3 Smooches
Synopsis
I have everything I want. Success. Wealth. Women…and make that plenty of those. As a filthy-rich CEO, I would say I’m pretty much close to perfection. Except for that one weakness: I’m cocky as hell, and an irresistible magnet for women.
So when one tiny mistake lands me in hot waters with the investors, I have one hell of a choice to make:
Restore my reputation…
Or risk losing my company.
I’m a man of my word and failure is not an option. Not now. Not ever. I fully intend to uphold my responsibilities.
Sharing an apartment should be easy, right? And it’s only for six weeks.
That’s what I thought before I found out that my new roommate is female.
And wow.
Vicky Sullivan is unlike any woman I’ve ever met.
She’s hot as sin, and crazy.
Definitely not my kind of crazy, but too hot to pass up.
There’s something about her that makes me rage with want.
I don’t like her, but obviously my dick does. And what he wants, he gets.
Six weeks…
Living together shouldn’t be too hard…
Until my best friend challenges me to a bet…
I make it my mission to make her mine.
There’s only one problem.
I have to break…Every. Single. Rule.
And did I mention she’s completely off-limits?
It’s too late to say no.
COUNTING ON YOU is a standalone rom-com with no cliffhanger.
Review
This was my first time reading JC Reed. I’ve been on a big romantic comedy reading kick this year, devouring them almost exclusively. I loved many of them, and there have been some that just didn’t work for me. Unfortunately, Counting on You falls into the latter category for me. I’ll preface this by saying that it could very well be a case of “it’s me, it’s not the book.” But either way, the fact remains that this just wasn’t for me.
I went it this book looking forward to it because the premise was cute and original. It sounded like a light fun read. Right out of the gate though, the hero grated on my nerves and was a character I could not connect with, root for or like. He was boorish, juvenile and I found it unbelievable that a man who was supposedly the CEO of big, successful company would call the members of his board of directors “buzzkills” when they called him out on his blatantly promiscuous behavior. Behavior, mind you, that was so inappropriate, it was landing him more often than not in the tabloids. He reacted petulantly, childishly and practically threw a temper tantrum when they ordered him into treatment for sex addiction. The heroine did not fare much better for me. Plain and simple, she was delusional and a straight-up stalker. That she glossed over those issues by calling it love would have been laughable had she not truly believed this down to her marrow. Further exasperating me was the wholly untraditional notion that the rehabilitation center would have roomed these two – a sex addict and a love addict – together. I just didn’t buy any of it, and unfortunately, this all happened in the first few chapters. By the time I got past that point and into the meat of the story, I was frustrated and not at all into the premise, the characters or their pairing but I had committed to read this book, so I continued on.
It’s not all doom and gloom. There were some moments of levity and even I can admit that it was pretty sexy. But with what happened early on to set up the plot, I just never got into the story, and I couldn’t connect with or relate to these characters. My disinterest was sometimes so great, I found myself struggling not to skim through, and on occasion, I lost that battle. Three smooches.
~ Danielle Palumbo
