Rating: ★★★ | Contemporary | Self-Published | 06/11/2018
I have been hearing about Alex Riley from the ladies on the Scandalicous podcast (BTW, where are new episodes ????) so when I saw his on Kindle Unlimited I decided to give it a go. I was taken in by the punny cover and didn’t read the synopsis or anything but this book turned out to be a lot of my romance catnip.
Our heroine Pepper is the ingenue to end all ingenues. She just moved to the big city from her small town to make and sell cute crafts on the internet. Her new neighbor, UFC fighter Teddy, has just bought her building and has decided he’s going to be taking care of his naive new neighbor. By the way, this book should really be called Virgins in the City because both our hero and heroine are virgins. So yeah, fighter trope and virgin hero trope? That’s my jam.
In her review of Stay Close, Jess noted that Alexa Riley books are all about “insta-love, over-the-top, sweet, and cheesy love stories that don’t take all year to read” and that is exactly what this book is all about. They don’t waste time with last names or even naming the city but got right down to the romance. Overall I enjoyed this book, I like all of the characters and it was a great quick palate cleanser between books.
I know Alexa Riley dabble in some barely legal heroines and while this book doesn’t explicitly have that (no ages are mentioned) I do kind of side-eye Teddy asking Piper where her parents are when he first meets her and how we hear a lot about how young she looks. I just don’t personally understand the appeal of the super young looking heroine.
This is my first Alexa Riley and I’d totally be open to reading them again. I’ve never quite been able to get into Harlequin’s category romances, but this book hits all of those marks with a younger and more modern sensibility.
