SUGAR'S TWICE AS SWEET
by Marina Adair
(November 25, 2014; Forever Mass Market; $6.00)
He's trouble she doesn't need . . .
Thanks to a cheating fiancé, Josephina Harrington's perfect life just crashed and burned. Moving in with her overbearing parents is definitely not an option. No, she needs to prove she can make it on her own. And she will-by turning her great-aunt's old plantation house into a destination getaway. She's just not expecting her contractor to be so hands-on-and so totally irresistible.
. . . but everything she wants
Bad-boy golf champion Brett McGraw figured his hometown of Sugar, Georgia was the perfect place to lay low and get his life back up to par. The leggy blonde with a pint-sized pup is the kind of sweet 'n sassy trouble he never saw coming. She doesn't know a nut from a bolt and before long, he's renovating her house . . . as she steals his heart. Can he convince Josephina that his womanizing ways are in the past and he's ready for forever?
My Thoughts:
All right, I finished Sugar's Twice As Sweet by Marina Adair. I have to say the overall story plot was cute. Here you have Josephina (Joie) whose life is falling apart around her. She finds out her fiancé is cheating on her. She comes to find out that all her friends and family knew about it, and didn't bother to tell her. They all basically justified it, well we can understand his point of view. Seriously, where is the loyalty there. Oh my gosh, my family would tan his hide, sorry I'm digressing. Anyway, Joie finds a letter from her Aunt Lettie and decides this is her one break to start anew.
Now Brett is ultra smooth playboy of the golfing world, but swaggery ways find him some hot water and he needs to go underground for awhile till the scandal dies. What better way to recover from scandal than go home. However, he gets back home he finds Joie and her pup on the road, and like any good southern boy offers to help in more ways than one. Joie sees his swaggery as a red flag, and tries to avoid Mr. Smooth at all cost. Yet, he just seems to popup. Now Brett is intrigued by her, because she doesn't faun over him like everyone other woman. The challenge.
I thought this story was fun with some serious funny parts. However, there were times where I just feel bad for Joie cause all she wants to do is start over, and she just has the hardest time doing, especially grandma mafia. Let me tell you, those ladies give a good southern woman a bad name. All they were trying to do was protect their memory of a dear friend, so they saw Joie as a threat. They tried everything to get her to come back north. They were god-awful. So, during the story we see her parents, and some of the town people trying her break her spirit. I don't think they were intentionally did it, but just didn't know how to go about it the right way. So, we have Brett who is seeing all this and he just wants to fix it. Poor guy stuck in the middle. More he gets to know Joie, the more he sees her potential in life. Yes, there are some slow parts, but overall the story is a fun read. Like most small town stories it does hit some of the clichés, but lets be honest those are the things that make the small town stories what they are. I like that fact that Joie starts to worm her way into some of the town folks heart.
In the long run, it was worth my time. I did like Joie and Brett together, because they just bantered back and forth. The grandma mafia, someone really needs get a leash on them, because they just aren't good for the southern image. So, if you are looking for light fun with a girl trying to pick up the pieces of her life, and playboy golfer trying to stay out trouble, but is having a hard time with that, you might consider reading Sugar's Twice As Sweet.
Copy provided by Forever Romance via NetGalley
Excerpt from Sugar's Twice As Sweet:
Three days later, Josephina shoved the
last scrap of wallpaper into the trash bag and knew it was quitting time. Her
arms were sore from scraping off glue, which was littering the wood floor, she
had a big bruise on her forehead from running into Brett’s elbow—and sharing
breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a man who made her motor hum only added to
her aches.
True to his word, he had asked her out
every day. And every day it became harder to say no.
Today had been the worst, she thought
as she watched the play of Brett’s muscles while he supported a plank of rotted
wood over his head. He was all rippled and gorgeous and flashing that
orgasm-inducing smile. The one that curled up slightly at the corners, saying
he’d caught her drooling. Again.
“A simple yes is all it would take,” he
said in that southern-boy way that made her heart warm. Along with some other,
more pertinent, parts.
“I have no idea what you’re talking
about.” She stepped sideways, right into a bowl of nails, knocking them over. Then,
blaming Brett for taking up too much damn space, she picked up the handsaw off
the floor and reached into her back pocket for a pair of gloves—coming up
empty.
