Dirty Rowdy Thing

I don't know if I'm a Christina Lauren fan, but so far I'm really enjoying this series, which I'm doing in audio. Shayna Thibodeaux and Sebastian York do a great job of bringing the characters to life but, and here I'm going to commit heresy, I think this would have been just fine with Shayna Thibodeaux as narrator. She does an excellent male voice and, though not egregious, I didn't feel that Sebastian York brought his ‘A' game in terms of Finn; I much preferred him in Shayna's voice. Moving on.

I really like how these authors write girls/women who own their sexual agency and aren't hung up on the usual damsel in distress role. I really liked Harlow, her sense of humor, her refusal to wallow in self pity. I love that the authors chose to present an American girl of Hispanic descent as just that: an American girl. The fact that her father is Spanish is just part of her like other characters having German, Irish, or Italian ancestors is a part of them, but not the whole of them. Kudos.

The romance itself, the relationship between Finn & Harlow, is emotional & unsentimental at once, also surprising in the most delightful ways; let's just say Finn is a real fisherman and knows his way around some rope. wink

I was all set to give this 5*** but then this thing happened: Finn gets his panties in a twist and his man ego hurt after Harlow does something, which in my eyes was a good thing, but which her parents and everyone else kept saying was not. In any case, getting mad is not horrible but his reaction was a bit too much for my taste and later there is zero groveling as in a barely voiced "I'm sorry". I'm all for equality of the sexes but in the end it's Harlow making the trip and reaching out to Finn, both figuratively and geographically.. Ultimately the combo of not loving one half of the narrating audio duo and the aforementioned “thing” dropped it down a star. Too bad because I really enjoyed this until “that” happened and I'd still recommend it. The authors do a pretty excellent job of setting up the next story without being too in your face and they people the story with fun and believable characters. I love Not-Joe and I'm gearing up to read his story.

I don't have much to say about this one except this series is becoming one of my guilty pleasures. There is something so great about reading a contemporary after all the fantasy and sci-fi books I read. I'm really enjoying this little contemporary/new adult fix I've been on.