Review: Her Stand-In Boyfriend by Kelly Jamieson
Her Stand-In Boyfriend
132 Pages
Release Date: 07/28/2015
Publisher: Entangled Publishing | Imprint: Select
Genre: Romance | Contemporary Romance
To find true love you first have to find a true friend…
This boyfriend business is about to get a whole lot more personal…
Event planner Lexi Mannis has a busy life in Chicago—too busy to have a boyfriend. For special occasions, she has her Stand-In Boyfriend, Mac Northrop. Mac offers (almost) all the perks of a real boyfriend—furniture assembly, a date to big events, and someone to cook for. But they’ve never been “with benefits”…until one wickedly hot night crosses the line.
Mac’s been in love with Lexi for ages. He knows he should probably end it, but dammit, he just can’t. When things get deliciously down and dirty, Mac is certain that he’s made the leap out of the friend zone…until Lexi decides she wants to remain friends. With benefits.
What Lexi doesn’t know is that she’s running out of time. And if she won’t promote Mac to Real Boyfriend, she might just lose her Stand-In Boyfriend to someone else…
*ARC provided by Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review *
Her Stand-In Boyfriend by Kelly Jamieson is a short, well-written, upfront contemporary romance read. It’s perfect for when you want to read a good romance but don’t have a lot of time to devote to the cause because the story has a true-to-life, emotionally satisfying feel to it, and the characters easily pull you into their story.
In the story, Lexi Mannis is having some trouble with her event planning business and her friend Mac is the stand-in boyfriend who supports her by listening and attending special events as her “date.” The fact that he’s been in love with Lexi for years hasn’t quite penetrated her head yet, but once they go from friends to friends with benefits, things grow complicated between them. And a fearful Lexi is left wondering if she isn’t about to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
I really liked this story. It was a simple, hot, friends to lovers story and the characters, Lexi and Mac, were likable, relatable, and easy to understand. I could see where both characters were coming from, and I felt for them because their particular predicament wasn’t an easy one for them, at least not without putting their hearts, and their long-time friendship at risk.
The author did a good job building the tension between the two lead characters, and keeping it there until the end. Which was one of the things I loved most about this read. I loved the struggle of the characters and the build-up for their romance, and I especially loved when they did cross the lines of friendship. It was a well chosen moment for Lexi and Mac, and the author did a great job with that whole scene.
If you like friends to lovers stories, Her Stand-In Boyfriend is a good read with two great characters who are both fun and hot together. I liked them a lot.
Only 99 cents right now!
Kelly Jamieson writes romances with heat that’s sweet. Her writing has been described as “emotionally complex”, “sweet and satisfying” and “blisteringly sexy”. If she can stop herself from reading or writing, she loves to cook. She has shelves of cookbooks that she reads at length. She also enjoys gardening in the summer, and in the winter she likes to read gardening magazines and seed catalogues (there might be a theme here…) She also loves shopping, especially for clothes and shoes. But her family takes precedence over everything else (yes, even writing). She has two teenage children who are the best kids in the world, not that she’s biased, and a wonderful husband who does loads of laundry while she plays on the computer writing stories.