Penny Reid

I really, really liked this book. Like almost loved it. I would have awarded 5 stars except for the language around sex work/ers. Romance writers consistently fall short when it comes to writing about sex work/ers and they need to do better. The premise of this story is that the MMC had a (inaccurate) story leak to the tabloids about his sexual preferences. This resulted in him loosing his position in his charity work. The issue I have is that sex workers were the ones to speak to the media about this although it should be widely understood that sw'ers want to keep their jobs so THEY DO NOT GO TO MEDIA AND NAME NAMES. It's not a thing. This makes an already vulnerable population look even worse than the media portrays them. Also, the MMC did not use services provided by sw'ers anyway so it just doubled down on this idea that sw'ers are the real enemy.

Then, the MMC has a lot of big long boilerplate response to porn and sw - how it is degrading etc etc. And like I think the book was trying to make his character someone who has hang-ups about power exchange since he was constantly worried about using his position as a famous rugby player to get women. BUT it wasn't really clear that is the issue. The FMC does kind of shut him down on his anti-porn position by mentioning that you can buy directly from people if you are worried about ethics involved and that not everyone that makes it feels exploited. So that I really appreciate but I still feel that the MMC's words about sw were given more weight.

Anyway - the hero has a voyeur kink and a lot of the build-up with the heroine was extremely steamy and I enjoyed it very much.… (mer)

When school-nerd Kaitlyn Parker hears about complot against her lab-partner and secret crush Martin Sandeke while she was hiding in the chemistry lab closet (don't ask), her instincts tell her to give him the heads-up. Not because that would earn her an IOU from the school's most popular jock (who she shouldn't fantasize about, to begin with), but because it's the reasonable thing to do. What she didn't expect from Martin in return though, are a kiss and an invitation to spend spring break with him.

She also never expected those couple of days to feel so great, and that she could open her heart and her mind to all things Martin Sandeke. But as she put her trust into him, other things come crashing onto the young couple, leading Kaitlyn to wonder whether opening up to him was a good idea at all...

What I loved about this book:

The great storytelling
The humour
The main characters (especially Kaitlyn)
All the feels!

What I felt needed improvement:

Absolutely nothing!

I love the fact that in Part 2, Kaitlyn shows more of her girl-side than her geek-side. A few days with Martin, and her mindset changed completely - and understandably. But still, she remains the feminist and engaged woman she is without being reduced to a puddle of swoon, and never once loosing her awesome humour and sarcasm.

"Women were more than the status of their hymen or their dress size. My sexuality bitch-slapped my guilt. Then my guilt sucker-punched my sexuality. I mentally took a step back, leaving them to fight it out amongst themselves, like a giant squid and a sperm whale in the depths of the ocean."

"It was one thing to be passionate, it was quite another to let passion be the sole driving force in my life. Reason and rationality still had a place at the table, even if passion wanted to have sex on the aforementioned table."

In Heat , we actually get even more insight into Kaitlyn's personality than before, and Martin points out a very important thing about her: while Martin could easily be considered as the rebel child, Kaitlyn has an extreme sense of commitment, leading her to sometimes choose what she thinks is reasonable over the passion and what the heart really wants.… (mer)