4 Stars
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, Loveswept
Date of publication: August 7th, 2018
Genre: Romance, Women’s Fiction
Series: Laws of Attraction
Down with Love – Book 1
Illegally Yours – Book 2 (expected publication date: January 22nd, 2019)
Where you can find Down with Love: Amazon | Barnes and Noble
Book synopsis (from Goodreads):
Sparks fly when the hot-shot divorce lawyer meets the high-powered wedding planner. The only question is, what kind?
If you ever get married, remember my name: Max Henderson. In my line of work, you acquire a certain perspective on supposedly everlasting unions. . . .
1. Prenups are your friend.
2. The person you married is not the person you’re divorcing.
3. And I hope you didn’t spend much on the wedding because that was one helluva waste of hard-earned cash, wasn’t it?
But some guys are willing to take a chance. Like my brother, who thinks he’s going to ride off into the sunset with the woman of his dreams in a haze of glitter on unicorns. And the wedding planner—the green-eyed beauty who makes living convincing suckers to shell out thousands of dollars on centerpieces—is raking it in on this matrimonial monstrosity.
The thing is, Charlie Love is not unlike me. We’re both cogs in the wedding-industrial complex. As the best man, I know her game—and I can play it better than her. But after one scorching, unexpected kiss, I’m thinking I might just want to get played.
My review:
I feel bad saying this, but I judged this book before I even read it. I thought it was going to be a fluff book. A book that had zero plot and was heavy on sex. Well, yeah, about that. Not what I thought it was going to be.
Max Henderson is a cynic about marriage. A successful divorce attorney, he has seen what breaking up a marriage can do. It has jaded him against anything wedding related. So, he can’t help but bait his brother’s wedding planner, Charlie Love. She is the opposite in everything. Or so he thinks. It isn’t until he kisses her that Max realizes he’s wrong about love. Will Max find his happily ever after with Charlie, or will he blow it?
I thought Max was a jerk when Down with Love started. I understand that he was cynical. I 100% understand that, but rain on his brother’s parade is something else. I wanted to smack him upside his head, hard. I didn’t understand why he felt the way he did. His parents were still married and in love with each other. But the more I read his story, the more I understood what drove him to that place. All his clients are upper-middle-class women who were pushed aside when their husbands wanted a younger model. Max saw what a divorce could do to someone who wasn’t expecting it. I understood then. But it didn’t excuse his attitude towards Charlie in the book’s first part. Another instance where I wanted to smack him upside his head. I knew he liked her, but he acted like a jerk to her. His attitude changed after the kiss. He went from needling her to helping her with family issues.
I loved Charlie. She was one of the more real characters I have read. I got a chuckle from the thought of a wedding planner with an anger issue. But, my amusement turned to sadness when it was explained why she had an anger problem. She also knew how to handle Max. This was great because he needed to be put in his place every time.
The romance between Charlie and Max did start off slow because of Max’s attitude. But once they kissed, it gathered momentum. When they had sex, it was hot. The other sex scenes were hot, but they didn’t reach the levels of hotness that they had the first time.
The secondary storylines made this book. The one that made me laugh was the storyline involving Charlie’s foster father, the dog, and Charlie’s foster mother. I was giggling over it because of the foster mother’s assumptions.
The end of Down with Love was your typical romance novel ending. But the epilogue more than made up for it.
What I liked about Down with Love:
A) Charlie
B) Charlie and Max’s romance
C) The secondary storylines
What I disliked about Down with Love:
A) Max, at the beginning of the book
B) How Max treated Charlie pre-kiss
C) Charlie’s anger issue
I gave Down with Love a 4-star rating. The book was enjoyable to read with hot sex scenes. Any of my complaints did not affect my star rating.
I would give Down with Love an Adult rating. There is explicit sex. There is language. There is no violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.
I would reread Down with Love. I would also recommend this book to family and friends.
I would like to thank Random House Publishing Group, Loveswept, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Down with Love.
All opinions stated in this review of Down with Love are mine.
**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**
The synopsis is intriguing. I like it.
Maybe max had to be a jerk otherwise it’d have been instalove and the plot wouldn’t have worked. and jerks in fiction are cute.
They are. He just rubbed me the wrong way when I read the book. And I was glad that there was no Instalove…lol.