Seducing Summer

I received this as an ARC for an honest review. I can without a doubt say that this book earned 5 stars. Callie Summer was such a wonderful character. She is intelligent and so funny and very brave. She is a hard working woman that has charm, wit and a great way with people.<br /><br />Gene Bond applies for a position as her temporary Personal Assistant and takes his job very seriously. He is taken with Callie and he works very hard to maintain his professional attitude with her, at all times. Until he can't. But there is danger lurking and Callie is not taking it seriously. Her mother has warned her of a threat and she will not listen. Gene does his best to keep her safe and protect himself at the same time. He is utterly professional until he is not. But it is full of fun interactions between the two. The whole cast of characters have fun personalities.<br /><br />The lovely story of these two people really is beautiful. Gene is ex military and he has been hurt in his life. He is a wonderful person. I wanted he and Callie to get together. Serenity Woods has created a great circle of friends for Callie to be a part of from the characters in the series.<br /><br />I look forward to the next three books in this series. Having met the girls, I know it is going to be good. They are very modern fun loving girls that work together designing lingerie and attempting to make all sizes of women feel sexy and pretty. This is a great premise.

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Oh! I've just realized that it's March 17th. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Sorry, it's 6:30 in the morning, I've had five hours of sleep, and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet. <br /><br />So, Seducing Summer...<br /><br />This book was not awful, but it wasn't fantastic either There wasn't anything wrong with it, per se. There was no cliffhanger, no OM/OW drama, no baby drama, no stupid behavior from either MC. <br /><br />It just...lacked oomph, if you know what I mean. <br /><br />Written in dual POV, I did like Summer. A lot. She was frighteningly intelligent and astute, and I loved how she neither did or said what people expected of her, nor did anything stupid to endanger herself from 'the threat' (ok, aside from one TINY detail, which I am not going to reveal for spoilery reasons). <br /><br />Unfortunately, I found Gene to be kind of flat. A great deal of time was spent describing how hot he was, but there wasn't enough time dedicated to character development. <br /><br />Well, ok, there wasn't a lot of character development on either side. <br /><br />I did think it was fairly clever the way the author kept 'the threat' on the sidelines of the story. It allowed her to focus on the interaction between the characters, while keeping the danger element simmering under the surface. It also was a bit of a cheat, since she didn't have to describe in 'the threat' in any great detail. <br /><br />A solid 3 stars, but not really something I'll be reading again.

DNF at 12%<br /><br />So maybe I was just looking for reasons not to read this because I'm kind of in a slump, but there were multiple things early on that bothered me, mostly: <br /><br />1) The blatant objectification of Gene when he is introduced - "Do you really think I'm looking for a smart-mouthed <i>man</i> to be my PA?" and then calling him a "hot piece of ass" to his face.<br /><br />2) The "not every man wants a stick insect" comment. Less of the body shaming, please!<br /><br />I usually love Serenity's books but after diving deeper into her backlist I have noticed the occasional lines that are problematic, or at the very least a little outdated. Like the kind of thing my grandma would say and not realise is kind of rude. <br /><br />I am still going to attempt book 2 because I want to read it for the Fall into Autumn readathon this weekend, but I may stick to new releases going forward rather than checking out her backlist, because I've never noticed this kind of thing in her post-2018 releases.

DNF at 83%...<br /><br />I’ll be very brief....<br /><br />Gene and Callie had zero chemistry. The flow of the story was off...we get details about sex, then a generic line about them talking for hours, which meant I felt nothing for them and felt they had no connection. I am also not a fan of a heroine whose life is in real danger and she turns down protection because she’s “strong and independent”...no, if people are dying, you’re just stupid and irresponsible. My last peeve is how Callie has a strained relationship with her mom because she’s not perfect...yet everyone describes her curvy body like Marilyn Monroe and everyone finds her charming and attractive. Ughhh, fake problems.<br /><br />I don’t care how this ends - I didn’t like Callie and don’t care about Gene.<br /><br />Two stars because its not terrible - I reserve one star for cheating and manwhores

