This is my first Farrah Rochon book. I had high hopes because of the blurb on the cover from Kristan Higgins, who has long been one of my favorite authors. And I am happy to say that the book lived up to those expectations. 

Setup

The Boyfriend Projects starts us off with Samiah Brooks, a high-achieving Black woman working in software at a very well-respected tech company, a company everybody wants to work for. The book doesn’t dwell on this, but we are reminded that she had to work twice as hard as the men, and then twice as hard again as the white people, to land such a lucrative and desirable position. So we know she’s good at her job, and when we learn that she has been working on an idea for a phone app, we have no doubt she could get it done if she just had the time.

The Dating Scene (in Both Senses of the Word)

The reason she doesn’t have time? Dating. It’s not going great, but there’s one guy she’s been seeing who seems okay. But when she finds out he’s two-timing her, she goes to confront him at a restaurant, only to find it’s actually three-timing and the other women are there—and somebody’s recording the whole incident. 

The video goes viral and Samiah is embarrassed, but the three women become friends and make a pact to steer clear of men for the next six months and focus on themselves. For Samiah, this means working on her app.

The New Guy

The problem with this decision? Daniel, one of her company’s recent hires. They have instant chemistry, but she is not in a place to do anything about that. And Daniel has reasons of his own (very good ones—he’s an undercover investigator) for not wanting to get involved in a relationship. But of course, that vow to stay apart doesn’t last. (I mean, we know this is a romance novel, right?) 

The Job

Samiah tries to work on the app and do her somewhat demanding job and date Daniel, and it’s difficult, but she manages it. Daniel continues his work, knowing this won’t last with Samiah because he’ll be leaving town when the job is done. Samiah of course has no idea that this is only temporary for him, but the problem for Daniel is that he doesn’t want it to be. But he has a job to do. 

Conclusion

I loved the resolution in the book—how he betrays her and how they both come to terms with that in a way that is very believable. I enjoyed the tech setting of the book, too (even though some of the stuff they worked on didn’t really make total sense to me, but whatever)—it’s definitely one that would appeal to fans of office romance. I also love to see characters who aren’t white (Daniel is mixed, Black and Korean) star in a book that’s achieved mainstream success. I highly recommend this for fans of contemporary romance. 

There’s a lot of deserved buzz around this enemies-to-lovers story. It’s set in England and features a black woman suffering from chronic pain and white troubled artist working as a building superintendent, and it’s definitely interesting and different.

Chloe is a web designer who comes from a rich family and has just moved out of her parents mansion as part of a life-improvement venture. After a near-death experience, she made a list of all the things she should do to make her life better. Things like riding a motorcycle, having a fun, drunken night out, and traveling the world with nothing but hand luggage.

Although she and Red, the building’s superintendent, constantly butt heads, she has sneakily admired him painting while shirtless. After he helps her down from an ill-advised rescue of a cat in a tree, she discovers that he needs a website for his art. She decides he can help her with some of her list, so they agree to a trade: she’ll do the site for free if he helps her “get a life” via her list.

Gradually they get to know each other and discover their mutual attraction, and things go from there. Red is a really nice guy, even though I didn’t find him as appealing as Chloe did, but that’s fine for the story. Chloe finds him very attractive, and their antics show he feels quite the same.

Overall, this is a good story featuring at least one character who’s typically underrepresented in romance (though things are starting to change). If you’re looking for a different but hot story, try this one out.

This is a followup to last year’s Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, featuring Trisha’s cousin, Ashna.

Ashna wants to save the restaurant she inherited from her father, Curried Dreams. Her friend is in TV and convinces her to be on a cooking-with-celebrities show. She has no idea who she’ll be paired with, but it turns out to be Rico, who is both her ex-boyfriend (from high school) and a world-renowned, just-retired soccer player. Unbeknownst to Ashna, Rico arranged to be her partner in an attempt to provide some closure to their relationship and prove to himself (and her) that he’s over her. Instead, they become fan favorites and the sexual tension between them is strong throughout the book, despite the fact that Ashna pretends to not know him, which annoys Rico. The further they get in the competition, the tenser things get between them, in all ways.

Ashna has a lot of other stuff going on, too. She’s still trying to manage the restaurant, and then her somewhat estranged mom shows back up. The two of them have a very complicated relationship due to the fact that her mom, Shobi, basically left her behind with Ashna’s aunt and uncle to take care of her, while she spent her time in India working on women’s rights. She is about to receive the Padma Shri, which is an Indian national medal given for distinguished service. Shobi is an important character in the book and has a few point of view chapters, even though it’s mostly Ashna’s story. Ashna’s never forgiven Shobi for abandoning her, but she learns that there is more to that complicated story.