“I’ve got an extra pair in my tool
belt,” he said with humor in his voice as he jerked his chin toward his goodie bag,
um, tool belt. “Right there in the center pocket. You see them?”
Oh, she saw them all right. She also
saw how incredibly amused he was.
“Don’t move.” Eyeing him, she
cautiously reached into the pocket, careful not to touch any of his tools. She grabbed the leather
gloves and jerked her hand back.
Doing her best to ignore his laughing,
she crawled up to the fifth rung of the ladder and sawed away the remaining few
inches of beam. Between the sexy smiles and “accidental” brushing of bodies,
Brett kept her in a constant state of unbalance.
“So to
clarify, you’re saying you don’t want to go out with me,” he mused.
She sighed,
sawing through the end of the beam and wondering why she kept repeating herself.
“Dating wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“Why is that?”
he asked, lowering the beam to the floor.
This time she
was certain he was flexing his arms on purpose.
“Because we’d
go out, have a good time, come home, and have sex. Only instead of just amazing
no-strings sex it would be complicated by all this other stuff, which would make
things weird. Eventually I’d be short one contractor, miss my opening date, and
wonder what happened.”
Not wanting
to look at him, she set the saw on the top of the ladder, ready to move to the
next spot.
“First off,
I’m in this for the long haul, I gave you my word on that.”
Josephina
turned around to ask him if he was talking about the inn, but then she forgot
how to speak. Brett blocked her descent, climbing up behind her to the second rung,
which brought him eye level. He gripped her hips and backed her up against the
ladder. “And, sugar, sex between us wouldn’t be amazing, it would be
earth-shattering.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
He sculpted
his hands down her sides to her thighs, paying extra attention to her bottom on
the trip back. She rested her hands on those biceps she’d been watching all week
so she wouldn’t fall over as the air whooshed out of her lungs.
Hell, she’d
suffered from severe oxygen deprivation since the minute she found him this
morning, standing on the front porch, latte in one hand, a cheese Danish in the
other, and the sun cresting behind him.
The man
redefined “sexy contractor.” The faded college T-shirt clung to his impressive
chest. And the hotter it got, the clingier the material became. Which was why
four o’clock was Josephina’s new favorite time of day. It was when Brett
shucked his shirt. And the tool belt he wore weighed down his jeans, giving her
a prime view of chiseled abs and lean hips, and highlighting his yummy parts.
And that
wasn’t even the most tempting part. Nope. The more she saw Brett as a normal
hot guy, the more the never-going-to-date-him rule seemed to blur, and the
harder he became to resist.
“I suck at
relationships,” she rushed out, more for her than him. “I get so lost in the
other person that Josephina goes MIA. I can’t do that again. Not now when
people are counting on me. When I’m counting on me.”
“It’s just a
date, Joie. I’m not down on one knee.” He sounded so sincere her heart pounded
as if he were.
“Date implies
the start of something, and you’re leaving.” And if I let you, you might take my heart with you when you go. “And I’m staying
here, in Sugar.”
With a single
nod, Brett let her slide past him on the ladder.
He wasn’t
giving up, not by a long shot, she could see that in his eyes. But he was
letting it go—for now.
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About the author:
Marina Adair is a lifelong fan of romance novels. Along with the Sugar series, she is also the author of the St. Helena Vineyard series. She currently lives in a hundred-year-old log cabin, nestled in the majestic redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with her husband and daughter.As a writer, Marina is devoted to giving her readers contemporary romance where the towns are small, the personalities large, and the romance explosive. She also loves to interact with readers and you can catch her on Twitter at @MarinaEAdair or visit her at www.MarinaAdair.com.
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In addition to the Sweet Giveaway, Forever is also giving a signed copy of Sugar's Twice as Sweet to a commenter (US/CAN Only). All you have to do is answer the question and leave your email address, so I can contact the winner. Easy Peasy. So, don't forget the fill out the rafflecopter for the big prize.
You are a new author to me and I can't wait to read your books!
ReplyDeleteAwesome excerpt! Thanks for the intro and spotlight!
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