Rush by Shae Ross

Title: Rush

Author: Shae Ross

Publisher: Entangled Embrace

Release Date: May 9, 2016

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Priscilla Winslow has a mouth that spits fiery sarcasm faster than I can throw a touchdown. But I’ve wanted her ever since I saw her in that Bo Peep outfit on Halloween. Yep, I’m a sheep who will follow that little hottie anywhere. There’s one problem…she hates me. Just because we ended up in jail and quite possibly ruined both of our futures…

They’re changing the rules…

College Quarterback, Preston Rush is living the dream. He’s leading his team to the National Championship and days away from earning a ‘first round draft pick’ label. When he meets Little Bo Peep at a Halloween party, he thinks he’s scored big. Instead, he wakes up in a jail cell with the corseted beauty. Because of him, she’s in trouble and when he discovers her true identity, he realizes, his nightmare is just beginning.

The always shooting for perfection Priscilla Winslow can’t believe her good deed has cost her soccer career. Even though she knows it isn’t Preston’s fault, she can’t forgive him for the disaster that is her life. She just wishes her damn body would get the message. Every time she sees him, it’s all she can do not to kiss him.

When everything crashed down around him, Preston will have to decide if doing the right thing is worthy losing it all.

As you can probably tell from a lot of what I’ve been reading lately, I’ve been on a major romance kick lately. I just can’t seem to get enough. The latest one I’ve read, Shae Ross’s Rush, was different and unexpected in a good way.

Hi, my name is Emilie and I love sports romance. A lot. Especially if it’s set in college. Even more if both main characters are athletes instead of just the hero. So Shae Ross’s Rush? Total Emilie bait. Also those abs on the cover. I just couldn’t resist them. But that’s besides the point. Shae Ross’s Rush was, in a way, different from the other sports romances I’ve been reading. For one, both main characters are athletes. That’s not necessarily uncommon, but it’s also not necessarily something I see a lot of. The other thing that made Rush feel different was that it didn’t so much focus on the prowess on the field as it did on all the corruption and messed up crap that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to some college sports. In fact, that was pretty much the entire focus of the story. Well beyond the romance. The fact that some sports teams are valued more than others, regardless of actual performance, and that there is a lot of bad stuff going on behind the scenes is something that your sort of know but don’t really want to talk about. So it was definitely interesting to read a story about that and seeing the ways that it affects the people involved. And it was definitely impacting the people in this story in a big way. 

Neither Priscilla nor Preston was exactly who I thought they were going to be. To be completely honest, I kind of expected Preston to be your stereotypical cocky-jock so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that that’s not who he was. Instead, he was someone who really cared about his family, someone who was willing to risk his whole future to help someone he barely knew, someone who was determined to do the right thing no matter how hard it was and no matter the cost. So yeah, Preston totally surprised me. But in in a really good way. As for Priscilla, I loved how she wasn’t willing to take Preston’s crap. Or any other male athlete’s for that matter. She was an athlete just like they were and she deserved the same amount of respect they got. And she wasn’t afraid to ask for it. Even if sometimes she needed a little push from her best friend to do so. So even though I wasn’t sure how I felt about them at first, Priscilla and Preston worked together. Or at least they did for me. 

I really enjoyed reading Shae Ross’s Rush. It was a different kind of sports romance and looked at a different aspect of college sports. On a different note, I wouldn’t exactly be opposed to reading a story about Carson, Jace or Marcus. Just saying…

The Rule Book by Jennifer Blackwood

Title: The Rule Book (The Rule Breakers #1)

Author: Jennifer Blackwood

Publisher: Entangled Embrace

Release Date: May 9, 2016

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Starr Media Second-Assistant Survival Guide

1. Don’t call your hot boss the antichrist to his face.

2. Don’t stare at hot boss’s, um, package or his full sleeve of tattoos. (No. Really. Stop!)

3. Don’t get on the malicious first assistant’s bad side.

4. Don’t forget to memorize the 300-page employee manual.

5. If you value your cashmere, steer clear of boss’s dog.

6. Boss’s dimples are lust-inducing. Do. Not. Give. In.

7. “The elevator ate your clothes” is not a valid excuse for showing up to important meetings half dressed.

8. Don’t break seven of the rules within the first week of employment if you, ya know, are in dire need of money to support your sick mom.

9. Whatever you do, don’t fall for the boss. See rule eight about sick mom.

10. Never forget the rules.

You know how sometimes you just want to read a fun romance that’s just going to put a smile on your face, maybe even make you laugh, and take you out of your own head for a few hours? I was looking for exactly that when I picked up Jennifer Blackwood’s The Rule Book and it did exactly what I hoped it would.

Lainey Taylor has never really been one for rules. But working at Starr Media means having to abide by a specific set of rules, each one more ridiculous than the last. But Lainey is determined to follow them, because without this job, she won’t be able to keep helping her sick mom. She needs this job and if to keep it she has to follow a ridiculous set of rules, then that’s what she’ll do. But everything that could possibly go wrong in her first week of work goes wrong and by some miracle, Lainey hangs on to her job. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also Brogan Starr, CEO of Starr Media and Lainey’s very hot boss. She knows the last thing she should be doing is think about Brogan in anything less than a professional way. But how is Lainey supposed to help herself when the more time she spend with Brogan at the office, the more time she wants to spend with him outside of work.