The story is told mostly in present time, though there are several important flashbacks to Ashna and Rico’s early days and to Shobi’s, as well. It’s told from three points of view: Ashna, Rico, and a little from Shobi. Despite the intense sexual tension throughout the book, the heat level is lower than I expected, given Dev’s previous books.

Overall, this was a good novel with lots of angst and false beliefs to overcome. If you’ve enjoyed Dev’s earlier novels, you’ll definitely like this one.

Okay, so it took me a little longer than a week or two to get to this. Life is very busy at the moment. Regardless, I was looking forward to reading this one as I’ve enjoyed Rai’s other books. It didn’t disappoint. Another book with a strong heroine and a sympathetic hero.

Rhiannon runs one of America’s major dating apps. She is a pretty hard person for a variety of reasons. She’s been burned pretty bad by love, in a way that also impacted her career, so it was double-devastating. But she’s come out of it a Winner. After a hookup that was supposed to lead to a second date but instead led to her being ghosted, she’s shocked to see the contemptible ghoster himself at a large dating app conference. She vows to not give him the time of day, but then finds out he’s the unofficial face of Matchmaker, an old dating site that Rhiannon is interested in buying. Then she ends up having to share an interview spot with him.

For his part, Samson does have a very good reason for ghosting her. He tried to get in touch with her after the fact, but she’d blocked him already. So he’s excited to see her at the conference. One of his roles with Matchmaker is to “find true love” through the site by means of going on several (filmed and aired) dates with matches the site suggests. He’s not just a public face for the site, but he’s also the owner’s nephew, so he has more than a passing interest in things going well. After a terrible date, where he makes a total fool of himself, he convinces Rhiannon to do a little dating lesson series with him, also filmed. The premise is that as the owner of Crush, she knows something about dating and can teach Samson.

Their chemistry is as good as it was during their hookup and Samson does manage to tell Rhiannon why he ghosted her. She is tempted to forgive him but still isn’t ready to risk her heart. Still, they decide to have a temporary casual relationship that goes very well. Then Rhiannon gets an opportunity to make an offer for Matchmaker, along with several other potential buyers. They all have to go to Samson’s aunt’s house to make their competing offers over a couple days. Rhiannon ends up writing Samson off after making an assumption about something during the bidding process and that constitutes the dark moment that tears them apart.

There’s a lot to love about this book: characters of color, genuinely strong women, a believable nice guy, a healthy dose of feminist sensibilities, the pull on heartstrings. It’s also pretty hot, like you’d expect from Rai. The main characters were complicated and relatable. I did feel like Rhiannon overacted a teeny tiny bit regarding the assumption she made about Samson when they were at his aunt’s house. I mean, she’s set up as pretty damaged so it’s not inconceivable. But still, when they got past it, I was happy.

Overall, this is a good one for fans of steamy contemporary, especially if you like something a little different from the standard white characters. Fans of Rai will especially love it.

This is a followup to Hoang’s first book, The Kiss Quotient, which I liked and reviewed. The Bride Test feature’s Khai, the cousin of Michael from The Kiss Quotient. Khai’s the other character from that book who’s on the autism spectrum.

I liked Esme, the heroine, from the beginning—she’s hardworking and unpretentious, unlike all the other women Khai’s mother is trying to pick from to be his future bride. That’s the setup—she’s gone to Vietnam to find a wife for him, unbeknownst to him. Esme’s cleaning the hotel bathroom across from the room Khai’s mom has reserved for interviewing the candidates. After not finding anyone, she “interviews” Esme and finds her suitable. Esme’s current life isn’t amazing and she thinks that if she could get to America, she’d have a greater chance of making it that way. So she agrees to a trial run over the summer and leaves behind her mom, grandma, and young daughter. (I have to say that if I hadn’t known it was real, I would have been screaming, “No! Don’t do it! It’s a trap!” But that’s the comfort of reading a romance—nothing truly awful happens, at least not to the main characters in the course of the novel.)

I have to admit that Khai was harder to like. Now, I’m sure this is partly to do with the fact that I couldn’t really connect with him emotionally, perhaps due to his slightly stunted (but not entirely absent) emotions. But as the story proceeded, I found him more sympathetic. And by the end it was clear that he had grown at least a little (though it did take some time).

