Saturday, November 19, 2011

Real Men Will by Victoria Dahl

Ah! Finally, a return to Dahl's best form. The first two books in this series featured characters I wasn't very fond of. Tessa was whiny and needy, Jamie refused to be saved, and Eric was just a know-it-all jerk. The three are siblings whose parents died leaving Eric in charge. He felt like he had to become the man his father was. Well, the man who had adopted him and then fathered Jamie and Tessa. Even though Eric took over the family brewery, he never really felt like a Donovan, even after all these years.
He's incredibly uptight and has only let loose with a woman once in recent history. It was the manager of the local sex store, Beth Cantrell, and he pretended to be his brother Jamie (who is a man-slut, at least in Eric's view.) They had a torrid one-night-stand, he couldn't figure out how to admit the truth to her and, frankly, was a little scared of how much she did rock his world.
Beth has her own problems. She's not nearly as adventurous as she appears to be. The sex column she supposedly writes is actually authored by several of the employees in her store. Meanwhile, the scars of a horrible high school rumor still haunt her to this day, making her relationship with her father nonexistent. 
But the two are massively attracted to each other and there are some s-t-e-a-m-y sex scenes. The writing was awesome.
I couldn't give the book five stars because both Tessa and Jamie, who had come pretty far in their own books, seemed to regress back to their original personalities. That being said, I have to repeat that this is probably my favorite of the trilogy.
Read alikes: Lead Me On by Victoria Dahl, Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips