What a Girl Wants (Tess Brookes, #2)

by Lindsey Kelk

[Leah]

Over the past couple of years I have come to firmly love Lindsey Kelk. She has a great brand of humour, and an honest way of writing that I find amusing and super enjoyable. I absolutely devoured About A Girl when I read it last year and I have been dying for the sequel ever since. And if you're wondering I am TEAM NICK, okay? TEAM NICK. You got that? NICK. Not Charlie. NICK. NICK. NICK. So I was SO RIDONKULOUSLY excited to receive a proof copy of What A Girl Wants. As soon as I saw the envelope, I knew what it contained and it just made me happier than I have ever been! It was like all my Christmases has come at once, and I couldn't wait to read it! AND IT DIDN'T DISAPPOINT! Oh, man, did I love it. All the feels, all the laughs, all the drama, it's just a typical Kelk novel, and I adored it!

Unbelievably the Prologue opens with Tess in jail, which by the way was ridiculous. It was like I'd walked into a well-dressed episode of Prison Break. (And that's actually the SECOND time Tess ends up in a cell in the novel, would ya believe?) It was quite the start to the novel, you can't say Kelk doesn't bring in the bangs and the drama from the very beginning because, oh, she does! The action then starts a few days after the end of book one (I think, from what I can remember) and Tess has to make the decision to go to Milan or, er, not go to Milan. (As if that's a decision, psh!) Nick's gone AWOL (oh, Nick, you silly, silent, AWOL type) and Charlie's at the forefront of Tess's romantic world, except she can't stop thinking about Nick (totes inconvenient since he's AWOL, possibly dead) but Charlie's moving way too fast - I love yous and moving in together (from the guy who took TEN YEARS to realise Tess was a girl he was attracted to!) and Tess can't really deal with all of that (Tess is indecisive, I've come to realise) so heads to Milan with BFF Amy to shoot more pictures for the faaaabulous Al, from About A Girl.

I absolutely loved What A Girl Wants, probably more than I did About A Girl. I loved the setting (Milan! I love Italian settings, even though I've never visited), I loved being back with Tess, and Amy, and Kekipi, and Paige, and Nick. They all just grew on me that much more during What A Girl Wants (except for Charlie, who goes further and further down in my estimation the more he appears, so it was good on his part he was hardly in the book, but not really because when he was in the book he was being a plank) and I felt like I really got to know the characters, and I loved being with them - almost as if I was there myself! But what I really, really, really loved was seeing Nick Miller again. There is just something about Nick that is irresistible. He's dark and moody, sure, absolutely gorgeous, sure but it's just the way Kelk writes him.... He knows what he wants and he goes for it, as shown the first night in Milan which was just so hot. I like a man with a temper, and Nick has a bit of a temper that causes some great arguments and ructions between him and Tess and their chemistry is just off the charts. Charlie WHO?

It's the type of novel where you just forget all the things that you might normally take issue with (Tess is indecisive; unable to make a decision or be honest which leads to trouble) but which sort of works, because well, I just didn't care if she wasn't honest with Charlie, ever. Because I could not care less about Charlie Wilder. With the type of romance we get to read between Nick and Tess during Milan, you just don't care about anyone else. Love triangle, what love triangle? Maybe it's my Nick blinkers, but I just don't care for Charlie. He's not a patch of Nick, and I always know a good love story when I see one if it makes me feel all funny in the tummy, and I got it a hundred times over while reading What A Girl Wants. It ain't all plain sailing, mind, but I raced to the end, desperate to know how Tess was going to fix everything. The ending wasn't what I wanted, I'll be honest, but it leads very nicely into book three, because there IS going to be a book three, even if I have to go and hold a gun to Lindsey's head while she writes it. I need my next fix of Tess and the gang. AND MORE OF NICK MILLER. What A Girl Wants is going to be the read of the summer, let me tell you, and it's SO deserving of that honour because it was amazing.

This review was originally posted on Girls Love To Read