Khai’s mom moves Esme into Khai’s house with little warning, basically. She does explain the situation to him and he vows to stay away from whoever this girl is. But of course, once he sees her, she’s beautiful and he can’t stop thinking about her. For her part, Esme likes Khai despite his often odd behavior. She works in Khai’s mom’s restaurant and starts taking adult education classes. That storyline actually becomes important later, which I appreciated. Esme turns out to have a lot more to her than anyone (including Khai’s mom) expected.

If you liked the first book, you’ll probably like this one. As a side note, if you like reading about weddings, you’ll like it, as well—Khai and Esme go to a bunch. If you like heroes you have to warm up to, and admirable heroines, you should give it a try.

I reviewed A Duke by Default—the first in this series—a couple months ago, and now I’ve read the first. It was great to get to know Portia as she was Before, since in Duke we learned she was trying to improve herself, but we never saw exactly from what. This book shows us what Ledi has to put up with in Portia. Not that that’s the focus of the book, but the dark moment is sort of enabled by Portia (though of course it’s the hero’s fault).

Ledi is a grad student in epidemiology who works very hard (probably harder than everyone around her since she’s both female and black…). Because she was a foster kid after her parents died when she was very young, she has no family and no money. So she also has to work as a waitress to bring in some cash. She’s been getting these stupid scam emails from someone named Likotsi from Thesolo, a supposed small country in Africa, that insist she return to Thesolo and take her rightful place as the prince’s wife.

Thabiso is the prince in the email and he and Thesolo are as real as can be. He’s kind of an ass in the beginning, with his personal assistant, Likotsi (writer of the emails), sort of acting as his conscience. He’s not evil or anything extreme, but he’s absolutely rich and entitled. When he finds Ledi at work, he spontaneously decides to take the place of a new hire she is supposed to train, in order to get to know her a little. Anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant will know that this won’t go well (a guy who’s never lifted a finger serving people… yeah, right). It goes even worse than you’d expect, which makes for even better reading. So then he moves into the apartment across from her (Likotsi rightly points out that this is stalkery behavior, but he doesn’t care).

With him across the hall from her, he gradually breaks down her defenses and they become friends and more than friends until everything comes crashing down, leaving Ledi feeling like the biggest fool and Thabiso like a real asshole (deserved).

Ledi is an awesome character—I love how hardworking she is, but more importantly she’s very smart. Of course she has trust issues, since she aged out of the foster system without being adopted. So this is her primary growth—learning to trust people. Thabiso’s not a bad guy, even in the beginning, but especially by the end. He’s been enlightened about how real people live and he realizes how badly he damaged Ledi by lying to her for so long.

The only little quibble I had with the book was that when Thabiso convinces Ledi to go to Thesolo with the promise of an epidemiology practicum, I don’t think she would have gone without Portia knowing about it because I don’t think she’d trust him to not be tricking her into going. A small thing.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book. Cole’s a great writer and she actually has real knowledge about science—enough to make authentic references to Ledi’s work and even crack a joke here and there. Good stuff.

I don’t think you can be a fan of romance and not also love Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (like I even needed to name the author, right?). Dev’s new standalone novel gives a big nod to that novel, without being at all derivative. First off, Dev switches the roles—in her novel, Trisha, the heroine, is the “snob” while DJ is the one she disses early on.

Trisha is a talented neurosurgeon who has to deliver very mixed news to a patient named Emma—she can remove the tumor that will save Emma’s life but not without causing her to lose her sight. This is devastating enough, but Emma’s also a visual artist, making it doubly bad. Trisha’s got an overbearing family who she feels like has shunned her (especially her father) because of something that happened a long time before. Her brother is running for a political office in California and the whole family is focused on supporting him, and Trisha is trying to get back in her family’s good graces. She attends an event at her parents’ house, where she encounters the event chef and manages to insult him.

DJ can’t believe he actually overhears this woman referring to him as “the hired help.” He’s a highly-trained (and Paris-trained, at that) chef who’s just back in San Francisco because his little sister is facing brain cancer. He doesn’t expect to see the woman again, so he and Trisha are both shocked to run into each other in Emma’s hospital room.

Unsurprisingly, they clash despite each being very attracted to the other. DJ keeps his attraction pretty under control, but Trisha struggles a bit more, constantly putting her foot in her mouth and insulting him over and over again. Then she spontaneously decides to admit her attraction to DJ, which goes over very, very badly. (It’s a great scene that perfectly captures the awkwardness and feeling of the parallel scene in Austen’s book.) And there’s a baddie named Julia Wickham who worms her way into DJ’s world, nearly disrupting everything.

