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REVIEW: Say You’ll Be Nine by Lucy Lennox
Say You’ll Be Nine – Lucy Lennox
One dilapidated cabin in need of renovation.
Two stubborn men pretending to be a couple.
Three summer months to get the job done.
Four tangled legs in only one bed.
Five cameras catching it all for YouTube.
Six hundred thousand Instagram followers.
Seven nosy family members with Opinions.
Eight thousand reasons they should never fall in love.
Nine million reasons why they will.
Say You’ll Be Nine is a standalone novel.
NINE! (♡´౪`♡)
Isaac ‘Nine’ Winshed is all kinds of adorbs and sweet and gentle and shy. He would rather be hit by a train than let someone be hurt under his watch. When he was a child he didn’t want his favorite chicken, Sir Pecks-a-lot, to be eaten so he let it live in his closet.
The man lives to help other people. He wields a hammer like Thor and has the heart of Captain America. His superpower is home renovation. He vlogs about DIY projects on Youtube. The best thing about him is that he didn’t feel too good to be true. I loved how author, Lucy Lennox, made him alive and relatable.
Nine is the ninth in a family of 12. All his life, he’s been dating girls but never really felt the spark. It wasn’t until he was with Cooper when he realized something about himself. For him, it’s not the the gender but the person. And Cooper was that person.
Cooper Heath is an aspiring actor hoping to make it big in Hollywood. He’s best friends with Eli, Nine’s big brother. Cooper was the opposite of Nine in many ways. He’s witty, extroverted, very talkative and a bit dramatic. He’s highly self-reliant and doesn’t like asking for help. He’s currently back in town, living with his mom and twin brother, Jackson.
Jacks has a rare blood disorder and they needed money for a bone marrow transplant. The fastest way was to accept a sponsorship for an LGBT-oriented DIY show on Youtube where Coop and Nine pretend to be a gay couple and renovate a cabin in the woods.
Coop can’t tell his Phillips from a Robertson but he’s very social media savvy. His superpower is Instagram. The project should be easy. All he needed to do was make them look good.
Except…how NOT to fall for the very attractive lumberjack+fake boyfriend whom you were kinda crushing on since when you were a kid? The same lumberjack+fake boyfriend who’s the younger brother of your best friend and by all accounts, straight?
Things are getting real really fast!
I want to see that time-lapse video of the cabin being renovated. As Nine said, it was like watching him and Cooper fall in love. It was fantastic to see how the characters developed and their romance transition from reel to real.
I totally loved how Nine embraced everything with an open heart and an open mind. He himself admitted he was naive but he learned fast and he gave it his all. Coop was very patient with him and they talked everything out, at first. It was wasn’t until the latter part that they headed towards that notorious miscommunication+separation route.
After which we are rewarded with a grand gesture moment that was so cute and so endearingly Nine. I wished this was a movie because that scene would be so beautiful on screen.
Cooper was no slouch either. He pulled off his own grand gesture with perfect timing with the best Christmas present ever. That ending was pure ♡ ♡ ♡ !
Say You’ll Be Nine is my first book from the author and I loved it to bits! This is a contemporary, opposite-attracts, forced proximity, fake boyfriend romance with a slight enemies-but-not-really angle thrown in. There’s also the brother’s bestfriend trope and first time gay going on. Everything came together in the best way possible.
It’s pretty much guaranteed, after reading this book, you’ll want a Nine in your life too!
Rating:
4.5 Stars – perfection is only half a step awaySoundtrack: You’ll Be Mine
Artist: Irma Kooper
Album: -
REVIEW: Two Rogues Make A Right by Cat Sebastian
Seducing the Sedgwicks: Two Rogues Make A Right – Cat Sebastian
Will Sedgwick can’t believe that after months of searching for his oldest friend, Martin Easterbrook is found hiding in an attic like a gothic nightmare. Intent on nursing Martin back to health, Will kindly kidnaps him and takes him to the countryside to recover, well away from the world.
Martin doesn’t much care where he is or even how he got there. He’s much more concerned that the man he’s loved his entire life is currently waiting on him hand and foot, feeding him soup and making him tea. Martin knows he’s a lost cause, one he doesn’t want Will to waste his life on.
As a lifetime of love transforms into a tender passion both men always desired but neither expected, can they envision a life free from the restrictions of the past, a life with each other?
Congratulations to the Seducing The Sedgwicks series for reaching peak fluff-tastic adorableness in the third book, Two Rogues Make A Right!
It’s for books like this that incoherent squeeing emojis are deployed.
I mean, that cover is pure ✧♡〜ヾ(◍’౪`◍)ﾉﾞ〜 ✧♡!!!!
A perfect cover that captures the ✧♡➴✧♡。❣╰(⋈◍＞◡＜◍)╯❣。✧♡ ➴✧♡!!!!-ness of the story.
Yeah, foreheads touches ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)
I will try to write a saner review now that I had the squeeing out of the way.
Two Rogues Make A Right is as sweet and gentle as an idyllic summer. It is a quintessential story of falling for your best friend. As such, there is the fear of losing a life-long friendship if romantic feelings become known. Mutual pining ensues. It is a tale as old as time, but Cat Sebastian was able to spin Will and Martin’s story into something more.
It was also about Martin coming into his own. His constant attempts to be a better person than his father ever been. His struggle to gain independence and make choices for himself. His determination to be useful in a world where an entry in Debrett’s pretty much guarantees you a lifetime of decorative lounging.
Martin came across as an almost villainous minor character in the first book, It Takes Two To Tumble. He’s grumpy and seemed to hate everybody. The second book found him in the attic, sick and cold. My sympathies were stirred. In this third installment, Martin turned out to be an utterly endearing tsundere. I really loved the scene where he spontaneously gathered posies on his way home and upon arriving, thrusted them to Will like he’s getting rid of something nasty.
Will is the kind of guy who’s free with his affections. He’s also “unspeakably loyal” to Martin and Martin knows that. I respected the heck out of Martin for steadfastly refusing to take advantage of Will’s loyalty. Even without the romantic aspect, their friendship were goals. I really loved how they selflessly took care of each other.
Martin rescuing Will from opium dens at the cost of his health. Will patiently nursing Martin back to health, telling him ridiculous bedtime stories. Them reading to each other! When Will was in the Navy, he got a tattoo on his arm with Martin’s name on it even before there were amorous feelings involved. To Will, Martin is home. Simple as that.
I want to build Will and Martin a blanket fort and keep the big bad world away from them. These are two precious dorks! Protect at all cost!
P.S.
Seducing the Sedgwicks is best experienced by reading the books in order. The series might not be 5-stars across the board like The Turners series, but It Takes Two To Tumble was also a highly enjoyable take on the Sound of Music. Read my review here.
I DNFed A Gentleman Always Keeps Score. I wasn’t connecting to the story. I will not be posting a review for it.
Cat Sebastian books here.
Rating:
5 Stars – absolutely perfectSoundtrack: Fallingforyou
Artist: The 1975
Album: IV -
NEW RELEASE BLITZ: Lighting the Lamp by K.R. Collins (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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NEW RELEASE BLITZ: From The Dark We Came by J. Emery (Excerpt & Giveaway)
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New Release Blitz: Sophomore Surge by K.R. Collins (Excerpt & Giveaway)
