Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Oh, yes. It’s adorable and funny and sweet
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine (YAY for third person in contemporary!)
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Very soon in (Pg 11 or about 3%)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends on a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, 2 years later
Format: listened to the audiobook from library (Hoopla)

Should I read in order?
I want to say all the books in this series are stand alone? This is the first I’ve picked up and didn’t notice anything overlapping within the other books.

Basic plot:
Cherry and Ruben have an instant connection – though when a paparazzi catches them making out in an alleyway, it leads to a fake engagement to protect Cherry’s privacy.

Give this a try if you want:
- contemporary romance
- England/Scandinavia setting (mostly the latter)
- instalust
- plus sized heroine
- fake engagement
- tall heroine but taller hero (5’11” heroine and 6’4” hero)
- lots of night time cuddles and talking sessions
- royalty – hero is a prince
- hero loves watching the heroine eat cake
- medium steam – 3 full scenes but more partial scenes and kisses and great tension (There’s another scene I decided not to count because it was pretty vague so it might feel hotter to you)

Ages:
- Heroine is 30, didn’t catch hero

First line:
Cherry Neita was not the type of woman to voluntarily use the stairs.

My thoughts:
Oh my gosh, I am officially a Talia Hibbert fan FOR LIFE!!!

This book I picked as part of The Diverse Baseline Challenge (check out @bookish.millenial on instagram for details) for fit Prompt C which is a plus sized heroine. I thought the cover of this just looked so adorable and I’m SO glad I gave it a try!

I immediately fell into Hibbert’s writing. It was so funny, witty, clever, her dialogue just sucking me right in. I haven’t loved BOTH main characters this much in forever. I was immediately in love with our heroine Cherry. She is just the best – I adored her personality so much. And Ruben I loved when he shows his naughty side but we got such a surprisingly sweet back story about him too – of course I swooned.

This book was lovely. I loved the whole thing and want to read allllll the Hibberts now. So many times contemporary doesn’t work for me but she has changed my mind! She had some really great partial scenes that I loved that really ramped up tension before diving into sex too which I adored. I loved that it was third person (reading so much historical and reading for the past 3 decades has just made me more used to third person). It was just perfect.

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own

“Cherry,” he whispered. “I like touching you.” His finger trailed down the back of her neck, along the spine. It dipped under her T-shirt, dragging down the fabric. She arched her back and shivered.
“I know you do.”
“Oh you know, do you?”
“I noticed, yeah.”
He wrapped a hand around her throat and pushed, gentle but insistent, until she lay back against the bed.
//
His lips pressed against the hollow just beneath her ear, finding the sweet spot with unnerving precision in the pitch-black. “Do you like it when I touch you, Cherry?”
//
His voice was low and soothing, but with a thread of command that had her pulse quickening. “I don’t think it’s obvious. Not until you tell me. So tell me.” His grip on her throat tightened, his fingers pressing against her pulse.
White fire shot through her veins as she gasped out, “Yes, I like it.”
“Tell me what you like. Tell me exactly what you like.” Always, he wanted more. More of her.
She loved that.
---
“Okay, I should go.”
That gave her pause. “Why?” she demanded.
He caught one of her hands in his and dragged it down to his waist. Pressed it against the front of his pyjamas. The soft fabric was marred by a significant wet spot.
“Oh.”
“I did tell you,” he murmured, his voice tinged with humour.
“Yeah,” she chuckled, trying not to sound smug. “You did. Hey, where’s my knickers?”
his voice, which had been playful as usual, became iron-hard again. “They’re mine now. Okay?”
 

 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- some scenes of family conflict, manipulation, and toxicity
- hero’s ex live streamed sex between them without consent
- mention of suicide
- mention of parental death
- child abuse and remembrances/implications of domestic violence

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: These were taken from audio percentages off Hoopla and might vary from other media forms.

Safe sex: 

  Hero uses condoms but one does break – the heroine is also on birth control 

How's the consent? 

  It’s good – he asks 

16% - kisses in the car, then kisses and fondling in the alleyway
48% - 🔥 kisses, fingering for her

“There we go, sweetheart. That’s what you want. Be a good girl and ride my hand.”

51% - kisses (very hot partial scene with him kissing her while she sits on the kitchen counter/island)
59% - 🔥 oral for her, hero comes in his pants

“Understand this,” he said. Kiss. “You are mine.” Kiss. “I know what you need.” Kiss. “And right now, you need to spread your legs like a good girl and let me do all the work.”

70% - 🔥 fingering for her, sex on the couch

“God,” he breathed raggedly. “I-I need you so fucking much.”
“You have me.”
“Do I?” He pulled back, moaning at the slow glide. “Fuck. You’re unbelievable. I knew as soon as I saw you. I knew you were mine.”

89% - kisses and sex though it’s a bit vague
97% - kiss