FIVE SMOOCHES!
SYNOPSIS:
On the roof of a house outside Truelove, Maine, master carpenter Max Doyle looks down through a skylight and sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on. She’s naked, she’s gorgeous, and everything about her is perfect, down to the ball-busting tattoo of a rose that wraps around her hip. But it isn’t just any woman making his knees buckle. It’s his best friend, Rosie Madden. And as he stands there, mesmerized and precariously close to toppling off the roof, he knows he’ll never, ever be able to look at her the same way again.
Rosie can’t help but notice that Max is suddenly acting very strange—lots of long stares, totally tongue-tied, and not at all like the slightly cocky hunk she’s proud to call her best friend. She can’t figure it out, until later that night when Max rescues her from the world’s worst date, challenges her to a game of pool, and shows her just exactly what she’s got him thinking about. Repeatedly.
But life is complicated. Rosie’s cat, Julia Caesar, wants to eat Max’s dog Cupcake for an afternoon snack. A dream job threatens to pull them apart. And another glance through the skylight changes everything, one more time. Yet try as they might, they can’t go back to being just friends, because falling in love with the one you’ve always adored?
It feels so good.
REVIEW:
I have yet to read something by the talented Nicola Rendell that I haven’t enjoyed immensely. Incredibly, she just seems to get better with each new book that she releases. Her writing is, quite simply, romantic comedy magic. She gives me exactly what I hope for when I crack a book in this genre open, and it’s the reason why she’s fast become a favorite author of mine.
Best friends since middle school, Rosie and Max have the kind of in-sync, rare and special friendship that everyone wants. Always each other’s rocks and never once having crossed that line, a glimpse at the unexpected is all it takes for everything to snap into focus for Max. An earth-shattering kiss, followed by some soul-shattering, plaster-cracking sex seals the deal and confirms what Max has just figured out: Rosie is the one. He’s all in, he knows what he wants, but he’s got his work cut out for him. While her world has definitely been rocked and she finds herself want more, she doesn’t want to lose what she already has, so it’s up to Max to convince Rosie that they’re meant to be more than just friends.
Rendell does not shy away from sizzling hot chemistry between Max and Rosie, and I, for one, am thankful. Packed with laugh-out-loud humor, the kind back-and-forth banter born of a long friendship and tons of tender, heart-string tugging moments, Max and Rosie’s love story was as easy for the reader to fall into as it was for the characters. Their journey isn’t without a few bumps in the road, and one of those bumps was their pets: Max’s adorable, show-stealing Chihuahua named Cupcake and Rosie’s surly, overweight, aged cat named Julia Caesar. I was invested in Max and Rosie from the first page, cheering them on as I devoured this story.
So romantic, so sexy, so sweet, I loved absolutely everything about this fantastic friends-to-lovers story. I sighed, I smiled, and I swooned from cover-to-cover. I finished this book with a blush on my cheeks, a full heart and feeling happy. Nicola Rendell’s So Good gets five smooches from me.
~ Danielle Palumbo
