Good Boy is the first in a spin-off series from the Him and Us books by the two authors (about Jamie and Wes), which I previously reviewed. Two of the side characters in Us, Blake (Wes’s teammate) and Jess (Jamie’s sister) reappear in this book as hero and heroine. Blake was probably the most significant secondary character in Us and I have to admit I found him a wee bit annoying. He’s a bit on the effervescent side and is always making up words that make little sense and just being silly in general. It probably says something about me that that annoys me, but whatever.
In Us, we find out that while Jamie is down for the count with a bad flu and Jess is supposed to be 100% focused on taking care of him, she instead hooks up with Blake, who has inserted himself in Jamie and Wes’s lives again.
In Good Boy, Jess is back in Toronto to plan and coordinate Wes and Jamie’s wedding, which brings her back in touch with Blake, who’s the best man. She’s a serial career-changer and although she was sure wedding-planning was going to be her permanent gig, actually carrying it out make her realize she doesn’t ever want to do it again. She has an epiphany based on when she was taking care of Jamie—she wants to be a nurse. So she moves to Toronto and starts nursing school there. She spends a lot of time with Jamie and Wes, which brings her in regular contact with Blake, as well.
He’s as interested in her as he was that afternoon in the chair in Wes and Jamie’s apartment. But she regards him as a mistake. She’s trying to get herself into proper adulthood and messing around with a giant goofball doesn’t seem the right thing to do. Actually, messing around with anybody seems the wrong thing to do. She’s trying to earn her family’s respect, after all.
The one problem? Their chemistry is off the charts. So eventually they do start hooking up but it’s not intended to be a long-term arrangement. How that comes about is a joy to watch. As always with Bowen and Kennedy, the writing is superb. They deliver with all the feels, dialogue, strong characterization, and hot sex that you would expect from them.