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Nate believes he has everything he needs to move onto the next level in his life. He is a successful career and now he is looking to find someone special to settle down with. He wants a wife and family to come home to, but he just doesn’t know where to find it. There aren’t many attractive women hanging around in his lab waiting for him to ask them out. When he tries a night of speed dating, disastrous doesn’t even begin to cover it.
When he gets pulled aside by the most beautiful woman there that night, he thought his luck had changed, but Kennedy Ashe is just trying to sell him her services…no, not those kind of services, but her services as a matchmaker. Kennedy wants to make Nate over, Pigmalion style. He will be her own Eliza Doolittle, she will make him over and find him true love. The first thing she needs to do is remove the orange self-tanner and return Nate to a normal color. Then he needs a new wardrobe, haircut, maybe a sexy five o’clock shadow, and when she is done on the outside, she needs to teach him how to talk with women without insulting them with his brutal honesty.
Actually, Kennedy believes his honesty is quite refreshing even if it is a tad harsh. It is nice to finally know what a man is actually thinking. But what Nate is actually thinking is that the wants his matchmaker. The more time he spends with Kennedy, the more he is certain that she is the perfect woman for him. He can see that beneath the sophisticated woman before him is a someone of fears commitment and doesn’t believe herself worthy of the love she is trying to find for others.
Nate needs to convince Kennedy to give him a chance before she puts him on the market for her clients and packs him off for a HEA with someone else.
THOUGHTS:
I really loved Nate and Kennedy. Who doesn’t love a geek in love? Nate is a bit of a mess, literally. He is always covered in spills. He is awkward with women. I gave this book only 4 1/2 stars because the characters and their interaction was wonderful, but there are several contrived story plots which will make you roll your eyes. Nate is a geek. He’s dated, but nothing long term and it is amazing that he dated at all since he needs such a drastic makeover of his look and his wardrobe to get women to even look at him. But not only that, he has a habit of saying what he thinks and turning women off. Soooo how come Nate is such a fabulously hot lover in bed? If he was so good, you think one of his prior lovers would have taken the time to do her own makeover and overlooked or curbed his big mouth. Nat is also hindered by an older brother who is sex on a stick and who teaches Nate all about picking up women for one-night stands. His brother has been burned by relationships and he can’t understand why Nate wants to find someone to marry. So Kennedy has to counter everything Nate has been taught by his brother.
We find out that as self-possessed and stylish as Kennedy is now, underneath it all she is still the fat, geeky girl that was teased and tormented in her youth. She eventually goes the other way and becomes anorexic until she gets help and learns how to deal with food. But you can see she still lusts for some of the things that Nate eats in front of her, so maybe she doesn’t have it all worked out with that relationship. Kennedy doesn’t believe she is worthy of a deep relationship which also indicates not all her issues have been dealt with in her therapy. Like Nate’s brother, she also uses casual sex as a way to keep men from getting too close.
As an example, one of the contrived story plots involved Kennedy who just happens to meet a date where Nate and his brother go to have a beer. Kennedy asks this man out to get her mind off of Nate. Kennedy and her date know that the get together is intended to lead to casual sex, but she changes her mind when she sees Nate at the bar. Kennedy doesn’t go home with the date, but they leave the building to a dark corner outside where date starts to force himself on Kennedy, rips her clothes, etc. Nate had the sudden need to follow her out, sees what’s going on and beats up the date to protect Kennedy. Now I can go with the theory that Nate used to be picked on at school and his brother taught him to protect himself, but why would Kennedy be hanging around in a dark alleyway with a man who she decided not to have sex with for a makeout session, except to wait around to be rescued by Nate, who she expected was going to get his ass kicked by her date.
One thing that did bug me and I have complained when the hero does it, so let’s not be sexist and I’ll complain that our heroine has done it…Kennedy sleeps with Nate although she has declared over and over again that she can’t commit to a relationship with him. After sleeping with him, she sets him up on dates with other women. In prior stories, when my hero has no problem having sex with the heroine even though he feels she needs to go find a better man than him, I have slammed him for his behavior and Kennedy deserves no less censure. If you sleep with the guy who likes you (and you like him) and then push him out of bed to go find another women, that does reek of cold-hearted bitch.
This was an enjoyable story with well written characters and many fun moments, and when Kennedy wasn’t lamenting how unlovable she was, the time spent between Nate and Kennedy was sweet. Jennifer Probst was highly recommended to me and this was my first story by her. I picked it because I liked the plot idea of the geek makeover. I was just a little disappointed that she used such basic dime store romance plot points.
Received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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Reading updates
- Started reading
- 18 April, 2014: Finished reading
- 18 April, 2014: Reviewed