The sexual tension between Trisha and DJ is great. And Dev is a talented writer, with her strong dialogue and descriptions. There was one thing that bugged me, though, that I feel like mentioning. The way Trisha’s family dealt with the situation with Julia and what she did—which isn’t revealed until later in the book—made me uncomfortable. There’s even a line about how releasing the details would set women’s rights back a hundred years—I didn’t agree with that at all. It was actually pretty messed up and Julia was clearly the bad guy there. However this line comes from one of the characters, and I don’t have to agree with everything they say or do.

Anyway, there is quite a bit going on in Trisha’s life. DJ’s busy too, but most of his non-Trisha time is spent with Emma, who also is Trisha’s concern. So this is definitely Trisha’s book. It’s also her most “American” book, with very little time spent in India (all of it’s in flashbacks, too). Still, if you’ve liked Dev’s other books or you enjoy reading about complex family dynamics, you’ll probably like this one, too.

I was looking forward to reading this book, Guillory’s next after The Wedding Date. This one also features a black heroine, but this time the hero is Latino.

I really liked the overall story here—Nik (short for Nikole) is proposed to on the Jumbotron at a Dodgers game by her boyfriend of just a few months, who she doesn’t even like that much. In front of everyone, she turns him down. Then she’s rescued by Carlos and his sister and from there Nik and Carlos develop a relationship. I liked both of the characters and found them somewhat relatable. She’s a successful freelance writer and he’s a pediatrician. The other characters in the book were also good. Nik has two close friends and her ex (the proposer) is an amusing total loser. Carlos has a friend but his family is huge in his life.

Despite all that, I didn’t love the book. It wasn’t bad by any means and I never considered not finishing it, but some of the dialogue fell flat for me. Some of the humor did as well—I did think there were funny parts in the book but I got the feeling I didn’t find them as funny as I was supposed to. Also, in the beginning, they were each unsure if the other liked them despite what I considered blatant signs that they did, which irked me. I just feel like this book was pushed out a little before it was ready. In my humble opinion.

Despite how I felt, many people will probably enjoy this book. And it’s definitely great to see some brown characters hitting the mainstream. In this case neither of the main characters is white, which is definitely cool.

The Kiss Quotient is an unusual romance with its heroine being on the autism spectrum and a hero who’s half Swedish and half Vietnamese (though culturally more Vietnamese-American since his Swedish father is out of the picture and his entire extended family is through his mom). So double bonus points for diversity. But does it work?

Yep, it does. They’re both great characters, though Stella’s my favorite. The premise is that Stella’s mom is pressuring her to get married and start having kids since she’s at the ripe old age of thirty (I hate biology). Stella isn’t opposed to the idea of kids, but relationships terrify her. She has mild touch aversion and sex is nothing but torture for her. But she decides her mom is right and the only way she can possibly have a relationship is if she gets better at sex. She needs practice. So she hires an escort. Obviously.

Okay, ignoring the fact that I don’t think it’s that easy to hire one who will assume sleeping with you is the primary purpose (though maybe it is—I wouldn’t know), this is a great premise. So Stella finds Michael and she explains her situation, which weirds him out at first, but then he goes along with it. Still, he’s baffled that she can’t just find a guy the normal way because she’s beautiful. But things don’t go well on their first practice session because Stella freezes up.

Michael usually has a limit of one night with a client, but he ultimately agrees to more lessons with Stella because he’s worried about how other escorts might treat her. They might not be as gentle and understanding as he is. Because although he doesn’t know she’s on the spectrum, he instinctively senses how to deal with her due to have an autistic cousin.

Michael breaks more of his own rules with her and soon enough they’re in an actual practice relationship because that made more sense to both of them in terms of useful lessons. She meets his family and that doesn’t go well at all due to her lack of social awareness and certain other concerns she has (it’s one of those things that’s funny and sad at the same time).

The problem is that each of them knows this is practice and even though they’ve fallen for each other, they assume everything’s fake (except their own feelings, of course). Stella knows Michael will not want her when he finds out she’s autistic and he is convinced that she won’t want him when he founds out what a douche his father is (assuming she’ll guess he’ll end up being the same).

The resolution is interesting and satisfying to watch as the book is well-plotted. The characters are complex and surprise you at times, but in ways that make sense. There is quite a bit of steam (this is the point of the practice, after all), but most of the encounters go awry in ways that are again a little funny and a little sad. It’s just that you know Stella is into it but her issues keep her from letting go. Fortunately, Michael’s a good guy. And ultimately, things do get better.

Overall, I really liked this book. It’s great to see the kind of characters that don’t populate many romances presented as real, complex people. I’m looking forward to Hoang’s next book.