Jennifer Blackwood’s The Rule Book was such a fun story. Like a lot of the romance books I’ve been reading these days, I hadn’t really heard anything about it until I came across it on NetGalley. But once I read the description, I knew that it was going to be my kind of story. And it absolutely was. Beyond being a fun and flirty romance, I found The Rule Book to also be a really relatable story. Or at least it was for me (well, not quite the romance with the boss part, but the rest). I totally understood what Lainey was going through, trying to find her footing in a new job after just having finished school. Thankfully, I didn’t have someone like Jackson in my first post-grad job, but even without someone like that who’s constantly trying to get you to screw up finding your rhythm after graduation can be hard. Especially when you have as much going on as Lainey did. All that to say that, in that aspect, The Rule Book was really relatable. Though I couldn’t exactly relate to the romance part of the book, it didn’t stop me from really enjoying it. Though I sometimes disagreed with one or both of them, I really liked the dynamic at play between Lainey and Brogan which absolutely made me root for them. Even when they were being stupid. But I’ll get to that. 

Much like Lainey’s work storyline was a relatable one, Lainey herself was a really relatable characters. Or at least she was for me. I connected with her right from the start and got completely caught up in her life. So many of the thoughts she has, whether about having inappropriate crushes or about having trouble resisting the lure of the one-click purchase button, are ones I’ve had myself and it’s those little things that often had me smiling throughout the book. What I loved about Lainey? Her sassiness. Lainey was definitely not afraid to say what was on her mind and I loved her for it. Even if sometimes I wished she would actually chew Jackson out for real and not just in her head because he so totally deserved it. And Lainey’s sassiness also came in handy with Brogan. Because Brogan sometimes (often) needed someone to give him a reality check and Lainey was great at doing just that. Because despite being swoony in all kinds of ways, Brogan sometimes was pretty clueless about some things. Namely how he felt about Lainey. And that having too many rules is not really living. But thankfully he came to his senses.

Though I might have randomly come across it, I’m happy that I found out about Jennifer Blackwood’s The Rule Book. It was a story that was fun and put a smile on my face while I was reading. And I’m just going to put it out there that I wouldn’t be opposed to reading a story all about Zoey...

No Kissing Allowed by Melissa West

Title: No Kissing Allowed

Author: Melissa West

Publisher: Entangled Embrace

Release Date: July 28, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

No kissing. No touching. And definitely no falling in love…

Armed with her bestie, an embarrassing number roof shots, and her list of 10 Wild Things To Do Before Adulthood, recent grab Cameron Lawson is partying it up before she starts her dream job at New York’s biggest ad agency. Her last task? Hook up with a random guy. And while it’s so not her style, the super-sexy guy sitting next to her is definitely game. No names. No details.

At least, that was the plan.

On her first day of work, Cameron discovers her hook-up is none other than Aidan Truitt—her new boss’s boss. Talk about failing the “no fraternizing with coworkers” policy on an epic level. Especially when Aidan makes it clear their one night was only the beginning. Falling for him could cost her everything, but sometimes the only way to get what you want is by breaking a few rules…

Despite the number of unread NA books I own both physically and digitally, I am always on the hunt for more good NA reads. I just can’t get enough. And that’s how I stumbled upon Melissa West’s No Kissing Allowed and found myself completely devouring it.

Cameron is ready to start her new career in advertising. She’s starting her dream job at the biggest ad agency in the city on Monday morning, but before that she and her friends are going out for one last crazy night. They even have a list of things they want to do and Cameron only has one item left to cross off: hook up with a random guy. Lucky for her, the hot guy sitting next to her at the bar seems just as interested as she is. And the next morning, they both go their separate ways. Until she walks into her brand new job only to come face to face with him again. And to make matters worse, Aidan just so happens to be her boss’s boss and there’s a strict no fraternizing policy at the company. Cameron is determined to just put it all behind her, but Aidan has other things in mind. Things that involve breaking all the rules that have been established.

I love it when my NA reads dig a little deeper than just two people falling in love. I love it when there’s more meat to the story than just straight up romance. But I can’t deny that I also love my fun romances, the ones where two people are falling in love and that’s that. For me, Melissa West’s No Kissing Allowed was the best of both worlds. This story was undeniably fun. As as the romance for that matter. It was about two people falling in love even though they weren’t supposed to, or even didn’t want to in the case of one of them. And it didn’t hurt that the story also featured one of my favourite romance tropes. For that alone I would have been convinced to read the story. But as fun as the story and the romance was, there was also some depth to it. Both characters had some deeper issues they were dealing with and that were touched on throughout the story. Sure, those issues may not have been deeply explored, but they were still there which added another layer to the story. But a lot of why I enjoyed No Kissing Allowed so much had to do with Cameron and Aidan.

I connected with Cameron right away when I started reading No Kissing Allowed. There was just something about her that made it so I recognized so much of myself in her. I just understood her. Both when it came to the way she thought about relationships and the way she thought about her goals and her career. Because of that, I like Cameron a lot. And so I was rooting for her in every aspect of the story. And I loved the relationship she had with Aidan. Despite the whole part about him being her boss, things just seemed easy between them. And it made for a fun relationship. Even if Aidan was dead set against relationships. Which brings me to Aidan. I loved him, but sometimes I just anted to knock some sense into him. He could be so caught up in his head and what he didn’t want to become that he kind of neglected to see what was right in front of him. Even then, though, I loved the back and forth between him and Cameron, and the way they both pushed each other. Basically, I loved their relationship.

In case you hadn’t figure it out, I really enjoyed Melissa West’s No Kissing Allowed. It was the kind of romance that perfectly balanced light and fun with deeper issues. This story took me by surprise and I couldn’t be happier about it.