Monday, January 31, 2022

Sweet Distraction (Stag Brothers, #1) by Lainey Davis Review


 Sweet Distraction by Lainey Davis Review

Sweet Distraction can be read as a stand-alone novel, but is the first installment following the Stag brothers and the women they learn to love.

This review contains spoilers for Sweet Distraction, in addition to discussions of some R-rated material. Read with caution.

We start out with Tim Stag, our lawyer bad boy who apparently can't keep a woman to save his life. He's hot. He's rich. He's successful. He's just my type. Alice Peterson is a freshly graduated chef who manages to snag the corporate chef position at Tim's office within a two-minute interview and immediately impresses him with her buns... and her muffins. With a dual POV, we see an immediate attraction from both parties, and an openness to discussing so with Alice's family members practically as soon as she gets home from landing the job.

"Manual labor helps me work through my frustrations..." I simply cannot relate to this.

I need to know why exactly Alice had to have sushi at an ice hockey game. I know the arena is super fancy, especially with the tournament going on, but seriously Alice, sushi? She was just saying that she was going to need whiskey to warm up in the arena and of all the food choices she picks...

Alice and Tim waste absolutely no time jumping each other's bones and Alice seems to be obsessed with licking his nipples. I literally have never read in any romance (contemporary, dark, etc) where a woman was so absolutely perplexed by a man's nipples. But to each their own. This definitely targets fans of the Fifty Shades trilogy (and accompanying books) in the realm of high-profile, handsome man happens to come across a woman who is either working for him or his company, and just has to have her. It reads similar to Fifty Shades of Grey, but with the benefit of dual-POV in this case, we are able to get a grasp of the relationship from both sides instead of having to wait for the male POV book separately.

All of the Stag men have names that start with "T" -- this is going to be fun to try to remember who is who. Even their nicknames start with "T," so I am making the executive decision to simply give them new nicknames in my mind so I can keep track of all of them.

Of course Tim sees every single man come onto Alice in the office, but I am always a fan of a jealous not-yet-boyfriend, so these interactions are fantastic. Especially because we get to see them happen in Alice's perspective as well as Tim's perspective.

Like a reverse Fifty Shades of Grey scene, it's Alice who is taking care of Tim when he comes into her office completely drunk and out of it, crying about how people get hurt when he is distracted. But when he wakes up in his own apartment the next morning with Alice staying in the guest room? *Chef's kiss,* pun intended.

This "I missed the pill and now I'm pregnant with my boyfriend's -- who is also technically my boss -- baby" is very much not the vibe on my part. I'm not particularly a fan of the pregnancy trope, especially when it's with whirlwind romances, so this was definitely something that is not my usual forte. I do appreciate the fact that Tim actually wants to talk about this situation like adults rather than doing nothing about it, while miss Alice is literally locking her car doors so she doesn't have to talk to Tim.

I really wish this was more "steamy" - it's branded as such and with the last 20% of the book dedicated to Alice being pregnant and her and Tim figuring out what they are going to do, I feel like we missed out on seeing their relationship actually form. There were definitely a few great scenes, but after the first few, it felt more "fade to black" and generalizations rather than in-depth descriptions. I did enjoy their story, and wish it was just a tad longer, with more development of their relationship before they had a baby.


Sweet Distraction is available for FREE download on Amazon for your Kindle devices and Kindle app.


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