4 Smooches!
Synopsis
Straight-laced 19-year-old Brooke Powers has two goals: First, avoid the party scene and all the drama and disaster that go along with it. Second, focus on attaining her Marketing and Business degrees. When her roommate begs her to attend a fraternity party she reluctantly obliges, but gets more than she bargained for when she meets enticingly charismatic fraternity brother, Dean Parker. After a mishap causes her to wake up in the worst possible place she can imagine, she vows to stay away from anything or anyone fraternity related. Staying away from Dean is a daily battle, one she’s slowly losing. When her feelings conjure up old demons from the past, her strategically planned future turns into chaos. Brooke is desperate to keep herself on track. Will Dean be her downfall or is he exactly what she needs?
Valentine’s Day isn’t always complete bliss.
Review
I love a good old fashioned College situated romance, I think because I lived on a constant diet of the 80’s movies referenced throughout this wonderful little book when I was younger and gorged myself on those Point Romance books as a teenager. The Frat parties, the beer pong, the initial meet of our power house couple and the general college atmosphere looks like so much fun and a million miles away from what university life in Northern Ireland is actually like, so I’m living vicariously through this story.
It starts off with Brooke going rather reluctantly to a frat party with her best friend where after having accidentally consumed some spiked concoction begins to feel rather altered and super duper ‘friendly’. Enter hero Beta Omega brother member Dean who deems it his mission to look after hapless Brooke.
Brooke was my kind of friend, she came with a past that she wasn’t too proud of but she was taking the necessary steps to straighten her life out and most importantly stay away from frat members and jocks. This was utterly refreshing to have heroine who at one point was a bit of a player herself rather than the doe eyed virgin navigating college campus. Her character is completely likeable and identifiable and often times down-right funny especially when she’s having a clumsy moment.
Dean was a lovely romantic lead, he was a jock with a heart and also a gigantic brain, intelligence and wit, an eight-pack for heavens sake and of course his penchant for winking…a lot. What’s not to love? My only problem with Dean was the whole spiked drink thing that he was aware of. He tells Brooke had he known she was about to drink it he would have warned her but what about all those other unsuspecting party goers that didn’t know either? I can’t help but feel more attention was warranted to this situation and more action should have been taken with Dean or Brooke doing more about it.
It was a lovely short read with a steady progression through friendship to flirting to more. I never felt like the story was stilted or slow it demanded my attention from start to finish with sweet romance, some sexy scenes to add more flavour and a bit of drama to break up the momentum. An absolutely wonderful book to get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day, it just might get your significant other in trouble when he doesn’t break out the big grand gesture like most awesome book boyfriends including Dean.
~Nicole
