Frigid by J. Lynn (Jennifer L. Armintrout) – C+ I enjoy the friends to lovers trope and I liked Wait for You so I bought this one when it was 99c one day a while ago.  Kyler and Sydney have been friends since they were toddlers and each has had deep romantic feelings for one another for quite some time.  Kyler is a bit of a manwhore and enjoys a lot of one night stands.  Sydney has only had one boyfriend and her sexual experience is very limited (and the one time she had penetrative sex it wasn’t very good and her boyfriend split up with her almost immediately after and complained to his buddies she was frigid).  Both Kyler and Sydney think the other is out of their league for one reason or another but when they are stranded together at Kyler’s family ski lodge in a blizzard the truth finally comes out. The story is told from both main characters’ POV in alternating sections and, for the most part, the big misunderstanding the story is conceived on didn’t bother me too much.  This is because things move apace and the whole book, in terms of their relationship, is about solving the puzzle, not setting up the misunderstanding.  So, they spend the book learning how to be honest with one another and that gave them a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to my dislike of the “Big Mis” trope. However, they just had to throw in one too many of the misunderstandings in order to have the grand reunion and that was one too many for me.   There is also a suspense plot in there which I thought was kind of unnecessary and bizarre but overall, it was an easy read and not taxing on the brain.

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AMAZON     KOBO

The Hook-up by Abigail Barnette – B  This free short story takes place after the events of The Girlfriend and therefore contains spoilers for the earlier books.  For that reason, I’d say best not to read it before the other two but if you don’t mind about spoilers, then I suppose you could.  In this story, Neil is in London, away from Sophie who is in New York.  He has a hookup with their mutual friend-with-benefits “Emir” and things don’t go the way one might expect.  I enjoyed the story in part because it was sexy and hot.  I liked that Neil’s bisexuality was shown on page and celebrated and it was nice to get some of Neil’s POV.  I also liked the chance to enjoy a short which was low conflict.  I expect there will be some other trouble ahead for Neil and Sophie – books would be boring without conflict – so it was nice to see them happy, even if they weren’t physically together in this instalment. Sophie wasn’t completely absent from the story, but she’s not the focus.  It’s only 30 or so pages so it’s a short hot read and hey: free.

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SMASHWORDS

Reviews of these books will be up soon at AudioGals.