4-4.5 stars<br /><br />This was a really enjoyable story. I liked both Callie and Gene and liked their story a lot. This is the first story I've read by this author and I liked it well enough that I'm planning to try more of her work in the future.<br /><br />Callie is a nice woman that co-owns a lingerie company with her 3 BFFs. Callie grew up with a father in the Army and a mother that worked as a criminal prosecutor (attorney). Callie's parents split when she was in her teens and (because she didn't know the whole story) she blamed her mother for the split and their relationship has been somewhat strained since. Callie's last boyfriend cheated on her, so now Callie doesn't trust her judgement of men and is rather leery of dating again.<br /><br />Gene is ex-military and now owns a security company. Gene grew up with both parents but didn't have the best relationship with them. His childhood wasn't horrible but it sounds like his home wasn't the most caring one, especially after his mother died when he was 11 years old. His father didn't approve of his choice of going into the military and they're not close now.<br /><br />Callie's mother told her about death threats that she'd been getting and Callie basically blew them off as baseless concerns. Callie figured she could "take care of herself" and "refused to be intimidated and scared by the bully that's stalking her mother". I wanted to be annoyed at Callie for this but the story does state that her mother downplayed the threat to her when she told Callie about it (just how much it was downplayed wasn't specified) so I can kind of understand why Callie wasn't taking it too seriously and refused protection. Because she refused protection, her mother got Gene (who she knew from years before) to act as Callie's bodyguard in secret. Her normal PA had to go on maternity leave and that gave Gene the perfect opportunity to take the job so he'd be close to Callie most of the time. What he wasn't expecting was to be immediately attracted to Callie...which made doing his job a lot harder.<br /><br />Callie reluctantly gives Gene the job...I say reluctantly because 1. she's attracted to him and doesn't want to be and 2. she's really not sure how well a guy would do as a PA for the CEO of a lingerie company. Thankfully, Gene convinces her that he can do the job and manages to prove his professionalism when it comes to dealing with the whole "lingerie" awkwardness that most men suffer from. Callie is planning a trip around New Zealand in order to build up business and Gene goes with her to help out. Along the way, their attraction gets stronger and stronger and although Gene really does try to stay professional, things happen. And then Gene is all freaked because he really likes Callie and since she values the truth, he doesn't think she'll like him once the truth comes out. Things actually come out in a totally unexpected (but maybe should have been expected) way and it's actually less drama than I expected. Eventually, the threats against Callie and her mother are dealt with and Gene and Callie end the story starting towards a HEA together.<br /><br />This was a really enjoyable story. Callie was a nice woman that was very bright and easy to like. I really liked how she handled the whole situation with Gene...I wasn't expecting it from the way the situation was progressing but it worked out great. Gene was a good guy that made the best of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Overall, this was a really good story with characters I liked so I'd recommend it. :D

Callie Summer, CEO of The Four Seasons Lingerie needs a temporary PA while her regular PA is on maternity leave. Gene Bond applies with all the skills she needs and she hires him.<br /><br />Summer's mother is a lawyer and one of the men she put in jail is out and sending death threats to her and that includes her daughter, Summer too. Gene is really a protection specialist with his own company and Phoebe hires him to protect Summer.<br /><br />Summer doesn't want protection so with the help of one of her friends Gene gets a job to stay close to her on her trip all around New Zealand to increase her business. The trip covers all of New Zealand with great descriptions of most of the country and romance develops as both Gene and Summer take turns seducing each other. Gene knows it is dangerous to be <i>Seducing Summer</i> with a killer after her but he can't resist. It is a great romance, a great mystery and a fun book to read.

First in the Four Seasons series. Owning a lingerie company is not supposed to be a profession that sets a killer on on your tail. A smoking-hot bodyguard, hot sex and a trip throughout New Zealand. Always something to keep you turning the page.

I've had the pleasure to read a few of this author's books and really have enjoyed them, this book being no exception, but there are things I really liked and didn't like with it....<br /><br />First of all I loved the storyline of the book. Gene and Callie where very entertaining, loved the chemistry between the two of them, loved Callie's sass, and how she and her friends went into business doing what they loved the most, making women feel sexy. Gene was pretty hot, interesting how his storyline was with being Callie's PA and traveling all over New Zealand with her. Loved the way the author described each town and city they went into, you really got the feel for the area, making you want to book a flight out to visit each and every place. I enjoyed Callie's friends, Neve's no bullshit attitude, and Rowan's gentleness. <br /><br />Now what I didn't really care for in the book. I'm not a fan of wishy washy characters, and I found Gene and Callie rather irritating after about half way through the book. How can you continually question how you can be doing what your doing in secret, but still go to bed with someone every night. First Gene can't live with himself because of his secret, but he continually ends up saying screw it and taking Callie to bed, and if it's his job to protect her, why should it even be a question on how he's conducting himself? And how can you guess what's going on, but just play along with it for 2 weeks? Just a lot of things that dragged on, making the story take on a whole different light in my opinion. Her mothers secret was rather odd coming from Gene, didn't get that at all, no matter how long the two of them had known each other. The end of the book seemed to jump around with the way they felt about each other too, just seemed jumbled to me. I would give this book a 3.5 rating if they had it. <br /><br />Overall it was a pretty good book if you can get past the indecisiveness between the two. As I said, I really enjoy this author's books, so I guess I was expecting something more in this new series. Will still read the next installment with great anticipation, want to hear about Rowan and Hitch, along with Neve and Rhett!<br /><br />I received this ARC book in exchange for an honest review.

Didn't finish after page 25. It may be an okay read overall but I already know I won't like it. The writing is very unoriginal and uninteresting. The dual point of view writing makes for a boring read. I know everything they are both thinking about in every situation. There's no mystery. I know what will happen because I know how they both feel about each other right away. Where's the intrigue in that? The wonder? There is none. It's all laid out for us right up front. Also, I don't like that everyone assumes the two lead characters are or will be interested in eachother, them included. I like an unsuspecting romance. One where nobody sees it coming and then somehow they fall in love despite everything. But it's unoriginal because both characters are perfect. They are perfect looking, smart, capable, on and on and on. it's all spelled out for us within the first 25 pages. So it makes for uninteresting characters. They have no flaws. They feel less normal and relatable. I like stories that are written in layers. Where we aren't just told straight out the qualities of each character. I want to uncover all the different aspects myself. See for myself the personality of the characters, not just be told all about them directly. I want authors to weave a tale, not just give me journal entry type writing. Like I said, uninteresting.