE parties… I love everything about them. I love the food, the wine, having friends and family and people from all walks of life together in one well-decorated space! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good party… and if there are people out there who don’t, maybe that’s just because you haven’t been to one of mine!
By day, Emma Chase is a devoted wife and mother who resides in a small, rural town in New Jersey. By night she toils away the hours bringing her colorful characters and their endless antics to life. She has a long standing love/hate relationship with caffeine.Emma is an avid reader. Before her children were born she was known to consume whole books in a single day. Writing has also always been a passion and with the 2013 release of her debut romantic comedy, Tangled, the ability to now call herself an author is nothing less than a dream come true.
Georgia resides in rural Mississippi with her wonderful husband, Jeff, and their two beautiful daughters. She spent fourteen years as a labor and delivery nurse before she decided to pursue her dream of becoming an author and hasn’t looked back yet.
