Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Jackson Carlisle has rotten luck with men and women, and after an especially bad situation, he takes a step back from romance. But with a two-week family reunion in Hawaii looming, his mom is determined to set him up with one of the sweet singles she knows would be perfect for him. A normal person would tell her no and be done with it. Instead, Jackson tells her he has a boyfriend. The only problem? He doesn’t.

Aaron Wilkes is an escort. He’s a little surprised when a friend’s girlfriend hires him to date her brother, but he’s had stranger jobs. Jackson is cute, and he thinks a fling with Aaron might be just the kind of no-strings-attached fun he needs to get over his dry spell. As they explore the islands together, their carefully laid plans begin to get away from them. Feelings aren’t supposed to come into play, but that shouldn’t be a problem. After all, you can’t fall in love in two weeks.

First edition published by Dreamspinner Press, October 2016.

Book Review

Falling in love with a “pretend boyfriend” may not be a wise thing to do, for more than one reason, but it’s a storyline I really like. Maybe I’m a fan because it is super romantic when a professional escort like Aaron falls for his client. Or maybe I just like the fact that a guy like Jackson, who thinks he is “unworthy” of a good relationship and feels he has to resort to paying someone to be his pretend lover, ends up seeing himself in a new light and believing he deserves to be loved just the way he is. Like in the first book of this series - where Jackson’s brother James, the food critic, finds the love of his life in Bastien, a chef of French descent – both Jackson and Aaron have some unusual quirks, get themselves into more trouble and awkward situations than should be legal, and have a very rocky beginning to a surprisingly promising relationship.

Jackson is not in a good place at all at the start of this novel. He has had several bad experiences in the relationship department already, but his last breakup takes the cake. He ends up depressed and unwilling to ever risk another entanglement of his heart even though he is, at heart, a card-carrying romantic. If it weren’t for constant pressure from his mother to move on eight months after the catastrophic ending of his last attempt to find “the One” added to the dreaded family reunion, Jackson would have happily remained single for a lot longer. But when his spontaneous reaction “I have a boyfriend” – meant only to get his mother’s attempts to set him up off his back – becomes a need to prove he is not worthless, Jackson feels he has no choice. He goes along with his sister’s plan to use her boyfriend’s friend, a professional escort, as the “pretend boyfriend” for the two-week family reunion.

Aaron is a professional escort who likes his job. He does dating only, “no funny business”, and he is in it as much to help people regain their self-confidence or to protect them from prying family members as he does it for the money. Aaron is an organized man, likes to interact with all kinds of people, and thinks Jackson is cute. Even though Aaron is a little hesitant because Jackson is not the one who hired him and things work better when the client is motivated, Aaron can see how much trouble Jackson is in, and he ends up saying yes.

What follows is a headlong rush into highly unprofessional feelings of attraction for Aaron, a confusing depth of feelings for Jackson, and together with the craziness of Jackson's very extended family, it makes for an entertaining story. More than that, it’s a wonderful romance as both Jackson and Aaron battle their feelings while falling deeper and deeper for each other. On the surface they are boyfriends already, but deep down, that is a status neither of them thinks they will ever attain with the other. I loved every minute of watching them slowly realize that they may have gotten it all wrong and that “pretend” is becoming “real” pretty quickly.
 
If you like crazy families and the things they can make each other do, if you want to watch what happens when two men start off pretending to be in love only to discover they’re falling for each other faster than they can blink, and if you’re looking for a read that is entertaining on many levels, funny, and very sweet and romantic, then you will probably like this novel as much as I do. It went straight into my reread-when-cheering-up-is-required file right next to the first book in this series.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Information

Format	ebook
Length	Novel, 234 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	05-November-2019
Price	$4.99 ebook
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Will-Escort-Carlisles-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B07ZMJTR33