Book Review: Falling for Max by Shannon Stacey

This is one of the later books in the Kowalski family series, but it’s the first one I heard about and it grabbed my attention right away. Nerdy, shy hero? I am all over that! And while it definitely feels like a later book with all of the other relationships and references to past plots, I didn’t feel so lost in the history that I couldn’t enjoy the story

One-Sentence Synopsis
A waitress befriends a shy, socially awkward man and sets out to help him find a wife. For a full synopsis, see this book’s Goodreads page.

Loving the Shy Guy
Everything about this book was complete crack for me. Max is the super awkward town resident who’s somewhat of a mystery and was at one time speculated to be a serial killer (jokingly…sort of). But the truth is that he spends a lot of time on his own because he doesn’t relate to people well and has always been known been seen as odd (though it’s never stated, he seems to have Asperger’s). But over time, he’s made friends and has went out of his comfort zone to actually go out and keep himself from becoming too reclusive. And one of the things he wants to do? Find a wife and have kids. But he realizes that to get there, he needs to find someone to date first.

Collateral Damage
Tori is a graphic designer and waitress who has an instant connection with Max. Witnessing his shyness, she offers to not only help him find someone in town to date, but to also teach him how to be a little more at ease with someone in a conversation. They become friends quickly, and though Tori finds him attractive, the shock and hurt of her parents’ divorce has made her built a wall against trying to find a relationship for herself, fearful that it would end with hateful and mean words, and the last thing she wants to do is hurt Max.

Friends to Lovers
I love foreplay in my stories, but I also like a good slow burn where feelings develop naturally, and this story falls into tha category. When their friendship starts, Tori and Max really do plan on just being friends, regardless of what others seem to think when they see them hanging out together. It’s a small town, and people speculate, and they figure that once Max starts dating someone, the talk will die down.

The natural way they start realizing they want to be more than friends is well paced, and so by the time Max finally admits that he wants a relationship with Tori, there’s no feeling of insta-love.

Flaws & All
Max wanting a wife and kids feels old fashioned but it’s so sweet. His being excited to have kids thing made me melt (and I’m not even a kid person). It was also endearing, though sad, how self aware he was of his own oddness, and how happy he was to finally have a group of friends he could spend time with.

Tori frustrated me with her fear of getting close to Max, but I felt that her reasons were sound, so rather than being an annoying character who went around in circles that didn’t make sense. I completely understood where she was coming from. The fact that her mother was a horrible person kind of cemented that understanding.

The Romance Factor
Max makes such a good romantic hero, and the fact that he tries to give Tori what she wants when she says she wants to be friends with benefits, even when he knows he wants more, made me want to hug him. I mean, to be honest, I kind of wanted to hug him throughout the whole book. More importantly, I wanted Tori to hug him. 5/5

The Steam Factor
Though we get to see some of the sexy times and thoughts between Max and Tori, it doesn’t go into need-a-cold-shower territory. In fact, the sex is just as sweet as the rest of their relationship. 3/5

Final Thoughts
While I’m glad I read this book, I wish I would have started with the first book and got to know the rest of the characters and followed Max’s story up to the point he meets Tori. When I heard about this on a podcast, that seemed to be one of the things people enjoyed, that they’d been hoping he would get his own story. The good news is that I enjoyed this book so much that I figure if I go back to start at the beginning and read the whole series, I’ll be ready to re-read this one when I get to it.

Once Upon a Billionaire by Jessica Claire

I hit another one of my goals, which meant I got to reward myself with the 4th book in the Billionaire Boys Club series. Sadly, I don’t get to see it sitting on my shelf, since it’s not in print. However, I could still read the digital version, which I bought right away. Besides treating myself to the book, I also treated myself to a night of putting the other books I’m reading aside and diving into this one.

One-Sentence Synopsis
A stuffy member of a small country’s royal family is appalled when the the temporary assistant hired to accompany him to his cousin’s wedding turns out to be a southern girl with no knowledge of proper etiquette or decor. For a full synopsis, see this book’s Goodreads page.

The Good Stuff
This one currently stands as my 2nd favorite of the series. Griffin is a complete douche while Maylee (who we met in a previous book) is one of the sweetest people ever, as evidenced by the fact that people are drawn to her and seem to like to be around her. Except for Griffin, who can only focus on the fact that she has a southern accent and seemingly, no filter.

Unlike Reese in the previous book, Griffin has a reason for the way he is. Having been brought up to be proper in a royal family, he can’t quite let go of those teachings, even though he’s made an effort to get as far away from his family as possible. Also, he’s not a social person. He doesn’t like people and he doesn’t understand them. There were so many times that he said or did something he thought was nice, and yet didn’t realize how much it hurt Maylee.

Maylee was so adorable. I loved her as the heroine, including her quirky ability to use folk healing to take away pain. It was a strange, magical element that fit into the story as a believable element. She was emotional, but it was nice to have an emotional heroine who was okay with crying when she was upset. She’s also hilarious. I couldn’t tell if she knew that Griffin was correcting her English and didn’t care or if she really didn’t know, but their dialog cracked me up.

Also, we get to see Gretchen and Hunter again, and though Gretchen comes off as a little obnoxious in this book, she’s also the one who calls Griffin out on being a dick, which maintains her likability quotient.

The Romance Factor
Maylee and Griffin take awhile to figure things out, but their journey there is so delightful and angsty. Every time Griffin messes up and Maylee gets sad, the feels just about about killed me. The thing is, Griffin messes up through pretty much the whole book, so while he learns, he learns very slowly. But he does learn, and by the end of the story, I was rooting for him, even if he was a major ass at the beginning. 5/5

The Steam Factor
Interesting fact about this story…compared to the other books, there’s almost no sex. The previous books in this series were pretty hot and heavy, but in this one, besides a few moments of sexual tension, nothing even happens between the two of them until about three quarters of the way through. Actual intercourse only happens once. But because Clare can right sex scenes like a boss, she managed to put so much eroticism into those few scenes, that it still maintained high steam factor. 4/5

Final Thoughts
It’s so hard to finish one of these novels and then go back to other ones. This is another one I could have turned around and read again. I own the next one in the series, so once I get some of my list pared down, I think I’ll “treat” myself to reading that one so I’m ready to buy the last one in the series when I meet my next goal.